The Alters Review – Talking to Myself

I’ve always appreciated survival and base management games from a distance. I like to think I’ve tried every major one, hoping to last more than ten hours with each, but things tend to get overcomplicated quickly.

It doesn’t help that the narrative in most of these games is either paper-thin or overly ambitious for their own good. So when The Alters was revealed, promising to merge all these genres in a more balanced and approachable way, I was ready to take the plunge again. Spoiler alert: it was completely worth it.

Me, Myself and I

The Alters follows Jan Dolski, a lone survivor of a space expedition gone wrong. He wakes up to find himself stranded on a hostile planet with extreme weather conditions and eventually makes his way back to a mobile base, where he and his team were originally meant to work on something called Project Dolly.

Yes, the project is named after Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal. Jan discovers a material called Rapidium, which, after reestablishing contact with his corporation, turns out to be what they’re truly after.

To ensure his survival, Jan is instructed to use Rapidium to create “alters” of himself, clones who made different major decisions in life. For instance, the first alter Jan creates is a technician who stood up to his abusive father instead of leaving home. That pivotal moment shaped who he became as a person, even though he shares the same memories as Jan up until that choice. Every alter you create shares one final core memory: the Project Dolly expedition.

It’s an ambitious premise, and one that the game largely delivers on. This success hinges on how the alters aren’t just randomly generated clones like in some life sims, but fully developed characters with distinct personalities, anxieties, strengths, and weaknesses. Most of them respond differently to any given situation, and you’ll have to adjust accordingly, just like in real life.

It’s no surprise that the alters are the highlight of the game. You’ll get to know each one on a deeper level through building relationships, reminiscing about your shared past, learning about their lives after diverging from your memories, and tending to their emotional and material needs.

As you start creating more Alters, you’ll find new ways to manage each one’s needs, assign them tasks they’ll excel at, and keep them happy. Sometimes, when an Alter is occupied with something important, however, you’ll have to move them around different modules just to get the work done.

Overall, I think the narrative, writing, and behavioral depth of each Alter are a major hook for anyone interested. I found myself absorbed in their stories and genuinely felt bad when I disappointed them. The Alters can often be confrontational and vulnerable, making these interactions feel deeply personal.

They’re not just names on a spreadsheet, but people you share a base with, and people who happen to share a lot with you. It’s hard to talk more about where the journey is headed without spoiling things, but there are a lot of excellent narrative moments that make the ride worth taking.

Working As One

The other part of The Alters is the base management and survival. You and your Alters venture out daily to gather various resources used for constructing new modules, equipment, and upgrades. The resource collection isn’t particularly difficult. It mostly comes down to finding a deposit, building a mining rig on it, and setting up a network of poles to transport the materials back to base. It’s more about managing time than anything else, since your daily tasks are limited by your character’s need to rest and rising radiation levels after a certain point.

I found the daily excursions relaxing, and the light traversal mechanics are fairly approachable. While it doesn’t allow much room for individual player expression like other survival games, The Alters focuses more on advancing the narrative. This is reflected directly by physically moving your base forward, while resource gathering becomes a secondary but important task to support its needs. This balance means the game never becomes overwhelming with endless things to craft and maintain, but it still gives you enough to manage each day.

Storage must be handled properly, and you’ll often rearrange modules within your base to make space and prioritize tasks, even if it comes with negative consequences. Your Alters will make demands, and you’ll have to make decisions that align with your own goals. Do you strengthen your bond with an Alter now or delay that in favor of developing a module that could prevent future problems? It’s all quite enjoyable, and the game smartly removes the tedium by fast-forwarding animations for tasks like mining, module development, crafting, and farming.

Presentation and Performance

Like every other game from 11 bit studios, The Alters features strong art direction and looks stunning. The foreign terrain feels alien and familiar at the same time, and the weather effects make each scene feel both alive and hostile. The character models show a wide range of expressions that match their emotions, adding to the immersion. The contrast between the explorable planet and the interior of your base creates a constant sense of security when you’re inside, and the tiny details in each module are worth spending a few minutes exploring.

The Alters is built on Unreal Engine 5, and my experience with games on that engine has been mixed to say the least. That said, The Alters is mostly solid with pretty decent performance on my RTX 4070 Super at 4K with DLSS set to performance. I did swap the DLL to the latest DLSS version, but I was averaging anywhere from 80-120 FPS, and it was mostly comfortable. There are some stutters, especially when shifting view from outside to the base, but it’s never to the point where it ruins my experience or anything.

Verdict

The Alters is another fantastic game from 11 bit studios that effortlessly blends strong storytelling with engaging survival mechanics and base management. It explores themes of identity, purpose, and guilt in a personal and often confrontational way, as you create alters of yourself with some shared and some vastly different memories. If living alongside multiple versions of yourself sounds like a scary but exciting idea, The Alters delivers with the backdrop of a hostile planet.