Review | The Alters - Jan, Myself, And I
The Alters is probably going to be one of my favourite games of the year when all things are said and done. 11 bit studios’ interesting combination of survival, base building, and RPG mechanics blends seamlessly together to create a highly engaging and tension-fueled sci-fi story.
After an unexplained disaster, nearly the entire crew of an AllyCorp mining vessel meets its untimely demise. As the sole survivor, you step into the boots of Jan Dolski, a builder employed by AllyCorp to assist in the hunt for a rare element, Rapidium, which is believed to be on the planet you’ve just crash-landed on.
Upon learning of the deaths of your crewmates, your next goal is to establish contact with Earth and try to arrange a rescue mission. This is all while the planet’s harsh environments make trying to stay alive difficult. Radiation, unexplainable anomalies, and the quickly approaching sun, which instantly vaporises any life it touches with its rays, are all things Dolski needs to manage in order to stand a chance of getting home.
The AllyCorp base that was deployed with your crew acts as the only sanctuary and long-term traversal option across the planet. It also offers the only way to contact Earth, but upon reaching the ship, you find it in bad shape. While Dolski establishes contact with Earth, the transmission is fuzzy at best, but he is advised to search for resources in the surrounding area.
What initially struck me about The Alters was how well it introduced new elements to the ongoing gameplay loop. The opening Prologue section did a fantastic job of getting me acquainted with the core mechanics of the game and the urgency required to escape the approaching sun.
Managing time, gathering resources, and dealing with radiation exposure are explained and shown to the player in a simple and understandable manner. As you progress further through the game, new elements are introduced, but not at a rate that ever felt like I was being overloaded with new information. Instead, I was gradually given new items and introduced to new concepts at a really nice pace that allowed the gameplay to stay engrossing, but not at the expense of slowing down my engagement with the game’s story.
After discovering Rapidium not too far from your base, Dolski relays the information to Earth. Sharing information about the discovery significantly increases Dolski’s odds of getting a rescue shuttle from AllyCorp, but given that he is the sole member of the crew, his ability to survive until the shuttle arrives is in doubt. The muffled voice over the transmission with Earth offers a solution: he gives Dolski access to the ship’s quantum computer and instructs him to use the computer to edit his life’s core memories and create a variant clone of himself that followed a divergent life path to assist in getting the base up and running. These clones are known as Alters.
After Dolski selects a memory to break off, the Technician is brought to life in the ship's cloning chamber, known as The Womb. Once Dolski introduces himself to the Technician and explains the situation, they work together to get the base up and running again and are able to plot a course to a rendezvous point for extraction. The Technician is the first of six Alters you’ll be able to create in a single playthrough, with each one being proficient in a specific task.
The added benefit of the Alters in the game is the freedom they open up for completing tasks. While exploration and resource hunting are a major part of The Alters’ RPG elements, conversations with Earth and the Alters, as well as the Fallout Shelter-like base management and building management, allow you to diversify what you choose to focus on from day to day and ensure the overall loop doesn’t become too repetitive. However, you can absolutely pick which tasks you’d rather do more of, because the game has a great Alter management system that allows you to assign certain Alters to different tasks.
The setting of The Alters varies vastly throughout each act, but the visual presentation of the planet is something that really grabbed me. Full of sharp rocks, sandstorms, ferocious lava, and more, its barren and rough landscape presents an uninviting environment, but also one that begs you to look through every nook and cranny. It’s a stark contrast to the polished interior of the sanctuary base, which feels sleek and modern on the inside while very mechanical and almost like a shipping yard's contents flung together to create a spaceworthy ship. Each room feels unique as well, and even more specific to certain Alters you can create. The lab, for example, is clean but frantic in its presentation, while the living quarters feel more homely and something you’d expect to see at an intergalactic hostel. Arguably, the kitchen — the place you’ll end up spending most of your time throughout the game's story — feels most like anything you’d see in everyday life on Earth with its simple table and L-shaped couch alongside a basic culinary set-up. It feels like something ripped out of a staff break room at any other job.
The game definitely advertises its replayability factor, as with a good number of Alter variants and only a few available slots to fill per save, there are certainly different ways to experience the story, depending on which Alters you decide to create. Despite this, I feel like the replayability aspect could get a bit stale. The gameplay is undoubtedly hyper-engaging and fun on your first playthrough but after completing the main story and loading up it up again in subsequent days to see what other paths the story could take, I felt having to run through the game’s base “tutorial act” again really put me off putting more hours into it, even if it would reveal some new revelation story-wise.
That being said, it’s nice to have the replayability there as an option for those looking to explore every possibility. In fact, it’s quite on brand with the game’s narrative. However, you can definitely play through the game once and feel accomplished and satisfied with what you experience.
The Alters may not be a game that I replay straight away, but it occupies a very special place in my mind. I can’t stop thinking about its world and characters, as well as the memories I’ve created with both. It’s absolutely worth picking up, even if you’re only mildly interested in its baseline concept.
