I spent 6 hours with the game no one can explain. The Alters is a truly unique project
The Alters from 11 bit studios is another of their projects that puts a new spin on things. Although Frostpunk 2 didn't buy me the way the first installment did, The Alters is much closer to This War of Mine, and that's already good news.
Imagine your life as a timeline. It's a collection of decisions, big and small, that shape who you are. There's always the question of "what would have happened" or "what if." Even Marvel is asking those questions! Not only what if Agent Carter was given Captain America's serum but also What if the last phase of MCU didn't suck so badly.
The whole premise of The Alters is based on the what if premise. But… to be honest, it's so much more than that. And since the game was first announced almost 3 years ago, no single marketing material could tell me what exactly the point of this game is. I was recently invited by 11 bit studios to Warsaw to play The Alters for about 6 hours, talk to the developers behind it, and finally find an answer to the question - what the hell is this game all about? Spoiler: I found my answer… and I like what I found.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
The Alters, which is what?
11 bit studios has a unique portfolio. You have Frostpunk 2 takes that story forward to speak more about human nature. Now,The Alters s this group of extremely unique games. A game that I honestly never got the full picture of. There was information out there that I was trying to piece together into something complete, but the puzzle never really fit together.
It's impossible to talk about this game without any spoilers, but I'll just mention the events from the very beginning. Although we also played the first and second acts, I left their narrative content alone.
In The Alters we play as Jan Dolski, Jan Dolski, and Jan Dolski. And actually 8 more Jan Dolskis at some point or another, but I'll get to that a bit later. You find yourself stranded on a distant planet, your crew is gone, and the only thing that can help you survive is the mobile base that I'm really surprised is not sponsored by Pirelli and is driven in Formula 1. Very large Formula 1. Jan Dolski is not a heroic captain, he's not some savior destined to do great things. He was just a regular worker sent on a mission that went wrong. The task was to find Rapidium, an element that is supposed to be a source of all the good things that will happen to humanity once it's brought back to Earth. Jan has his own detailed backstory that you will be able to get to know really quickly in the game because it's tied to the most unique mechanic this game has.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
So, just like in The Martian, Jan Dolski tries to find his way home, even though he's all alone. But instead of growing potatoes and fertilizing them with his feces, our protagonist finds the Rapidium thingy, and that helps him grow his own help. Here comes the "what if part."
With the help of Rapidium, Jan is able to access his life’s memories ed to a quantum computer on board the mobile base. However, what is important - making different decisions would usually mean a different result. And this is the way you'll get help. As players, you find a point on the timeline that is good for branching out Jan's life. As a result of this branching, you'll end up with a different human being with a different skillset that you then artificially grow. It's not really a clone. It's an alternative version of Jan who believes to be equally real to the main protagonist and who has the memories of the things that actually never happened. Those are the Alters from the title.
The lives of the Alters is where the strength of the narrative lies in this game. This game is much closer to This War of Mine in of storytelling than I expected. That's exactly because we have a limited number of characters, each with their own lives, own problems, and the biggest issue of all - is that they're not necessarily real 11 alternative versions of Jan Dolski aren't a tight-knit group of buddies; they are actually strangers to each other, who share part of their lives (including a fondness for dumplings) and who seem to think that what they really happened. Even though they just came out of the machine that bred them.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
After talking to a few other Jans, you'll notice how different their personalities are and that each of them requires a different communication strategy. The choice of appropriate words affects the mood of our companions, and thus our ability to convince them of our ideas. I haven't fully figured out the real impact of Dolski's moods on the choices made, but I've already encountered a situation where Technician didn't agree with my idea, but because we had improved our relationship earlier, he decided to help me anyway. Overall, what I saw in the game really moved me, kind of like the stories of civilians in This War of Mine. For obvious reasons - I won't be spoiling any details.
As a side note, it has to be said that Alex Jordan, the voice of Jan Dolski, did an amazing job. You have 11 versions of the same character who need to have a common factor, but at the same time be substantially different to fit the archetype of a character, be that a scientist, a technician, or a miner. At times, you forget that all of these voices are done by the same actor, and it speaks to how masterfully it's done. We must appreciate such good work.
One thing that disappointed me a little bit is that I expected more from the branching system and creating alternative Jan Dolskis. I was hoping we'd have to figure out the best place to branch off in Dolski's memories on our own. Unfortunately, the game clearly communicates which point is the branching point and what kind of Alter you'll get as a result. I get why it's like that - they wanted to create really specific characters with their own stories, so the narrative would be clear and not vague. Despite that, I was really hoping for something more, and I still have faith that 11 bit studios will step it up a notch. Maybe in the form of a DLC?
Not only by the story do 11 Jans live
The gameplay in The Alters is layered. While your main task is to just get your base going in the direction away from the incoming sun that would result in your death, there are lots of things that you'll have to do to make it happen. We'll encounter a lot of obstacles along the way, like a huge river of lava that our big wheel just can't roll over. You then have to figure out a way to cross it with the whole base.
Besides, we're just trying to survive, but the corporation that sent us on this mission and is our only hope for rescue has its own requirements for Rapidium. Your Alters will have their own opinions on your actions, and things are getting stranger and stranger with every ing day. Rapidium and its effects are not the only weird things on the planet, you will also encounter anomalies that can hurt you or that bend space-time, resulting in a different flow of time when you're in their area of effect.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
Resources are needed to survive. As a player, you're able to walk around maps and scan specific, marked areas of them in search of resources, and then you can mine these. You do that either yourself or by asg other Alters to do your job. Different Alters have various perks, so some people are better suited for certain kinds of jobs, like mining outside or other tasks within your base.
