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If you ever wondered what might happen if you combined the multiversal chaos of Everything Everywhere All at Once with base building and survival mechanics in a sci-fi adventure, The Alters is your answer. 11 bit studios has been cooking up something truly unique since The Alters was announced in 2022, and after spending around two hours hands-on with it, it's quickly become one of my most anticipated games of the year.
Jan Dolski is a normal guy cursed to be thrown into the deep end of a terrifying sci-fi situation. After taking on a sketchy new job which sees him travel through space to a distant land, he finds himself stranded, surrounded by his dead crewmates on a planet that omits deadly radiation waves. Oh, and he also has the newfound responsibility of piloting a weird, moving, hamster wheel-esque base, which boasts interconnected, moveable modules which make the whole thing feel like a futuristic doll house.
Clone crew
Poor Jan doesn't have the luxury of simply hanging out in his galactic Barbie Dream House until the end of time, though. He quickly discovers that if he doesn't get a move on and get himself off the planet, he'll find himself burnt to a crisp by a deadly sun that's set to rise and obliterate everything caught in its rays. Needless to say, this isn't good for Jan, but it's also bad news for his mission, which tasks him with recovering a mysterious material known as Rapidium, which'll also get destroyed by the sun if he doesn't find it, and fast.
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Unfortunately for Jan, he doesn't have death-defying plot armor, and is entirely ill-equipped for the situation. Thankfully though, he can enlist the help of various other versions of himself who have a better idea of what they're doing, by using the aforementioned Rapidium to create alters (sort of clones) who serve as physical representations of how his life could have ended up had he made different decisions at key points in it. This is a double-edged sword – while each new alter essentially provides a new crew member to take on specialized tasks such as research or mining, they also add volatile new personalities to the mix who might not necessarily vibe with those who're already there, creating tension within the base.
Although there's a larger mystery afoot in terms of how Jan ended up being the only survivor of the mission, how Rapidium works, and what the hell the deal is with the deadly sun, the alters are definitely the most interesting part of the story to me so far. You can read through their entire backstories from the point where their decisions branched off from Jan's – one early alter you meet, for example, followed a different life path after defending his mother from his abusive dad, ending up as a more courageous person with an engineering job. Meanwhile, another alter devotes himself to his studies and career as a scientist, pushing away all of his personal relationships with his family and wife to become someone who feels like an entirely different, self-absorbed individual.
Relatability
"We wanted this person to be relatable. [...] We wanted a person who was very unfulfilled and has regrets in life"
Tomasz Kisilewicz, game director
While the alters' personalities end up differing wildly from that of the 'main' Jan, they provide an interesting way to get to know the protagonist better since any of those paths essentially could have been his life, too. Game director Tomasz Kisilewicz also tells me that the wide variety of these alters was entirely intentional, in an effort to give every player someone to relate to. How did 11 bit studios approach this? By taking inspiration from the actual development team.
"We wanted this person to be relatable. [...] We wanted a person who was very unfulfilled and has regrets in life," Kisilewicz says of Jan. "That's why we made this white guy in his mid 30s. And we felt like you know, 'But how do we make it relatable for more people?'"
From this point, individuals on the development team were asked about their personal regrets and biggest "what ifs" to gather ideas from a more diverse pool of people. "Through all of this, we created this life of Jan," Kisilewicz continues. "So we hope that everyone – no matter their gender, race, or anything – everyone will have at least one that is really relatable to them."
There are definitely comparisons to be made between The Alters' concept and various forms of multiverse media – the aforementioned Everything Everywhere All At Once being perhaps the best example, even if Evelyn wasn't forced to become roomies with all her alternate selves. However, 11 bit studios wasn't inspired by any particular media when creating The Alters, as development had started before the wave of recent multiversal stories.
"I hesitated with watching Everything Everywhere for a long time, because I was like, 'Okay, I love these guys. I love their movies, and I'm nervous it's gonna be the same as The Alters,'" Kisilewicz admits. Thankfully for the director, this wasn't the case, as he found that the two were "totally different" in how they explored their ideas.
Survival
"We want this to be engaging, we want to create tension, and we don't want to overwhelm"
Tomasz Kisilewicz, game director
During my time with The Alters, I was able to get to grips with the exploration and survival aspects, begin adding new modules to my base, and create familiar-looking new crewmates. Each in-game day only allows Jan a limited amount of time out on the planet before he gets tired or dangerous levels of radiation start setting in. You also have a limited number of days to get the base moving to the next area before the deadly Sunrise occurs and everything is destroyed, so time management is key. In that allotted time, you'll venture out to gather materials, such as metals and Rapidium, to create new tools, base modules, and so on. By setting up mining points, you can also add fast travel points around the map to get around more quickly.
In its current pre-launch state, the game's performance was consistently smooth on PC, although the world does feel rather barren. Admittedly, I didn't have enough time to explore extensively to uncover any secrets that could be out there, but so far, it doesn't appear that there's an enormous amount to see while out traversing the planet other than the occasional mining spot. However, the story so far is genuinely gripping, and I had no qualms pushing forward, completing objectives to see what unfolds next.
Throughout the duration of my play session, ensuring Jan's survival was a pretty straightforward task, but Kisilewicz was quick to say that in terms of all the gameplay systems on offer, there was still "a fair amount of stuff" ahead of me.
"Of course, we didn't want to overcomplicate it, that was always a tough balance for us," Kisilewicz adds. "Because we want this to be engaging, we want to create tension, and we don't want to overwhelm because when you overwhelm you stop caring about the alters, about the story."
Although things were going well for Jan and my two alter Jans throughout my hands-on session, failure may well have been waiting around the corner had I made a wrong turn. Thankfully though, if you do fail, the punishment isn't harsh – Kisilewicz reveals that players are able to choose exactly which day they want to wind the clock back to if they die, allowing them to correct their mistakes or try a different approach.
With that said, there's no 'correct' way to ensure Jan's survival – Kisilewicz notes that players "have a lot of freedom" to choose which strategies they want to employ when progressing. The story – which is broken up into a three-act structure, will contain obstacles to overcome, such as an enormous lava river blocking the base's path in the first act. "The solution might always be to cross the lava river, but how do you do this? What tools will you use? You can do that in a different way," Kisilewicz says.
Some of those different approaches may be influenced by the various alters you've already recruited for your cause – Kisilewicz reveals that alters may offer up ideas to overcome certain obstacles, but, of course, their input depends on their specialities. Given that players may choose to recruit different alters at different points, there's a good chance that many people will approach the story in alternate ways.
The Alters still doesn't have a release date, but even in its current state, it offers something truly engaging, with a plot so intriguing that I have no idea where it's going to end up. It's set to launch simultaneously on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S later this year.
For more games like The Alters that you can dive into right now, be sure to check out our pick of the best sci-fi games.
