The trail of games I’ve unknowingly left behind must be long, really long.
I’ve spoken at length in the past about my low-information diet I go on for games that I’m interested in, wanting to form my own opinions on them free from that of the greater public. That doesn’t mean I’m not connected to the gaming media at all though, far from it, but it does mean that certain things will slip by me since I’m not fully plugged in all the time. It also means that, for instance, when a developer I’ve loved in the past releases something new there’s no guarantee it’ll hit my radar. Such was the case with The Alters, coming from former GOTY winners 11 Bit Studios, which I was a soft-pass on until Yahtzee mentioned that he’d like the storytelling elements in it. So I dove in, still unaware that I was playing a game from those devs, and I’m glad this wasn’t one that managed to fly under the radar with me.
Jan Dolski had to prove himself. Mostly to others but also for his own sense of self. That’s what saw him sign up for the Dolly Mission which would see him flung to the far reaches of space in search of one thing: rapidium. This wonder element was theorised to control the flow of time along with a whole host of other game-changing properties. The hope was that rapidium would help avert the collapse that Earth was barrelling towards, even if the potential saviours were also largely to blame for the need of a solution. Something terrible happened on approach to the target planet however and Jan found himself alone, stranded with not much hope of getting out their alive.
The Alters hits right in that uncanny valley for the visuals, going for stylised realism that works in some respects but hits awkwardly in others. The base environments, for example, are well realised and full of detail something that’s definitely needed since you’ll be up close with them for extended periods of time. The outside areas that you’ll be exploring feel like they got less attention, seeming to be a lot more basic both in terms of construction and detail. The best way I can describe it is it feels like they’ve used a lot of Unreal store assets in it, even though I’m sure that’s not the case. Would it be a bad thing if they did? Not at all, but assets from those kinds of places have a certain feel to them, something which The Alters seems to share. That leads onto the performance which is a bit hit and miss, something that’s typical for unoptimised assets which, again, is a feature of things from the asset store. Maybe this is just a long winded way of me saying the visuals are good, but not great and at the end of the day that’s not what this game is all about.
Leaning on their heritage in the base building/survival genres 11 Bit Studios brought much of that game loop into The Alters whilst changing the formula considerably from what they’ve delivered in previous titles. You’re still going to be doing a lot of resource management, figuring out how to best spend the precious few resources you have to get you over the next hump, but the critical resource you’ll be spending is time. You have a set number of days to accomplish a particular task and how you get there is entirely up to you. Underpinning that is The Alters system which allows you to create clones of yourself that lived a different life and, therefore, have a different set of skills to you. Those alters will then become part of the crew to help you manage the base and overcome the challenges you face. Whilst the main goal will be the driving force behind why you need to engage with the core game loop how you support your crew is the engine by which you’ll achieve that. How you build out your base ties directly into that, as well as influencing just how efficient you are with the resources you gather. There’s also some mild exploration elements involved as well, but given you’ll be working within a fixed environment that’s none too big that part of the game doesn’t last particularly long.
The Alters does a good job of slowly introducing it’s varied mechanics over the course of the first introductory level although it deliberately stops short of giving you any tips beyond that. Now this makes sense from a narrative perspective, you are after all just one person on a mission that needed more than that, but it’s also part of the game’s overall ploy to have you experiment to find what works for you. To be sure you can go out and read any number of the guides out there to find a more optimal build than the one you were likely thinking of, but it’s clear that the devs want you to stumble your way through. I will admit that this annoyed me a bit at first as I wasn’t sure if I was going about things in the right way but now, after finishing my playthrough, I can see that given enough work all paths are viable.
To give you an example of this once you’re able to create Alters the game really doesn’t mention when is a good time to do that. The thing is, once you’re past the first couple hours you can create as many as your current upgrade level allows and, realistically, there’s not much reason not too. Of course if you do, and fail to implement the right systems to support them, you’ll end up in a world of hurt which is something veteran survival base builders are likely to pick up on quickly. On the flip side though, should you not do it early enough you’ll likely hamstring yourself and find it much harder to achieve the current act’s objectives. This is a rather long winded way of saying that whilst this might not look like one of 11 Bit Studios’ games on the surface it very much follows the tropes of the genre quite closely.
