WEB DESK: While only receiving a fraction of the oodles of praise this year’s earlier AA smash hit, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, did, The Alters is no less of an astounding achievement.
Earlier this month, Polish developers 11 Bit Studios released their latest take on the survival, resource management genre, a space they’ve been at the forefront of since the release of Frostpunk in 2018. A culmination of that experience, interlaced with a base building social sim, and wrapped together in a gripping sci fi narrative, gave birth to The Alters. And it’s the synergy between those three elements, each pushing the player further in the other two, that makes the studio’s latest offering an experience like no other.
An Enthralling Set-up (Spoilers for Prologue ahead!)
After crash landing on an enigmatic planet, Jan Dolski finds that he is the only surviving member of his mining mission. Attempting to escape the growing radiation of night, Dolski runs to the mobile base he was meant to inhabit alongside his crew. Now, alone, the lone builder finds that time is running out for him. The sun is approaching. He must out run it. But he can’t do it alone.
That opening sets the stage for the central hook of the game. Alters.
It’s revealed to Dolski through a nebulous call with his company, that by combining the very element he’s mining with his own DNA, he can create alternate versions of himself. And with the help of the quantum computer, these alters will have their own unique personalities and demeanours, all stemming from pivotal moments in their life where they strayed away from choices made by the original Dolski.
And so, an impossible social sim is born. One in which the dissonance present in each moment of socialisation is off-putting and yet indubitably intriguing. Each alter is Dolski, and yet each is unmistakably their own person, a point that the player can stress during each waking sequence to calm the newest member of the crew before they realise the life they knew was but a dream, and that they were created for the singular purpose of survival.
Similar in early core memories, each alters’ depth comes to life in encounters with the player character or each other, as it becomes clear how one decision branched them off into a completely different life, giving them a completely unique outlook and personality to match.
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To Each Their Own
What holds the compelling drama together are the stunning performances of Alex Jordan, who plays each of the alters. Despite ever member of the crew presenting the same initially, Jordan’s performances further reify the fact that each is a different person. There’s the botanist, with levity and softness in his inflections to convey the happily docile married life he lived. There’s the scientist, with an air of superiority audible in even his scoffs. There’s the technician, with the rough, low tone of an immovable force unwilling to compromise. There’s the miner, equally low, but defeated rather than defiant in pitch. And that’s just the first few the player has the honour of meeting.
As Jordan creates the foundation for the story to engross, it’s the emergent gameplay within the social sim that steals the show and keeps the player coming back for more. As the player character deals with scenarios that emerge from either his alters’ responses to the current crises they find themselves in, or their inability to escape their past and come to terms with their present, a slew of branching paths become available. Alters may even share their own two cents on any given situation, and depending on who the player chooses to side with, both their internal feelings and relationships between each other will change.
Emergent Gameplay (Spoilers for Act 1 ahead)
One scenario from Act 1 that gives a feel for how the story and sim ebb and flow involves the miner. Unable to differentiate from his simulated life in which he lost an arm, and the reality in which he still has it, the miner informs the player character that he feels excruciating phantom pain. The player is then given the choice to give the miner pain medication. Choosing to do so leads to the miner, who has a history of addiction, succumbing to accident after accident. If the player chooses to stop his medication, the miner will do his best surgeon impression, cutting off his own arm in the kitchen, leaving his fellow alters to clean the blood off the floor.
This one path based on the decision to provide or not provide medication opens up even more possibilities, as the scientist and technician have differing views on how to move forward. The former, favouring the practical and efficient method, offers to create a prosthetic, while the latter, more concerned with the mental wellbeing of his fellow crew, suggests a more human and considerate approach, to try and regrow his arm using a serum. Whoever the player sides with will feel appreciated, while the other will feel disrespected, leading to complications down the road.
The base building element provides the player with another balancing act, choosing to create necessities to further the ultimate goal of running from the sun and towards the extraction team, or spaces that help with the management of the alters’ moods, such as a dormitory, the social room, or the contemplation room. While not immediately apparent, the latter becomes a necessity as well when an amicable crew is needed for efficient resource gathering. What’s more, failing to keep the alters happy can lead to them creating their own goals. And those don’t always align with yours.
Its that cycle of management involving resources, the base, and alters’ moods, in a scenario of tension, mystery, and synergy, that creates a game, one-part existential crises in space and one-part survival sim. Both parts composing a must-play.
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