The design of maps is fixed, and it's more like a set of corridors that lead you to places just like the devs wanted it in order to control your pacing. The game does that by making something accessible only once you research upgrades or craft items that allow you to progress through the obstacles, like a climbing hook or a drill that needs a freshly crafted charge after each use. The design is pretty good, I indeed felt like it was nicely paced, and while there are mandatory objectives that you have to do, there is a place for exploration to find some optional content that may, for example, improve your relationship with your Alters. You can even find luggage that somehow got lost, and it may contain a movie that you can watch with your crew. Or you can play beer pong. This is a truly complete experience. 10/10.
First the base, then the rest
Speaking of things you can do in your hideout, let's talk about the mobile base. We're starting with a set of "rooms" and room to expand. As the game progresses, you can also expand the available space to put your rooms in. There's a lot of it. During the day, you will constantly have to send your Alters to do tasks in a specific room as is required by whatever you set yourself to accomplish, because no, you won’t have enough Alters to cover everything at the same time.
The Alters introduces such a simple and obvious solution that I can't believe I'm even writing about it, but its usefulness is just priceless. When one of our Alters finishes their task while we're out exploring, a message will pop up next to the companion portrait, asking if they should start the next task waiting in the base. By selecting a simple yes/no option, we can remain concentrated on our job in the field, ensuring we won't forget to allocate someone to a task while waiting for available help. If you play The Alters, you will quickly see how useful this feature is.
The survival aspect of the game is pretty simple. Every day, the clock is ticking, you can easily work between 7 am and 8 pm, but at 9 pm, heavy radiation starts that hits you hard if you stay outside. At that point in time, you're also in a fatigued state, meaning tasks take longer to do than during the day, so you need to be mindful of what you do and how long it'll take.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
The radiation is your enemy, not only while exploring the planet, but your base also needs to have a steady supply of radiation filters. There's energy you have at your character’s disposal that is used, for example, for climbing, and that can be replenished either at your base or at mining outposts. We will renew energy at the base or at the extraction stations. We also need to make sure we have food for our crew, but that's easy because we just need to have some supplies on board, and then we can forget about it. Generally, survival is pretty straightforward, it's the resource management that might be a bit more tricky.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
Is it worth wasting resources on additional miners and pylons to connect them to your base, or maybe you'll just move your miner to a different resource point? Is it worth building additional storage for all the materials? Also, the heavier your base gets, the more it costs to move it to the next location, so you need more resources. You need to keep track of how much you spend on what, because while miners theoretically don't run out of resources, you might run out of time before the sun catches up to you. I like the fact that the game has you think a little bit about that, but at the same time, it’s not overly complicated, and it’s not unnecessarily annoying, not taking your attention away from the narrative.
The music is playing, and the graphics...
The artstyle and generally the visual direction of the game hits the intended spot. It's a mix of dark, alien spaces with the slick, corporate design of fabricated rooms in your base. Add to that the unusual color scheme that you can also see in the key art with all the Jans for the game, and you get something unique. The graphics itself I'd call… good enough. It's nothing spectacular, but in this case I don't think it really had to be in any way groundbreaking. I don't know if it's the case of the build that we played, but something weird was happening with the lighting and edges of characters during conversations, which were a bit out of proper sharpness. Hopefully, this is something that still gets addressed before release. Even if it’s just a minor detail, this just kept grabbing my attention all the time.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
The music is exactly what you would expect from sci-fi themed games. The composer responsible for the soundtrack is Piotr Musial, who previously worked on Frostpunk, This War of Mine, The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. There’s also a cool surprise in the game, but I’m not saying a word about it. Just know that it's connected to music.
Talking to the team from 11 bit studios, I learned that the game has grown compared to the original plans. They started with the idea of having this game be a bit over a dozen hours, but apparently it's substantially more than that. However, don't expect The Alters to be like a 100-hour-long game; it’s still a contained story that needs to have its proper pacing without side-tracking the player. For the 6 hours that I played the game, I really enjoyed what I saw, so I really hope that all the additional time I'll be putting into The Alters will be equally enjoyable.
Your usual day
So we generally have a game that in its DNA has an 11 bit studios approach to telling stories about individuals that have you reflect on life. The important thing here is the stories that make us think. The story here may not be as overwhelming as in This War of Mine, but The Alters is much closer to this game than to Frostpunk.
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
What sets this game apart from previous 11 bit games is the fact that, as Jan Dolski, we won't fail as often. This War of Mine and Frostpunk kept teaching us from our mistakes, while The Alters tries to prepare the player for the challenge ahead. So, we have a really cool story, and the gameplay is mainly there to the narrative. But if you like what the studios did previously in of their own games, you should be happy about what's coming in less than a month. The story of Jan Dolski is heading to PC and consoles, and if you subscribe to Game , you will find the game there immediately upon release.
So, how would I try to explain The Alters in a short form to all the people who are still trying to figure out what the hell this game is? Some would probably even call it experimental. This is a game where we try to survive by creating alternative versions of the main character, collecting resources, and carefully managing them, all while trying to escape from the impending threat that may not be the only thing to thwart Dolski's plans to save his own life. This is a game about what if; a game full of questions, providing only some answers. A game about determination, despair, anger, and joy; about what we regret and attempts to get the most out of what fate puts before us. And on top of that, the game has a cute little sheep. Who would despise a charming little sheep?
The Alters, 11 bit studios, 2025.