A similar strategy applies to the upgrades you can research. There’s a lot, more than you’ll be able to research in a single playthrough I think, and so you should focus on things that are causing you the most harm. For me that was mostly economy focused initially as I cannot understate how annoying it was to manage Alter allocation onto mining outposts, especially when they were in a bad mood for one reason or another. Getting those automated outposts was honestly the best improvement I had to my overall experience with the game as it mitigated so many problems. To be sure though I think most of those issues I encountered could be mitigated with better planning and possibly some other dialogue choices.
I’m in two minds about the exploration mechanics in The Alters. On the one hand I liked that it wasn’t overdone as it could’ve easily become a chore if there was too much of it to do. On the other there were some parts of it that were really frustrating, like the constant dealing with anomalies, numerous upgrades required to make it less painful and the general awkwardness of the movement systems. Part of this could be tied to the performance issues I was encountering in some places which would often see my rig freeze for a split second which, for whatever reason, would then have the input system interpret my movements in the opposite direction, meaning any hitch had me facing the wrong way. I will admit to not attempting to optimise the settings to address this (beyond power limiting my GPU after a persistent issue reappeared after a driver update) so potentially this could be solved with a little tweaking.
One system I neglected for a long while was the Alters’ emotional states which, again, is something that’s hinted at but you’re never really pushed towards. The long and the short of it is that you should probably look at it from time to time and, should there be something in there that seems…rather dire then you have to do something about it. Let’s just say that I had a few unintended consequences (and a total game over) at one point because of this which seemed to come out of nowhere. After going back a couple days and actually, you know, paying attention the cause was obvious but given the game gave me no real incentive before then to look there I was totally oblivious to just how crucial that was.
PLOT SPOILERS BELOW
I found the opening hours of The Alters somewhat hard to engage with. Jan’s dialogue with his Alters felt hollow since, in my mind, they had experiences that simply didn’t happen. It was like talking to people in a dream; whatever they had gone through was of no real consequence. That changed slowly and surely as more of the conversations tipped towards their shared history and the different perspectives they had on it. Suddenly even though their experiences weren’t “real” there were grounded and Jan prime could start to go through some real character growth as a result of it.
Of course it probably didn’t help that I’d picked some of the most unrelatable/annoying alters to start off with in the Miner and Worker. I unfortunately lost the Miner at the start of Act 2, not realising my choice to drug him up would lead to an overdose if I didn’t mitigate that issue somehow. I also made the choice to not give the Worker the implant treatment as that was his wish which, of course, led to his death. Also, weirdly, after they both died I didn’t create anymore which meant I ended up with just 4 of them in the final acts. With my setup that wasn’t much of a problem and, to be sure, I could’ve created more but for some reason I didn’t. I guess the weight of bringing more Alters into the world at that point weighed too heavily on me.
I also chose not to return to Earth as myself, instead giving the Botanist the opportunity to do so. I’ll admit I didn’t really like the ending I got, not so much because it wasn’t what I wanted, just that it wasn’t told from my perspective. I was more interested in where the other Alters ended up as I already knew where the main story was going to go. Perhaps that’s something that might be explored in a DLC or something in the future, which I’d definitely be here for.
PLOT SPOILERS OVER
The Alters was an unexpected surprise, coming out of left field for me as something that looked interesting but not enough to take the plunge on initially. I’m glad I did however as whilst it’s not without its faults The Alters delivers an impactful narrative that respects and encourages player choice, something that is rare these days. 11 Bit Studios crafted a great branching narrative that will make all playthroughs unique and will drive many great discussions about the rationale behind what you did and why you did it. This is 2 hits in a row for me from 11 Bit Studios and I cannot wait to see what they bring to the table next.
Rating: 8.75/10
The Alters is available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S right now for $50.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 19.1 hours total playtime and 58% of the achievements unlocked. Game is also available on Xbox Gamepass.
