I love Fallout, but we haven’t had a new Fallout videogame in quite some time. Sure, I could go and replay Fallout 3—the best one—but why go to the Wasteland when you can bring the Wasteland to you? That’s what realgrillgamer thought (I assume) when they made their very own Fallout Vault in The Sims 4.
This isn’t just some house with a few bits of extra Fallout-themed furniture modded in—although there is an awful lot of custom material in there—it’s a three-tiered bunker complete with gear-shaped doorway plonked right in the middle of the desert. Vault 18 took “over 90 hours to build, and it’s still not done,” writes the creator on Reddit, where they go by HeyR.
Vault 18 is chock-full of detail. There’s a communal space like the one from Lucy’s Vault in the Fallout TV show, hallways filled with chairs and potted plants, even an Overseer’s office complete with the iconic desk.
I have to admit, with Sims 4’s glossy sheen over everything, Vault 18 actually looks like a pleasant place to live. Not like those experimental death traps in the games and show. The only problem is the lack of sleeping space—there are just two bedrooms, so I assume everyone sleeps at their work stations. Or, maybe it’s only for the ultra-rich and only two families could afford to secure their spot.
If you’re wondering why someone would go to all this effort, realgrillgamer’s Tumblr blog—which goes by yet another name, juliussims—has the answers. Their bio reads: “A mostly vintage Sims blog. If it’s art deco or Bauhaus, I’m into it.”
Fallout’s retrofuturist aesthetic is a staple of its visual identity. While it mostly leans on 1950’s American iconography mixed with some old-fashioned sci-fi, there’s a good dash of art deco in there, too, especially in the surface-level pre-war buildings.
If you want to check out the designs for yourself, you can find them on the Sims Gallery by searching the creator’s name there, realgrillgamer.
