The Alters review - send in the clones

Metro

4 days ago

From the makers of This War Of Mine and Frostpunk comes a new sci-fi survival game, where you literally are your own worst enemy.
Now that we've finally finished our Nintendo Switch 2 launch coverage, and the madness of not-E3 week is over, we have time to circle back and see what we might have missed from the beginning of the month. Normally, June isn't a busy time for new releases but for some reason this year was different and MindsEye proved to be such a baffling creation we were compelled to cover it as soon as possible.
The Alters wasn't any more sensible in picking its release date, especially with the summer games drought now upon us, but it is a vastly superior experience. Technically, it's a survival game, but rather than a formless sandbox world to explore it has a tight narrative, very much in the vein of films such as Mickey 17, Moon, and Multiplicity (except that it doesn't begin with the letter M).
The idea of a single person being cloned multiple times, to perform different or dangerous tasks is surprisingly common in movies (which is a little strange as companies would surely prefer to just use multiple, low paid workers) but relatively rare in games, as anything other than a throwaway excuse for getting an extra life. With The Alters though, the concept takes centre stage.
Frostpunk and This War Of Mine would have been fine games in their own right but Polish developer 11 bit studios elevated them by using the gameplay to explore morality and the human condition. By constantly forcing you to choose between the lesser of two (or more) evils, you gained an often disturbing insight into how the real world works and how immoral or destructive acts can initially be driven by good intentions.
In The Alters, you play as engineer Jan Dolski, an unremarkable everyman who finds himself stranded on alien planet, whose sun emits deadly radiation if you're caught out in the open when it rises above the horizon. This creates a tight time limit for the whole game but luckily you have access to a mobile base, which is presented like the bases from XCOM, with a side-on view where you can see everyone working away, like a sci-fi ant colony.
The base is built inside a giant wheel, but there's no one except you to operate it, which is where the cloning comes in. Not only do you need more people to staff the base, but you also need to go outside and forage for resources, in order to craft tools and equipment, and grow food. The most precious commodity is something called rapidium, which has the ability to accelerate cell growth in any living thing. This is used for food but, just as importantly, to create clones – or alters as the game calls them.
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Most alters can do most ordinary jobs but sometimes you need specialists, like a scientist, to work on something more specific. This may seem impossible, given the original Jan is just an ordinary engineer, but the conceit is that the central computer has all his memories stored and it's able to extrapolate from there different paths his life could've taken, in order to get alters with different abilities.
We're not sure that makes much sense but it's why we mentioned Multiplicity, even though it's a comedy and not sent in space. In that film, Michael Keaton plays innumerable different clones, with very different personalities, and, in a rather less slapstick manner, that's how The Alters works too.
The narrative is fascinating, in that the thing the alters are most interested in, is how and why your life didn't go down the path that would've led to them. They don't necessarily trust you or your decisions and they're fully aware that they're disposable and that while you might make it home okay, if everything works out, they're just as likely to be discarded or sacrificed.
As a result, you're not just managing them in terms of telling them what to do but dealing with their personal concerns as well – which despite decades of strategy management games is not something any of them have ever really got into. You can't refer them to HR, so instead you have to tell them what you think will best motivate them and then make the decision as to whether you outright lie or not.
There's a tendency for the script to rely on a single, cliched personality type for each alter, such as the nerdy scientist, but while some of the plot points, such as neglecting home life in favour of work, are equally predictable the alters do change over time, as a result of your input and their interactions with each other.
Dealing with alters is when the game is at its best but some of the other elements don't work quite so well. Every major task takes time to complete and that means that sometimes you're not doing anything more than pressing a button and waiting for the day to end – although you could argue that makes it even more realistic.
Unfortunately, the survival aspect is also not very engaging, as it literally seems to be designed to waste time. The graphics are surprisingly good – the whole game looks far better than its mid-budget price tag suggests, but the day-to-day exploration and tedious minigames are a slog and quickly become repetitive. More Trending
The increasingly dangerous aliens are also an irritation, as they're almost invisible and they have time compression abilities that, you guessed it, are also designed to steal precious days away from you.
These aren't ruinous problems but interacting with the alters, and the quandaries they throw up, is much more interesting than the okay-ish survival elements. The game is inventive and ambitious, but it really needed a second pass in order to get everything working at the same level. We'd very much welcome a sequel but, ironically, The Alters would also work really well as a movie.
In Short: A management game where you have to handle people as well as just spreadsheets, but while its sci-fi elements add intrigue the survival gameplay isn't all it could be.
Pros: A fantastic idea that attempts a clever mixture of narrative, management, and survival gameplay, with some very difficult moral decisions to make. Surprisingly good graphics.
Cons: The survival gameplay is repetitive and rarely very interesting. Pacing can be knocked off course at times and some of the writing is a little basic.
Score: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £28.99*Publisher: 11 bit studiosDeveloper: 11 bit studiosRelease Date: 13th June 2025
Age Rating: 16
*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one
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