Good news, Vault Dwellers. Prime Video on Friday announced that a new reality competition series, inspired by Fallout, Bethesda Game Studios’ hit video game franchise and Amazon’s sci-fi drama, will launch on its platform early in the new year.
Fallout Shelter: The Experiment is the official title, and its 10-episode season will drop the first four episodes on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2027, with three new episodes dropping weekly through Wednesday, Jan. 27.
“The world is ending,” the Pip-Boy animation in the short video announcement says. “The competition is just beginning.”
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According to Amazon, Fallout Shelter: The Experiment will invite “everyday participants to test their aptitude for the apocalypse in Vault-Tec’s state-of-the-art bomb-proof vault shelters.” The series will pit the competitors against each other in “a series of high-octane drills, psychological dilemmas and morally challenging behavior trials” until there’s one person remaining to receive the grand prize of $1 million.
The timing of the announcement adds extra special meaning to Fallout fans, as Oct. 23, 2077, is known as Fallout Day in the fictional world of the video games and Prime Video’s series. This is the day that the bombs dropped, marking the beginning of the Great War that turned America into an irradiated wasteland.
If you’ve ever wanted to live the Vault Dweller lifestyle, this show will probably be your cup of tea. Fallout Shelter: The Experiment is also the latest in a string of competition shows inspired by established genre properties; Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge and Wonka’s Golden Ticket come to mind.
Beyond the reality series project, Bethesda has announced fun global partnerships to commemorate the day, including a Fallout-inspired exhibit at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas and the return of the Fallout Cafe to Tokyo’s Tower Records. The game studio also has a new collaboration with Jones Soda, titled Project T.W.I.S.T. (which stands for Taste-Worthiness Initiative for Shelter Transition), inviting people to help select the flavor for Nuka Twist — which will also reflect the Nuka Twist flavor, once it’s revealed in-game.
As for Fallout Shelter: The Experiment, the new spinoff project arrives at the beginning of 2027, which marks the 30th anniversary of the video game franchise (Fallout dropped on Oct. 10, 1997). With season 3 on the horizon, something tells me it’s going to be a big year for all things Fallout.