The Alters

I love a good science fiction tale; they always manage to capture my imagination through the different worlds and scenarios that we get presented with over other film genres. The Matrix is still one of my favourite films thanks to the ingenuity and creativity on show that crafted such a mesmerising and clever narrative. The Alters firmly landed in this bracket for me and it will be one that stays with me for some time to come. 

Polish Developers 11 Bit Studios (Frostpunk 2, This War of Mine) have created a game which strives to push the player in many directions, from its original narrative to its many, many gameplay mechanics. This leads to an experience that can sometimes be quite overwhelming but also very addictive, which fed my confliction with the game as a whole.

The Alters is set on a derelict, barren planet with a harsh, unwelcome atmosphere. You play Jan Dolski, the lone survivor of a crew that evacuated their ship for untold reasons. Once you have found your mobile base, Jan finds out that the sun is a massive radioactive ball of flames that will wipe him out if he doesn’t move the base from the sun’s range. The only issue is that he needs more people to run the base, not only for the extra pairs of hands but also because he lacks the required knowledge for most of the base’s systems.

Luckily, after a few calls to Earth and the discovery of a mineral called Rapidium, Jan comes into possession of the know-how to clone alternate versions of himself (called Alters), ones that have made different choices in life which have veered them onto different paths and careers. These Alters will hold the skills that Jan is seeking to get the base moving and to maintain it to a good standard. The endgame is to keep escaping the sun through three acts while Earth prepares a rescue team. 

At its heart, The Alters is a management game, with many sections of the base that will need attention. Jan has to make sure there’s enough food, build new rooms for the base, make sure there’s enough storage, keep on top of radiation filters, craft items and repair kits, and the list goes on. You also have to manage the time; with a tight day/night cycle, Jan only has a certain amount of time before he’ll get exhausted and will need to go to bed. 

This is amplified by the crafting, as all items take a certain amount of time to make, which is handily sped up through a sweet fast-forward mechanic, but I easily lost track of the time and before I knew it, it was time for bed again. There’s also only a certain number of days in each act before the sun will catch up, so it was always a race against time to get the essentials done. 

Also present is resource hunting, which is needed for crafting and building purposes. These are found as you explore mini open areas outside of the base, and whereas in the base the viewpoint is a 2.5D angle, outside it kicks into a fully 3D world to explore. The main resources to find are metals, minerals, organics and the ever-important Rapidium. These can be mined by placing machinery over the deepest area of the deposits and connecting the machinery to the base through pylons that you have to place periodically, then either you or an Alter can mine the elements until otherwise needed. 

But that’s not all that can be done outside, as there are many sections and paths that can be explored. There are secrets and items to be discovered as well as shallow deposits of elements that Jan can drill. Rock walls can be destroyed to make paths more accessible. though you’ll need to make sure that you have crafted drill cartridges. There are high ledges all over that Jan can climb but you’ll need a hook gun, which, to use, takes a certain amount of power out of a rechargeable battery and during all this, Jan’s energy levels need to be kept an eye on; otherwise, he may collapse in exhaustion. 

There are also invisible jelly-like hovering anomalies that are scattered all over that Jan will need to use an ultraviolet torch to see and disperse; otherwise, if he walks through them, he will get a heavy dose of radiation. If Jan takes too much, he will collapse from irradiation, which will force an Alter to rescue him, and Jan will lose the rest of that day while he recovers. These anomalies come with different movesets and can also be found blocking paths or filling an entire section. They did become a right pain after a while, especially when I needed to get a task done quickly or I’d run out of battery and couldn’t continue exploring. 

While Jan is outside or in the base, he will also have to contend with the Alters themselves, as they will also need attention. Jan has to maintain their morale, deal with any issues and help them with optional tasks. If certain areas are left unattended, like food levels, you risk a mutiny and could be taken down by your own Alters. As more are cloned, their attention levels will only rise, leaving Jan to make sure that they are happy and, when they are not, to help them to feel better about the situations they find themselves in. 

