Ahead of my trip to 11 Bit Studios HQ in Warsaw, I did not expect to fall in love with its slate of games quite so quickly. While acutely aware of its hard-hitting works like Frostpunk, This War of Mine, and The Invinicible, I had little to no experience with its tried and tested formula of engaging gameplay loops interspersed with dark and desperate thematic hooks. The Alters has convinced me to pay the Polish developer-publisher much more mind.
The in-house efforts of 11 Bit Studios have produced a gorgeous and immediately engaging interstellar exploration game that's as much a The Alters is poised to become another fine example of the value of a Game subscription to players and publishers alike.
Waking up on a desolate planet with his personal effects scattered about the place, The Alters protagonist and humble builder Jan Dolski quickly discovers that his crew is dead. What begins as a fairly routine start to a survival game set in outer space soon takes a more distinctive turn. While exploring the visually gorgeous area around Jan's rolling base, I discover the strange material that leads to The Alters' principal hook: Rapidium.
This shimmering substance can be crammed into a quantum computer – not to conjure up some cool new tech to get you home, but to manufacture organic lifeforms. The tutorial has me test the theory, producing an animal companion that's a clear riff on Dolly the sheep, before I get to work filling in the gaps of the missing crew with… clones of Jan. However, these aren't clones of Jan as he is right now. They're clones of Jans that never were; a Jan that might have been, had he stood up to a bully, saved a family member, or ran away from home.
I'm not convinced your life trajectory or future area of expertise could deviate so much as to create ten entirely different vocational variants, but I was more than happy to roll with Jan, Jan, Jan, and Jan for a couple of days in a dimly lit room surrounded by other writers and content creators. With an ever-burgeoning crew on hand, I found myself (and myself, and myself) with a mission: keep spinning the wheel of rolling base to outrun the rising sun. Whether that's to buy time for a rescue mission or to fill up the Rapidium reserves for the man back home isn't immediately clear, but you can use your imagination.
See, it's not all about chilling with your alter buddies until rescue arrives. With a whole base to build, maintain, and manage à la Fallout Shelter, there's a lot of busywork between cooking up pierogis and reuniting your clones with a sweet lava lamp. For one, I need to stay on top of crafting radiation shields to avoid burning up even earlier. For another, I need to carefully manage the minutes of each day.
Before the radiation hits its high each night, I'm encouraged to suit up and head out, placing mining machines to collect resources and daisy chain them together with a network of power pylons. Back at the base, my duty-bound alters turn gathered resources into handy adventuring tools, necessary upgrades, food for the crew, and maybe a Beer Pong table or a home theatre – whatever they need to blow off steam after a hard day of being several extra pairs of identical hands.
In a Mickey 17 sort of way, Jan's alters are not best pleased about the situation they've been born into. Though they wouldn't exist without it (they're not pulled from another dimension, let's make that clear), they're still very much real people, with real memories and all the messy, complex thoughts and feelings that come with them. Struggle to make time to talk things through, and you risk a situation flaring up while you're out mining the juice to make a Jan that can cook a decent meal.
Over the six hours spent in this hands-on preview, I got to see and experience a good chunk of The Alters' first two acts. My playthrough of Act Two came with a couple of Jans I didn't choose in Act One, and therein lies the replay value. You can't have every Jan in a single playthrough – and with each having specific roles to fill, lives led, and personal issues to resolve with one another, there's looking to be enough reason to go on a second (or even third) run with this cuckoo crew of clones.
I'm told to expect a 25-30 hour experience all-in. Whether multiple runs are required for a true ending is up in the air, but I can see it happening. With such a strong performance from Alex Jordan (Dragon Age The Veilguard's Rook and Baldur's Gate 3 sex machine – don't let him forget it) pulling it forward, it's easy to imagine not wanting to call time on chilling with a dozen technically-identical but oh-so different people brought to life so convincingly by the mouth of one.
That said, my time with The Alters wasn't all searing sunshine and Rapidium rainbows. Though I'm itching to see Jan's story through after two particular hooks in the second act, managing resources did start to wear me down. What starts fairly simple in Act One begins to skirt chore territory in Act Two. More obstacles are introduced to slow you down, and each new zone you travel to is only likely to get bigger as your operation demands more materials. Fail to quickly set up shop and enlist your army of Jans to do some field work, and you're likely to neglect your guys as you trundle around looking for scraps.
Everyone is bound to have their favourite aspect of a strategy game that merges so many genres this harmoniously. But after backtracking time and again when miscounting a material, or struggling to figure out the six-step process to upgrade an item required to reach my next objective, I wondered if I was maybe just going through the motions to hear what philosophical revelation Jan and his multiplied mates would uncover next.
There's that familiar 'one more round' gameplay loop scratching to get out while playing The Alters, but what drives you through that may be one mechanic or story beat over another. Its variability is what makes it an ideal Game game, and it's well worth seeing if Jan's story grabs you before the burden of setting up a space rock mining mission threatens to knock you back down to earth.