By The Alters is one of the most unique and innovative games I’ve played in a long time.
I don’t throw this around often, but I believe it’s a game that deserves a spot among the Game of the Year contenders.
I had the opportunity to play the game a few days before the release, and I couldn’t bring myself to stop playing it.
It’s genuinely a fascinating combination of base management and immersive survival sim that I haven’t seen any developer even attempt to create before.
And I must say, 11 Bit Studios have nailed it!
If you’re wondering if The Alters is worth playing right now, I’ll give you a short answer.
Yes! It’s a unique life-sim style survival experience that will make you guess each decision you make and think twice about each conversation you have with.. Well.. yourself.
Warning: Includes a few minor spoilers
What Is The Alters?
The Alters is a survival adventure game developed by 11 Bit Studios, the same folks behind the iconic Frostpunk franchise.
In this game, you take control of Jan Dolski, who was sent on a space exploration mission by a big corporation. Jan crash-lands on a mysterious planet only to find that his entire crew is mysteriously dead.
The twist is that this planet he’s on is nearing its end. Upon sunrise, which takes several days on this planet, it will be completely destroyed. Jan’s only goal is to survive these few days until a rescue team arrives.
Jan finds a uniquely designed mobile base, where he can survive the brutal radiation storms of this planet.
As Jan begins to explore the planet, he discovers a rare resource called Rapidium.
When he informs of this discovery to his corporate people on Earth, they instruct Jan to gather as much as he can and bring it with him on the journey back, as it has the potential to solve a lot of problems on Earth.
The only issue is that Jan doesn’t know how to survive alone. Most of the base maintenance tasks require expert engineers. Not to mention the limited time on his hands before the destruction of the planet.
As a solution to this matter, the corporate people instruct Jan to do a cloning experiment using Rapidium—to create cloned versions of himself!
Jan creates different versions of himself by editing the memories to create clones like Jan the Engineer and Jan the Scientist, to help him with daily tasks and manage the base.
And that’s just a rough summary of Act I of The Alters.
Engaging Gameplay Loop
The main mission of the game is to get the mobile base into a safe location on the planet before sunrise. But it’s easier said than done because the path to this safe location is paved with obstacles.
Every day, you wake up and go out to explore and gather resources. You have a set of tools at your disposal to discover the ideal resource locations and then setup mining drills to gather the necessary resources needed to survive.
You have to work these machines manually to collect resources and whenever you use them, it advances time. The solution is to create Alters to help you with these tasks.
Because you also have to survey the area, maintain the base, cook food for the Alters, maintain the morale of the Alters to keep them happy, complete tasks assigned to you by the corporation, and expand the base as you progress.
The only way to do all these things is to keep cloning yourself and put them to work!
However, these Alters won’t be happy all the time. They will get into fights with each other, get injured, have various requests, and you will have to get involved to maintain things in order.
This gameplay loop, combined with the time limitation of the impending doom of the planet, will keep you on your toes and make each day and night cycle in the game quite exciting.
Immersive Exploration
I love the base management side of the game, but what I love the most is putting on the spacesuit and stepping outside to explore.
Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, The Alters has stunning visuals and environments. Every time I go out exploring, I am in awe of how gorgeous this game looks and feels.
The game effectively captures the sense of exploring an unknown planet and gives you that vibe and thrill of being immersed in a sci-fi world. Basically, it feels like being in a sci-fi movie.
As you explore, you will come across various obstacles and anomalies that you must find ways to overcome and investigate. I won’t go too much into those details, as you should discover those on your own.
Think and Strategize
Even the developers say that the players are not supposed to finish the game in their first playthrough.
The Alters is designed for replayability, and you won’t 100% the game in one take. It will take multiple playthroughs and lots of “learning from mistakes” to progress faster in the game.
This takes away the intensity and frustrations of all the base management tasks. Because you can’t do everything at once.
Every decision you make in The Alters has consequences. You can make more food for the Alters, but then you won’t have enough resources to craft radiation filters to survive the nights.
You can force your Alters to work 12-hour shifts, but then they will lose morale, and they will get sick and tired easily.
You need to strategize and think carefully every step of the way with a survival mindset. After all, you only have a few days to make it.
Incredible Conversations
Checking in on your Alters is an important part of the gameplay loop. You need to make sure they are feeling happy and less anxious to ensure they avoid getting injured and perform their tasks more efficiently.
To do this, you will have to engage in conversations with them, listen to their ideas, and sometimes complete side quests to fulfill their needs.
These conversations can be quite fun, mainly because Jan is basically talking to himself. The Alters share the same memories but with slight differences in their career paths. And sometimes, they will even teach you a thing or two about life as well.
Performance & Issues
I was able to play The Alters with max graphic settings and DLSS set to quality on my RTX4060 PC quite comfortably at around 80-90 FPS. When I turned off DLSS, FPS dropped to 60 FPS, but the game ran very smoothly.
I didn’t encounter any bugs, glitches, or issues during my playtime. The only complaint I have is the annoying shader compilation times that take 10-15 minutes whenever an update rolls out for the game. But that’s something you have to endure when playing Unreal Engine 5 games.
The developers have clearly made the right decision by delaying the game from its original release date and put that time to good use by fully optimizing the game.
Is The Alters Worth Buying?
The Alters is a game that offers a rare and unique experience unlike any other game available right now. It will keep you guessing every decision you make, and you will second-guess every choice in the path you take in each playthrough.
This game is designed for replayability. In each playthrough, you can try things differently and make different choices in your conversations with the Alters. In fact, you might not even survive until the end in your first playthrough.
This challenging yet exciting gameplay loop, combined with replayability, makes The Alters well worth buying. It’s a must-play game, even for players who are not big fans of base building and survival games.
