The Alters
Review
Survival, at any cost
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
Survival, at any cost
There's a story moment in act two of The Alters that encapsulates much of the experience. Protagonist Jan Dolski has a big, divisive decision to make, one that will clearly split the ranks of his crew between the grateful and the resentful no matter the choice. Still, as a player, it's agonizing. Agonizing because I want to do right by these people that have contributed so much to your survival, but also because both options come with unique challenges that take up precious time and resources. Everyone is unhappy, simply because they're alive but also because of the situation, so I'm taking breaks to play beer pong or watch a movie in hopes of salvaging the situation. Ultimately, time is so short I have to opt for the quickest option. It doesn't go so well in the eyes of about half of the crew. That fact was unavoidable.
Thoughtful Explorations
It matters very little to me that I felt I could see through the veneer of choice, here. Given the events that unfold, the alternative timeline of the other option is crystal clear, but like so many other things The Alters has thought of that. Inside of this survival-base-builder-space-exploration game lies a lot of psychology and philosophy, as if it knew who I was as I was playing it. What appears on the surface as a stranded astronaut cloning himself just to survive turns into various ruminations on what it means to be alive, to grow as a person, to have purpose, and, yes, to make choices, among so many other things. As Jan becomes friends with himself, these other versions of himself branched off of "the other decision" at various points in his life, he learns from them just as much as he teaches them. It's a give-and-take relationship, and finding the right balance between the two is just as important as mining minerals or organic material.
There's a touch of absurdism to the whole thing: Jan and his alters are looking for purpose beyond survival, and the world he's stranded on, and the universe, are offering nothing. If there was any doubt at all, a conversation or two about Albert Camus pops up (again, as if the game knew I was to be its sole audience) for both the player and the characters to mull over during the menial work. But it's the ease at which the characters grow that makes The Alters truly special. While Jan himself has his blunt "Lessons Learned" unlocks that fit together to form the perfect version of himself, like that time his buddy the Miner taught him about vulnerability, it is much more effortless in the interactions with the alters themselves, often popping up out of a lost piece of luggage that Jan finds on the planet's surface that triggers a conversation. The Miner did get the lion's share of the story in my playthrough, but clear side mission markers existed with each other character, so that became the real drive to play through the game again once it was over. The Alters is at its best when it's making you think, and many of its points feel aimed at 30-somethings who enjoy that sort of thing. It doesn't always nail the conversations surrounding its various ideas, but it does gain some favor for what it does get right.
Harsh Explorations
Learning uncomfortable truths is hard, but so is the surface of the planet on which Jan Dolski finds himself. There is no combat in The Alters, at least not in the conventional sense. You aren't fighting off alien monsters, but there are hazards to contend with that become more pressing the more careless you become with exploring these areas. These hazards manifest in the form of radioactive anomalies, and banishing them for the ultimate in safe travel uses a replenishable suit energy resource, requiring a bit of a trade off or some careful planning. As the need for exploring the areas to find spots to mine resources gets higher, and the timers begin to run short, it can become tempting to take one-too-many chances with these hazards in the interest of saving time. You see, it's one thing to get what you need to make it off of this strange planet, but you're also running from an impending sunrise every dozen-or-so days. If you're in one spot long enough to see that sunrise a quick-but-extremely-painful death awaits.
Between Jan's alters pushing back and becoming irradiated by a close encounter with an anomaly or two, The Alters begs the player to slow down in the face of its many requirements, another thing to delicately balance. Requests for things to do on top of the ultimate "survive" mission come from Jan, the alters themselves, or a few contacts on Earth, and at times it truly feels like spinning plates. We needed to mine more metals, so the Miner is at an outpost. The greenhouse broke down, so I had the Technician fix it. We ran out of food, so the Refiner is making meals. And the Scientist...well, nobody can do any research but the Scientist, so he didn't get to move around much. That left Jan to run around, headless chicken style, to mine some organics to make food, craft the repair kits for the Technician in the workshop, and then scour the planet for more resource deposits because the next research item needs them.
Uneven Loads
My alters were right: I was using them like tools. If they knew they were in a video game they would understand, but there is also room for them to understand that I'm also using Jan like a tool, and a much more versatile tool, at that. In fact, it's more important for the passage of time, for the player, that Jan has something to do. Work looks like this: for roughly 8 hours a day, each character has to work and they have their set efficiencies. For Jan, a cooked meal takes 20 minutes. For a hypothetical chef, it might take 10. So of course the Miner will mine, the Technician will perform repairs, and the Scientist will research. Jan, however, is doing everything else, for both the group's benefit and mine. To work, you interact with a console and time speeds up until the work is done or you let go of the button and run to do something else. Of course I'm going to be doing as much work as possible, for the most part, because the quicker real-world time passes on things like research and production, the quicker those things can be used. So when any number of characters confronts Jan about him not seeing the alters as people, I was slightly put off by the fact that I couldn't hit back on that opinion with "I'm doing the most." I bet that would have gone over well.