At one stage I had to build a social room where you can play beer pong or watch movies with the Alters. The movies are worth a mention, as each was filmed in live action, with each one only lasting a few minutes but with catchy titles such as “We Always Finish Each Other’s Sentences”; they did turn out to be pretty entertaining, though they will of course eat into your time. 

Through all of this, there is a captivating branching narrative that the player will shape depending on the decisions that are made. You will get to shape the person that Jan will become and how the story ends. It won’t be easy, as there will be many tough decisions to make and sometimes the most trivial answers will have much bigger consequences later in the game. 

The Alters themselves will unload their feelings on the situations they find themselves in and Jan will have multiple dialogue options to choose from when responding. Depending on which option is chosen, it will make that Alter feel certain emotions, which will expectedly alter their mood and morale. Some of these choices will also have knock-on effects down the line, so always be careful with how to approach each of these types of interactions.

There is a pivotal point in the story where you have to make a pretty dark choice and although there was an alternate answer to the problem, I decided to see how deep the game would go down that ethical rabbit hole. After it was done, I was left feeling pretty bad about myself, which shook me, and for a couple of hours I just felt quite uncomfortable. A game has never made me feel this way before and all I could do with it was to make sure all my future decisions in the game were the best I could make. 

This decision did cause massive shockwaves with the Alters and created a situation that couldn’t be reversed, and that only amplified this uncomfortableness. I take this as a positive, though; the writing for not only its story but also for the Alters themselves is so good that I was getting attached to them. They all had such different, likeable personalities that I couldn’t stop myself and so it was actually quite heartbreaking when in this situation. 

One other area the story can branch is when Jan communicates with the people on Earth and his employer, Ally Corp. This narrative beautifully plays with you on who you can trust and who maybe you shouldn’t. It seems that the corporation are out to save you but are they really just after the Rapidium? I kept yo-yoing between people as they played with me and maybe I shouldn’t have listened to some, but that lies in the beauty of this type of story and once again, the choices you make in these interactions could come back to haunt you later down the line. 

The Alters ask you to come back once you’ve finished the game to experience the alternative strands of the story with already chosen decisions and choices from previous playthroughs clearly marked.  This also leads into the fact you can only clone a small selection of Alters through the entire game, and with many other versions of Jan available, you’ll have to replay the game many times to meet them all. 

The visual design of The Alters is, quite frankly, stunning. Imagination was certainly key when the developers were creating this world. The planet was realised amazingly and really gave off this barren alien wasteland vibe with sharp diagonal rocks, stony bumpy surfaces, caves and tunnels. The same can be said of the base, with its distinct wheel design and rooms suspended in the centre through cables. The rooms themselves were covered in much detail and decoration, never feeling empty, always feeling lived in and with the machinery and tech realised in its futuristic designs beautifully, I could only admire the level that 11 Bit was aiming for and achieved. 

The Alters is a remarkable game, especially when you look at it from a technical point. So much is happening under the hood, with so many different mechanics happening all at once that I was quite taken aback by the scale of it all and how well it runs. Saying that it can also be a big ball of stress, with me often feeling overwhelmed by everything that I needed to take care of and things that I couldn’t, so that it nearly got too much for me. The time restraint really amplified this feeling with its tight schedule and I often got frustrated when I had to drop tools before it got too late. It got very intense when the sun was literally on my doorstep and I still had tasks that needed to be taken care of, with me just scraping through to completion at one particular point.

This conflicted me, as it did feel like too much work; I’m aware of the lack of time in real life. Do I want to have the same constraints in a game? I want to relieve my tension levels by playing games, yet in some instances I walked away from The Alters with more than when I started. I appreciate that management games are built to factor this in; I’ve played many in my time, but none have come close to the levels I hit playing this one. 

But I couldn’t put it down either; the game loop was too addictive. I caught myself saying, “Just one more day before I finish,” and real-life time felt like it was going as fast as the in-game clock did. I couldn’t stop myself from exploring the outside world, curious to see what was around the corner, to hang out with the Alters in the social room or to just finish one more task. It has been one of my most diverse gaming experiences ever, and as I said at the start, one that I don’t think I’ll ever forget.