You’ve crash-landed on a sun-blasted, radioactive alien world. Death creeps closer with every rising sun. Your oxygen’s low, your base is falling apart, and you’re totally alone—except for the seven alternate versions of yourself you just created in a lab. Welcome to The Alters, a narrative-driven sci-fi survival game by 11 bit studios, the minds behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine.
It’s not a game about slaying monsters or building civilizations. It’s a game about managing time, surviving your own guilt, and arguing with the version of yourself that never left his wife. It’s strange, slow, emotionally sharp, and completely unforgettable.
🧬 One Man, Many Lives
You play as Jan Dolski, a stranded blue-collar worker who discovers Rapidium, a substance that lets him create alternate versions of himself—The Alters. These aren’t clones. They’re Jan as he could’ve been: the scientist Jan, the optimist Jan, the bitter, failed father Jan.
Each Alter comes with unique skills—and just as many personal hang-ups. Need someone to fix your base’s oxygen systems? Better hope the engineer Jan isn’t still pissed that you abandoned your family.
It’s survival, but the “enemy” isn’t nature—it’s fractured identity, regret, and inter-personal chaos among versions of yourself that hate each other’s guts.
🏗️ Manage, Survive, Reflect
At its heart, The Alters is a structured survival-management sim disguised as an introspective sci-fi epic. You manage a mobile, rotating wheel-shaped base, sending Alters out to harvest resources, build facilities, or explore.
Every action takes time—and time is your greatest enemy. The sun will literally kill you, so you’re constantly moving, planning, and squeezing tasks into narrow windows before everything turns to ash.
Your base isn’t just a factory—it’s a psychological pressure cooker. You’ll install therapy rooms, kitchens, crafting stations, and even emotional support modules just to keep your Alters functional.
Each Alter has needs. Some demand respect. Some spiral into depression. Some start sabotaging the group. You’re managing morale as much as systems.
🎭 Introspective and Existential
This is where The Alters separates itself from every other survival sim on the market. The writing is unusually personal. There are no world-ending threats, no evil corporations. Just one man, fractured across timelines, trying to piece together a version of himself that can survive.
Dialogues between Jan and his Alters feel like therapy sessions, job interviews, and custody battles all at once. Conversations don’t offer good or evil paths—they explore resentment, compromise, and acceptance.
You’ll argue with the soldier version of yourself about violence. You’ll avoid the failed husband version because he knows exactly what you’re ashamed of. And when you have to choose which version of yourself to delete to conserve resources? That’s when the gut punches land.
🎨 Presentation & Atmosphere
Visually, The Alters is bleak but stunning. The alien world is covered in orange fog, cracked rock, and mechanical ruins. It’s haunting, but never flashy—emphasizing emotional tone over sci-fi spectacle.
The base feels alive: whirring machinery, echoing voices, and dim hallways that make you question whether this whole thing is a metaphor for depression (spoiler: it might be).
Voice acting is solid—especially lead actor Alex Jordan, who delivers a grounded, emotionally complex Jan. However, not all Alters are equally distinct in tone or delivery, which occasionally dulls character differentiation.
Sound design deserves special praise. From the faint ticking of your radiation suit to the distorted audio logs of past selves, it keeps you on edge in all the right ways.
✅ What Works
🔹 Original Concept
Creating and managing fractured versions of yourself hasn’t been done like this before. It’s bold, weird, and works.
🔹 Deep Character Writing
The Alters feel like real people—with real anger, jealousy, hope, and trauma.
🔹 High Stakes Survival
Sunlight kills. Resources are finite. Every decision has urgency.
🔹 Smart Base Management
The rotating base and modular expansions offer layered strategy that’s never overwhelming.
🔹 Replayable Structure
Multiple endings, branching paths, and different Alters each run make for a high replay ceiling.
🔹 Atmosphere
Bleak, clinical, and oppressive—but in a beautiful, slow-burn way.
❌ What Doesn’t
🔻 UI Clunkiness
Navigating between modules, tasks, and characters often feels like wrestling an old CAD program.
🔻 Lip-Sync and Visual Bugs
Facial animations occasionally glitch or lag during key emotional moments.
🔻 Dialogue Inconsistencies
Some tonal swings feel unearned, and certain scenes end awkwardly.
🔻 Exploration is Shallow
You send out drones and vehicles, but rarely feel like you’re exploring—just managing others who are.
🔻 Early Game Overwhelm
The first few hours dump a lot of systems on you with minimal guidance.
🔻 Limited Freedom
Despite looking open-ended, much of the gameplay is puzzle-like and highly structured.
🧠 Should You Play It?
Yes—if you want to play something different. This isn’t for twitch-shooter fans or sandbox survivalists. It’s for players who want emotional storytelling, layered systems, and meaningful choices. If Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, or Frostpunk are on your shelf, The Alters belongs next to them.
No—if you crave constant action or dislike managing emotional variables. This game asks you to slow down, think, and feel.
💰 Should You Buy It?
At full price: yes, if you’re into introspective, narrative-first experiences.
On Game Pass: absolutely—it’s a must-play risk-free try.
On sale: still worth it, especially for fans of emotional or philosophical science fiction.
The Alters: It’s not just about surviving a dying planet—it’s about surviving yourself. The Alters is a triumph of concept, design, and emotion. It may stumble in its systems, but it soars in its soul. – Obsidian
