On the back of the successful Frostpunk series, 11 Bit Studios is back with a sci-fi thriller in The Alters, a gripping experience that sucked me in right from the start and had me contemplating my existence throughout my review period.
Although impressed with the story, the gameplay, and the world created, there were some frustrating teething issues with The Alters that occurred that certainly knocked me off my stride.
The Alters Review
Straight from the off, The Alters settles into a familiar approach on the sci-fi scene; a scientific mission gone wrong, leaving you as the sole survivor after mysterious circumstances on a planet full of environmental threats.
Stuck in this desolate landscape with little hope of survival, the task of escaping is daunting and cannot be completed alone by Jan Dolski, the game’s protagonist. At least, it can’t be completed by one Jan Dolski.
That’s where things start to get weird. After finding a mysterious substance on the planet, you’re told it can be used to clone yourself, and, after testing it out by creating a sheep, your first ‘Alter’ is created.
From there, it’s all about survival and pushing towards escaping the planet, all while battling with the morality of cloning yourself and dealing with their differences and emotions. Should you be blunt with them, or show empathy? The choices you make are also crucial to your survival.
I’ll admit, it also triggered some existential crisis moments for me. How do I know I’m not a clone? Is the world just one big simulation? The sorts of questions that will keep you up at night.
Outside of the crisis management in dealing with the emotional state of beings who have just found out they’re not technically real, The Alters places a lot of focus on resource management, including metals, organics, and the strange substance that allows you to play God in such an eerie way.
Fortunately, you’re not alone at this stage, and you can instruct your alter-egos to complete tasks for you, ensuring you can keep tabs on everything needed to run smoothly, but the more managing there is to do, the more frustrating things get.
Teething Issues
My biggest problem with The Alters stems from managing resources, which ranges from mildly frustrating to pure rage-inducing. While I can assign my Alters to complete tasks, I don’t have enough (yet) to manage everything, and even if I did, there would still be problems.
Alters can be given specific jobs to do, but those working on gathering resources outside of the base can only do so for a limited time before night falls and radiation sets in. Unfortunately, there’s no way to assign them to have both outside and inside jobs, giving them tasks to do when they’re back on the ship.
It’s also very, very easy to be sucked into a disaster that is near impossible to escape from. In one such situation, I was balancing trying to fix everything from a Magnetic Storm, while running low on resources to create Radiation Shields and ensure there was enough food for everyone.
I died several times during this battle, and also failed on numerous occasions due to a rebellion from my Alters, but the most frustrating part was when I loaded a save from a few days before the mayhem all kicked off, only to find that what I had been doing should have worked—instead, a bug was making the rebellion guaranteed.
This was far from the only bug I encountered in The Alters, though I should make clear I was playing on an early build that does not represent the final product, so I’m hopeful that the crashing issues that plagued me are resolved for release.
Unfortunately, the sequence of the rebellion bug and crashes occurred almost back-to-back, leaving a particularly sour taste in my mouth.
The Alters Review Verdict
Overall, I have enjoyed my time with The Alters, and I’m looking forward to playing more, particularly given the clear replayability due to the many different options you can take, and I’d certainly recommend it if you’re a fan of the sci-fi genre.
The Alters’ saving grace, however, could be its inclusion on the Xbox Game Pass service day one on launch, as I can’t quite say it’s worth splashing out on specifically, but if you are a subscriber, give it a go and see what you think.
Verdict:
3 – Good
