I’ll admit thatThe Altersdidn’t capture my attention immediately. The game’s generic-looking base-building and survival systems seemed, at first glance, to be the makings of a pretty boring game. However, about an hour into the game, once you really get into the meat and bones of the unique premise ofThe Altersand have had a chance to play around with the mechanics, the game’s hidden depth reveals itself. Perhaps one of the most creative survival games I’ve played in a long time,The Alterswill appeal to fans of sci-fi storytelling and base management alike, telling a very interesting tale built around one of the coolest gaming concepts I’ve seen in a while.
The Altersbegins with a pretty familiar dilemma: as the last survivor of an unpredictable shipwreck, you find that your expedition is cut short by the looming threat of death, and you must restore your base and gather resources from the harsh alien planet. No man can do such a massive job alone, however, and when the need for specialized knowledge you don’t have arises, the game introduces its incredibly unique concept.
See, inThe Alters, you create a crew of busy hands by essentially cloning alternate versions of yourself—copies of our protagonist Jan, who, at some point during their lives, set off in a different direction. These branching lives are shown to you via a literal web of choice, where different decisions made at the same point in your life create the path of your alters, equipping them with new knowledge and skills to help you on your escape.
The game tackles the concept of living with your alternate selves through a very interesting, well-fleshed-out social system in which you must bond and manage the emotions and relationships of your different selves as you struggle to survive together. The harsh realities of being brought to life as essentially a clone and the existential questions that go with it are not ignored, and characters often bond over shared memories, as well as those that greatly differ from each other.
Outside of storytelling, the gameplay as a resource-gathering, base-building game is akin to many other survival games. Every action taken requires time and energy, with radiation storms and the threat of exhaustion putting a very real limit on how much you may get done in a day. Materials must both be gathered from the real world via exploration and processed on your ship, either through advanced manufacturing or simple cooking and crafting.
Something I adore about the resource gathering inThe Altersis how the game handles immersion and realism while also “gamifying” the grueling real-world task of, say, mining. In most games, these gathering tasks are done instantly and via a very short animation, something you see so often that you likely have learned to tune it out. In real life, even the most mundane of chores can take twenty minutes to hours, but nobody has the time to sit there and do that virtually, so it’s understandable why this doesn’t get translated directly into your favorite survival games.
The Alters, however, pulls this off by still maintaining the realistic nature of its plot and setting by, very simply, speeding up time when you gather resources. More specifically, the animation of you gathering supplies looks like footage that has been put on 10x speed, and the little energy bar in the bottom left of your screen—which, for immersion’s sake, is displayed as a clock, showing how many “hours” of energy you have—ticks down quickly as you do it. This gives the impression that what you just did actually took several hours in-universe and is just one wayThe Altersmanages to play like a game while maintaining a solid immersive identity.
The base-building aspect of the game didn’t really capture my imagination. While I did enjoy the many placeable processing plants put throughout the overworld, actually expanding your base, which is essentially a series of connected containers attached to a wheel, is done through a pretty basic connect-the-room-on-a-grid style made popular by the game Fallout Shelter. While not the most imaginative system, I find that with what the game wants to be and the focus on storytelling and character, it works, or at least is a passable system. It gets the job done, and therefore, there isn’t much to complain about.
The Altersis not a survival game where you spend a lot of time exploring, expanding, or conquering the world around you. Instead, it is a narrative game with some incredibly cool sci-fi concepts that uses its survival mechanics as a means of storytelling. With multiple story paths and endings,The Altersisn’t a game that will be the same each time you play it, and its emphasis on character and storytelling definitely demands that you have an appreciation of its story when you step into it. If you just want to build a big base and hoard resources, I would instead recommend you playRustorRuneScape: Dragonwilds.
The Final Word
The Altersmay not reinvent base building or survival gameplay, but it masterfully frames both around a fascinating narrative hook. This is a game that asks the player, “What if you could meet who you could’ve been?” and makes that question its core mechanic.
Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review ofThe Alters. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on ourGame Reviewspage!The Altersis available onSteam,Epic Games,GoG,Xbox, andPlayStation.
