I’m sure we’ve all questioned ourselves and our actions at some point, being human and all. It boggles the mind to consider all of the things that had to happen for us to be here, right now, and putting your past decisions under a microscope can be enough to drive anyone to the brink. The Alters is a game that looks to delve into the ‘what ifs’ of a person’s life, and to see how things would have turned out differently with the most minor of changes. I recently got the chance to visit The Alters developer, 11-Bit Studios, in Poland to play a few hours of their mind-bending creation.
The Alters is an emotional sci-fi game. The Alters is a third-person survival game. The Alters is… a narrative adventure game? It’s a lot of things, apparently, and playing it for myself I can see why that perspective changes depending on who you speak to. The Alters means different things to different people.
The basics, then. You play as Jan, a technician for some deep-space company, whose primary role is to help his crew on some alien planet do whatever his boss tells him to do. The snag is that the landing on their latest jaunt was a lot rougher than intended, so much so, in fact, that everyone died. Except for Jan, obviously. He isn’t a science whizz, nor is he an expert pilot, he’s just Jan; a worker with no specific set of special skills. This is an issue.
The first part of my playthrough was a lot like many other games that came before it; I explored the desolate landscape, found resources, and repaired my ship. There’s been no shortage of survival games of late, and I’m pretty tired of hitting rocks to get more valuable rocks, just to craft that into something more complex. Thankfully, this feeling of dreaded familiarity faded once I set foot inside my base.
Your base, or ship, or whatever you want to call it, looks like a giant wheel, with a bunch of boxes suspended where the spokes would usually go. When you take the elevator up, the view changes; it’s shown side-on, much like the perspective in This War of Mine, or even Fallout Shelter. Each segment of your base performs a specific function, which could be crafting, sleeping, or making a phone call. You’ll find out that while each of these segments is vital to your journey because Jan simply doesn’t have the expertise, or the hours in the day, to run them all.
There comes the rub and the premise of this entire experience. Jan needs help, and with his shipmates dead, the entire mission, and Jan’s life, will shortly be coming to an unnatural end. A fuzzy phone call from your sketchy bosses later, and it turns out that the solution takes the form of Jan’s life coming to several unnatural beginnings.
Why the ship is carrying a fully functional cloning facility wasn’t totally clear during my brief playtime with The Alters, but after discovering a very rare resource on a jaunt outside, Jan can, in fact, use this birthing pod, thus solving his workforce issue. After a successful test, cloning a sheep (there are several references to Dolly, which is a nice touch), we’re ready to create life.
Each time Jan replicates himself, something in the clone changes. A part of their past life deviated from Jan’s; they chose to do something differently, and as a result, they’re a different person. This raises many questions that I’m nowhere near smart enough to broach, but simply calling them clones rubs a little – especially when you say it to their face.
Now, the person who comes out, the other Jan, hasn’t actually lived an alternate life – the quantum computer aboard ship calculates this for you and fills their head with a past not lived. This is handy because some of these clones (I’ll have to keep calling them this for simplicity’s sake, sorry, Mechanic Jan) come out fully formed with special abilities that OG Jan doesn’t have – like repairing equipment.
My first creation was a mechanic version of Jan – I needed him to fix something. He wasn’t pleased to find out that he’s not quite who he thinks he is, but after a small conversation, and a bonding session, things are worked into a somewhat stable relationship. You bond over your mother; the OG Jan was too afraid to stand up for her in what turns out to be a volatile household, whereas the Mechanic Jan stepped in. They share stories about their mother, and I opted to try to mend the relationship by cooking a beloved childhood meal for us both.
You can go into the timeline of each Jan’s life; they’re punctuated with big moments, like going off to college, turning to alcohol in a dire time, and taking the job aboard this very ship. With each new Jan, this timeline branches off, where you can delve in and examine exactly what they did that you didn’t.
The process of recruiting new members in games of this ilk usually boils down to a menu of skills, a process that is fairly impersonal and merely a means to an end. The Alters, however, adds the most personal touch you can – each new crewmate adds a skill to your overall pool, yes, but they also have you question yourself and the choices you made in your own life. Seeing every eventuality of your life decisions can weigh heavy, and is one of the most exciting things I’ve experienced in a while.
There are many points of interest you can examine in Jan’s life, with a new Jan theoretically able to be born from that event. While my ship was fairly underpopulated, it’s easy to see a space full of alternate people eventually calling the base home. How this will play out, and how Jan figures out how to walk a veritable tightrope of interpersonal relations with himself is fascinating – if at all achievable.
While the generic survival aspect of The Altars doesn’t strike a chord with me, whatever happens inside the base absolutely does. It’s a fascinating experiment in self, and I want to see how Jan copes. I just hope it doesn’t force me to take a look at myself. That would be terrible.