If parallel timelines actually do exist, how much do your choices (regrettable or not) truly matter in the grand scheme of things?The Alters, the new sci-fi survival-management game from 11bit Studios, explores this question with a charming, hilarious and heartfelt sci-fi tale that’s equal partsDeath Stranding, Mickey 17andThe Martianto create a unique tale full of friendship and cloned sheep.
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Me, Myself, and I
After a crash-landing on a far-away planet with the rest of his crew deceased, space miner Jan is forced to make the ethically-questionable choice of cloning himself to survive and make it back to Earth. Using the ship’s quantum computer to create a duplicate of himself from another timeline (in which Jan became a technician capable of repairing the ship), a new Jan is created, followed by several more as hardships and limitations arise as the identical crew of the ship make their way across a hostile planet.
Each Jan is from a timeline branching off from significant moments in Jan’s life, causing a completely new personality to form while retaining memories up to the branching point. It’s a lot to digest, not only for the newly-born clones, but for the player as well, which makes the ability to read the backstories of not only Jan, but his “alters” as well, extremely helpful when communicating with them.
On the flip side, the ship (a peculiarly-shaped self-driving wheel which contains stacked rooms that Jan and his clones wander throughout) has been pretty banged up, and with no resources surviving the crash, the only option is to scavenge them from the strange planet you’ve landed on.
Trapped On A Strange Planet
Gathering resources is done by building mining rigs in the area currently surrounding the ship, then connecting them to the ship via transport pylons. Resources are used to build new rooms, new items and tools to help the crew get off the planet. Various tools and devices are used to traverse the rugged landscape and scout out new mining locations, as well as fend off strange reality-bending enemies that come in the form of transparent floating blobs.
Each room or mining rig must be occupied in order to serve its purpose, which is where Jan and the alters come in. Each Alter is well-equipped at performing a specific kind of task (growing food in the Greenhouse, operating Mining Rigs, etc.), but there are always more tasks than there are crew to work on, so the player has to keep track of the current status of each alter and keep them assigned to the most effective task to survive.
Tales Across Galaxies and Universes
While the main gameplay loop follows Jan and his crew collecting and managing resources to build upgrades and progress to their extraction point, there’s a secondary set of gameplay in the form of a life-sim/friendship simulator, as Jan must negotiate and maintain the emotional state of his crew through dialogue options and side stories. These choices can heavily affect your crew, with some paths leading to lost limbs, depressive breakdowns and even death.
The struggles of not only Jan, but also his crew, aren’t only limited to the survival of the crew. With the branching backstories of each clone, existential and moral quandaries arise in several forms. One version of Jan lost a spouse to an oil-mining accident that never occurred in this version of reality, leading him to beg the original Jan to warn their still-living significant other of the dangers at the rig. Each side story carries emotional baggage that brings the moral and ethical discussions to the forefront.
Closing Comments:
The Alters delivers such a high-quality experience in gameplay, graphics and storytelling that it’s easy to forget that this isn’t an AAA game (or priced like one, either). Exploration and survival-management gameplay pair perfectly with the themes of death, purpose and trauma that recur throughout the plot, making for a memorable and unique adventure that keeps you on your toes at all times.
The Alters
Version Reviewed: PC
STRANDED BUT NOT ALONEJan Dolski is a simple worker who faces impossible odds. Crash-landing on a distant planet, stranded and alone, he seems trapped with no way out. Jan’s only hope for survival is to employ additional helping hands on board his mobile base… but how? Improvising as he goes, Jan uses the local Rapidium substance to create alternate versions of himself: THE ALTERS.Have you wondered how your life would change if you chose a different path in the past? Who would you become? Jan Dolski is about to face answers to these questions which makes the predicament he is in even more daunting. Each one of his alters has a different personality and background as his life path is a result of a specific change in Jan’s life.To return home, Jan must not only get along with his alters but also face some crucial choices he made in the past. The decisions he will make based on that can occasionally put someone’s life at risk. The question is – are you ready to deal with the consequences of these choices?A RACE AGAINST TIMEThe planet Jan has landed on is slowly turning its face towards a giant sun. This means that radiation levels can quickly reach a critical level. Survival on this unforgiving planet is a death race, so the base Jan lives in must remain on the move. This, of course, is far easier said than done. The planet is highly inhospitable and filled with many difficult obstacles our Jan will have to overcome.To move across barren landscapes you need food, fuel, and other precious resources. Luckily, your base is ready to extract them from the surface of the planet. The only problem is that finding these required resources might prove quite challenging… and the time to do so is running out.
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