What are the events that made you who you are? Do you fixate on the contingencies, or the ostensible hand of fate that drove you to this particular place in space-time? How do you make sense of your regrets, your self-justifications, your burdens, your excuses?
The Alters is a game about a man physically confronted with such questions. To survive on a remote planet, he must learn to live with the other selves he might have been, radically different incarnations who share Jan Dolski’s exact DNA but have their own personalities and talents.
After beginning in a cliché fashion, the latest effort by 11 Bit Studios, the Polish developer behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine, blossoms into an extraordinary survival game that explores miscommunication, human fallibility and conflicting motivations.
At the start, Jan finds himself the sole survivor of a space mining expedition on the behalf of Ally Corp. Soon after exiting his lifepod, he discovers a deposit of “rapidium,” the most valuable substance in the universe yet one whose properties are scarcely understood. Then, upon returning to his ship, Jan learns he is in imminent danger: The radiance of a too-close star will soon char him into ash.
Heeding the instructions from a colleague on Earth, Jan also discovers the most personal information imaginable on the ship’s quantum computer: a form of searchable memories that chart all the pivotal decisions that led him to enlist in Ally Corp’s space mission.
Rushed for time but lacking the technical know-how to get his ship moving, Jan initiates a branching procedure on the computer that allows him to select an alternative life path. Using the rapidium, which is known to hasten organic growth, he births another self in the ship’s medical wing, known as “the womb.”
But Jan Dolski, the technician, is far from enthusiastic when he realizes what’s going on. He resents Jan Dolski, the builder. For his life choices. For using him as a means to an end.
To escape the fatal starlight, Jan must gather resources that can be converted into food, fuel and building materials. Doing so entails exploring the outside terrain for resource deposits, then setting up mining stations and powering them via pylons to the ship. The environmental design is excellent, and wiring up a far-flung deposit can feel as satisfying as taking down a nemesis in another game.
But there is only so much that can be crammed into a space day. You have to be ruthlessly efficient, lest you find yourself, as I did at various points, having to backtrack several days to get things on track.
Fair warning: The Alters will let you fall on your face. By contrast with so many games that urge perfectionism — high scores, low times, no-hit runs, etc. — it wants you to embrace your errors and remember that out of mistakes, good things can happen.
“What was really important for us was to create the life of Jan Dolski from our own experiences and our own loaded questions,” the game’s director, Tomasz Kisilewicz, told me. Early in the game’s five-year development cycle at 11 Bit Studios, the developers were polled internally about the what-ifs that have haunted them.
“For one person, it’s ‘What if I never left my hometown?’ For somebody else, ‘What if I took this business opportunity or didn’t drop out of college?’” Kisilewicz said. The most emotional ones, he said, were about relationships. “‘What if I proposed?’”
By the third act, I had created four other alters to assist Jan: a biologist, a scientist, a refinery operator and a miner. (Other options include a doctor, guard, worker and shrink.) Aside from the refiner — a laid-back, wellness-oriented guy — the others are prickly in their own way. Try as I might, I couldn’t help but court their animosity when I irked them with my conversational choices or decisions. The feelings of tension were mutual. Oh, how I shuddered inside whenever I heard some variation of “Jan, got a moment?” while immersed in some time-sensitive task.
Rarely has a game filled my head with duties that felt so pressing. At almost any given moment, there is something to fret over: Is there enough inventory space? Are there enough resources to build? Is the ship adequately protected against radiation? Is there enough food? Are there enough repair kits to fix things on the ship?
During our conversation, I told Kisilewicz that I was especially impressed with the adversaries Jan encounters that aren’t hostile-minded aliens. There are spatial anomalies that float in the air like astral jellyfish, irradiating Jan if he comes into contact — or, in their most fearsome form, causing time to speed up if he remains in their vicinity.
Kisilewicz explained that those who worked on The Alters refrained from trying to devise large-scale combat scenarios for practical reasons: the game had a small development team. They also didn’t want to detract from the personal story they wanted to tell.
Along with CD Projekt Red, the makers of The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077, 11 Bit Studios has helped catapult Poland into the vanguard of the gaming industry. Kisilewicz was clear-minded about the country’s particular cultural influence on The Alters. “It brings this Polish flavor of touching tough things and not shying away from bad endings, from bad outcomes,” he said.
The Alters is a first-class resource management game that I found rewardingly stressful to play. This is not a game where the good, bad and neutral conversation options are signposted. Some alters may react negatively to a gesture of empathy or curiosity. Sometimes there aren’t any good choices.
Jan’s journey is marked by pressing ethical concerns. They invite players to reflect on their own priorities, and to ponder what we owe others and what we owe ourselves.
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