Do you stay up late at night wondering what would’ve happened in your life if you made a different choice? In The Alters, you get to experience and see “what ifs” in your timeline, several times.
Sometimes you encounter rage, jealousy, and straight-up rebellion. I can honestly say, in my 30 years of gaming, I haven’t had an experience like this one.
Jan Dolski’s life is filled with regrets and bad choices.
In The Alters, you play as Jan Dolski, a man haunted by his bad choices who finds himself on an ill-fated space expedition.
With your crew dead, how will you survive this expedition? Your situation doesn’t allow you to go all Matt Damon like The Martian. Instead, you use a found resource called Rapidium.
The Quantum Computer lets you see your life’s timeline and where splits occur, and those splits allow you to build an alternate version of yourself.
Need a doctor? You were a doctor in one of those timelines. Need a technician or scientist? Well, you now have three additional crew members — and they’re all versions of you.
Alters have a career, and they come with bonuses in some way. You can assign them to any job, but some are better-suited for particular tasks than others. If you need someone to tend to the greenhouse, The Botanist has 100%+ crop-growing efficiency, which speeds up food production.
The Scientist is the only Alter who can use the lab to research new technology and base improvements. The Scientist and the Technician are the two Alters you will always end up with for story purposes; the rest are up to you and your needs.
Survival is the goal, but you need all the help you can get.
The survival aspect of the game looms heavily overhead. You have to mine resources and find ways around the terrain, and even try to avoid strange anomalies. I’m not much of a survival game fan, but adding in exploration and being able to assign Alters to do tasks frees you up from boring duties. The tasks you have to accomplish aren’t easy, either. Add Alters into the mix, and you have a very stressful situation. Your Alters’ emotional states can get more challenging than survival at times, as their issues might hold up your overall progress.
Some choices can cause such a negative impact, the Alter who dislikes your decision will stop talking to you and start to rebel.
I even got a “Game Over” by not helping one of my Alters in time. He killed everyone on the ship while I was exploring the planet.
One incredible thing, though, was making a band and songwriting with your Alters, jamming out to your tune while getting drunk. Alters just wanna have fun!
On top of all this, you have a third element to navigate: the people you have contact with on Earth. Choices made can change these outcomes, too. Hiding information or your Alters can be a correct or incorrect choice, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be able to finish the game. Navigating the company and other characters creates a lot of politicking between all parties. Getting denied help in a key moment will just add to the pressure of your survival.
Let’s talk about receiving a “Game Over” screen in The Alters. You can reload an older save and see all previous dialog decisions. If you said something that really caused a negative effect, this great feature allows you to circumvent that and finally get past any troublesome areas.
You are going to want to do several playthroughs, though, to see every Alter and how other choices play out.
It would be a disservice not to shout out the voice cast, like veteran Doug Cockle (Geralt from The Witcher series). But the real standout is Alex Jordan, who voices every version of Jan Dolski, and they all sound and act completely different. I was shocked to find out all of them had the same voice actor. Jordan really did something special here, and I hope his performance gets some sort of recognition. If anyone reading has any influence on industry awards, please shower Jordan. His performance is a master class in range and emotion.
The story, with all three elements at play, was great. I did four different endings, each giving me a slight variation of the final scene. You could be a hero, a villain, or someone else.
With the way the story was laid out, I can easily see this game adapted to a miniseries. Think of Matt Damon in The Martian, but with a bunch of Matt Damons who look and sound different.
After navigating the Alters, your ex-wife, and whatever else the corporate suits show interest in, it’s so interesting to see the ways your life could have gone, and the person you could’ve become.
All in all, The Alters is a ‘Game of the Year’ candidate.
The Alters is my “hear me out” for Game of the Year.
Wait — listen to my words! Don’t let the survival elements scare you away because you aren’t a fan of the genre. I’m not a big survival fan myself, but The Alters uses these elements to push the story forward in an interesting way.
11 Bit Studios injected an amazing story into an overdone genre. If you are going to play a survival game in your lifetime, it should be The Alters. The replayability is very high; with only five Alters, my playthrough clocked in at around 24 hours, which means there’s still more to see.
The Alters is hitting Xbox Game Pass at launch, but at just $34.99 for a base game download, $39.99 for a physical copy, and $49.99 for the digital Deluxe Edition, it’s easily worth the price of admission. Even the Signature Edition, packed with all kinds of extra goodies — a Pierogi Press, pins, a keychain, and more — retails for just $69.99. With $70 and $80 games taking over, it is nice to see more budget-friendly games that aren’t afraid to take chances.
The Alters is a must-play sci-fi dream that feels like a movie.
Score: 9.5/10
Pros:
- Unique premise.
- Incredible voice acting.
- Poignant story.
Cons:
- Occasional minor stuttering.
- Stuck in place on mining equipment after fast-traveling.
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