For a game that is filled with such thoughtful conversations, I hoped for that ability to push back, even if it resulted in a smart retort about the ethical implications of creating clones simply to work, or something. Even with Jan's assertiveness perk, he was a people pleaser. Once again, and without much evidence, it seems like variability in these interactions (or at least the outcomes) is limited, but as the story went on I cared less. Jan Dolski is crafted by his interactions in the game, not intrinsically by the player, and lessons take time. Precious time.
Technical Difficulties
Games change daily in modern times, but a few bugs in the experience need mentioning, if only because they helped me discover another few pieces of intelligent design. At one point early in my first run I was feeling particularly good about my situation. I had a crew of four, we were researched up and ready to move on, just waiting on the sun so we could build up as much of a stockpile as possible to make the next area easier. Then the revolution started. One of my alters disappeared. He was gone from the roster, and I had no indication of what happened. I think I would have noticed him dying, or at least the game would have said something, and likewise if he had decided to leave for some reason. Not too long after, the game crashed. Attempting to reload my latest save (also with the alter missing, how long did it take me to notice that?) crashed again.
The Alters saves every in-game morning, and stacks these saves for you, which not only minimized my progress loss while still letting me reload a save with all my alters intact, it more broadly allows for experimentation and limits (if you choose) the penalty for failure. Moreover, it'll also mark previously-chosen dialogue options, in the event you want to take a distinct path and don't remember your exact steps. Because the number of potential alters is so large that you can't conceivably see them all in a single run, my experimentation was mostly around those choices, but you can also cut your losses on poor research, bad math on a mining operation just before time is about to run out on the sunrise, or any number of other things. All that is to say that The Alters feels like it’s constantly in forward motion, but it's far from hardcore.
A Home Base, Or A Home?
The atmosphere of The Alters flexes its muscles on the planet's surface. The alien landscape is beautiful and mysterious and the ominous soundscape makes it feel much more like a horror game than it rightfully should, which the warble of the anomalies punctuates at times. Inside, things are a bit more sterile. The score persists as an ever-present reminder that you are stranded on a strange planet, but the ship is filled with small beeps and boops underneath clunky footsteps that differentiate the two spaces. This is fine, of course, because a majority of the gameplay time is spent either outside on the surface or having conversations inside the ship, but it subtly reminds you that your base is something of a glorified menu, or the home you return to briefly between work shifts.
The overarching base building component is engaging. In relationship to the stellar "it's a giant wheel" design of the ship, building and arranging new rooms plays out like an inventory block puzzle as you look to balance the cost of moving the ship–which costs more organic material the heavier it is, and your total organic material storage is directly tied to your ship size upgrade overall–with having the necessary rooms and storage space for other material. The light puzzle aspect comes from fitting oddly shaped rooms together, but since Jan rarely needs to visit most of them, I ended up placing the important ones at the top of the elevator for easy access, and cramming everything else wherever it fit. The rooms are effortless to rearrange, and it clearly wasn't meant to be some sort of challenge, but, outside of conversations with the alters, the base is relegated to a place to run around in, hold the interact button to work occasionally, or play a beer pong minigame. A few more distinct interactions would have elevated the base to a truly meaningful part of the game loop, but it ended up being the place I went to sleep until the next day more often than anything else, with the occasional alter telling me they want to talk, forcing me to decipher which "medium storage" segment they're in. Opening the map is quick enough, but as the base gets bigger it becomes ever so slightly more annoying, especially when the Scientist is as far away from his research post as possible, all because he wants to talk to me about a thing he discovered.
Not A Survival Game, A Thrival Game
The Alters does exactly what great sci-fi stories do: it uses the fantasy of future technology to have conversations that are timeless. It didn't need to be absurd, it didn't need to be existential, but it is at times both, and so much more. The conversations and relationships represent the true experience, but the management aspects hold their weight, too. Even though it stumbles over those heady conversations at times, either as a result of the writing itself or because stitching together disparate pieces in a video game sometimes ends up like that, it's about so much more than those individual moments. Parts of the gameplay don't reach the same heights, particularly when it comes to base building with minimal benefits, but The Alters is satisfying from so many angles when it comes to management and survival that it's difficult not to recommend it. More than that, though, it's forgiving enough with those mechanics that it becomes a must-play for just about anyone. Much like Jan Dolski, I thought I was going to struggle to survive, but I ended up thriving.
As always, follow Hooked Gamers on Instagram for news updates, reviews, competitions and more.
9.5
fun score
Pros
A thoughtful narrative centered around unique clone mechanics that delivers with a strong atmosphere, great conversations, and engaging survival mechanics and management.
Cons
Underwhelming base building mechanics, minor bugs and crashes
