Notoriously, my organisation skills are not very good, to say the least. Whether it is leaving things to the last minute all the time, or just being outright terrible at making proper plans, it is certainly not my strongsuit. When it comes to gaming, this ineptitude definitely has its moments where it shines through. Playing The Sims games was always fun, but often an absolute nightmare to keep on top of, even if it was just one person to take care of. My sister, in comparison, is a Sims maestro and could somehow juggle a full family with ease and I never understood it. Any game that has base building elements or managing things, I generally just avoid. Fallout 4‘s bases system is a good example, because I just completely ignored it and left the poor people of the Commonwealth to fend for themselves. This brings us to 11 Bit Studios’ most recent release, The Alters, which is full of these gameplay systems that I just generally do not get on with. And yet, because of its excellent narrative and its seamless blend of other gameplay genres, this ended up being much more enjoyable than I first thought.

In The Alters, you play as Jan Dolski, voiced by the fabulous Alex Jordan. This is a man not particularly enamoured by life and things have not quite gone his way. He grew up with a harsh, drunkard dad that he could never stand up to and he is constantly at war with himself for not being there to say goodbye to his mum. His own marriage has also gone up in flames and so he feels like, in life, he has only made the wrong choices. Seemingly the worst choice of all though was taking the trip that lead to his current situation. Crash-landed on a strange planet, with all of his crew dead, Jan is all alone. Stuck on his base, with radiation all around him, Jan needs desperate help to gather resources and build what is necessary to survive. But after a discovery of the time-bending substance known as Rapidium, he just might get the help he needs. Using a quantum computer and a device called the womb, Jan creates clones of himself to help him accomplish his mission. These clones are not just mindless though, and serve as versions of him if he made different decisions in his life. Through communicating with them and leading them, Jan may be able to escape the planet, but he will also endeavour a formative journey that will change his outlook on life itself.

The Alters is very varied in its gameplay approaches, but it all manages to work well together. The two main divides are what you do outside the base and what you do inside. Outside the base is mostly just focused on exploration of the planet and resource gathering. Out here, there are various deposits for mining resources, which are crucial to survival. You will have to use pylons and mining stations you have crafted to harvest these, but to do so, you must find the source of the deposit. This can be incredibly frustrating because you have to join up these probes to scan an area, progressively going towards the red area which will prompt the nesting of a station. It can take a long time to find these and they will often be in the last place you look, sod’s law and all. Finding that sweet spot though is immensely satisfying and linking up that station to your base to guarantee resources in the future is always a relief. Aside from the puzzle-like deposits, the other exploration is very simple. It mostly consists of using drill charges to destroy roadblocks and using suit power to scale up ledges with a climbing hook. This is all done to find the deposits, things necessary for a mission and even little collectables that you can gift to your Alters. This would all be quite pedestrian and boring if it wasn’t for the anomalies. These are these invisible forces that affect your exploration in different ways, whether it is just attacking you with radioactivity, or completely changing reality by dilating time or pulling you into multiple realities at once. They make exploration constantly exciting and with the added pressure of getting everything done before the day ends, it is always a rush to get what you need and get back safely.

Everything you do outside affects the inside. All those resources you gather are used for building new modules within the base, crafting equipment and having a stable food source. Everything either takes metals, minerals, rapidium or organics, the latter of which is the most vital to survival, due to it being the only way to get food. The most interesting and most important element to all of this is the Alters. Each one that Jan wakes has a specialisation that comes with its own story. When going to the quantum computer to wake an Alter, you see Jan’s tree of life and the potential pathways it can take, resulting in different professions. A Jan that managed to keep his wife happy and followed her dreams, as well as his, became a professional botanist, meaning you wake him and he has specific benefits. The Botanist, as an example, has a lot of experience with growing plants (who knew?) and food, meaning that assigning him to the greenhouse means food takes half the time to harvest. Assigning everybody to the right role becomes crucial for maximising productivity, especially when you only have a certain number of hours in a day. As much as I struggle with organising, I loved starting a new day and looking through what had to be done, assigning everybody their roles to either acheive something in the story, or even just complete a side objective. However, it did start to get tough and quite gruelling towards the end, with how much stuff you needed for each objective. Storms can come too which delay your progress, whilst damaging the base, meaning resources go to sorting that rather than getting to where you want to be. There are so many different tasks to do and with all your obligations, it is impossible to do them all in one playthrough, especially considering some choices have major consequences which change how things will play out. You get to a point where you realise you cannot do everything, and in some ways I suppose that is the point. Similarly, many people will have certain Alters they favour and even get Alters in a different order which would dramatically change the game. That is excellent for replayability prospects and I would be particularly interested to see the other options to some of the game’s bigger choices.

How the story plays out is this game’s biggest strength and it is heavily related to the Alters, specifically how Jan treats them and interacts with them. There is obviously a lot of moral problems with clones of people, because it makes somebody less unique. But these Alters are all so different from one another and it does offer a lot of reflection on life and its many choices. Jan is so concerned about his past mistakes and a lot of the conflict during the game concerns him trying to clasp at realities that are not his own. The Technician was a massive deviation from his own life purely because he stepped up and confronted his dad when he was too scared to. He stayed with his mum throughout her illness and got to share those last moments with her. Jan is jealous of that and much of the game is about him trying to be content with who he is, and realising he is not a failure. He could not be where he is now, for better or worse, without his past life experiences and everybody can take something from this message. The concept of this game and its relation to the narrative may seem on the nose at first, but throughout the story, it continues to be very nuanced and thought-provoking. Even when my patience started to weigh-thin towards the third act, it was never because of the story. It constantly kept me engaged and routing for Jan to not just get back, but also heal as a person. All of this is capped off by a great central performance from Alex Jordan, as well as all his work with the Alters too. It must have been a lot of work for him and he certainly did not disappoint.

The Alters really hits it out the park with its narrative and its gameplay loop is good enough to spur you on to each story beat. It can get rather difficult later on and, frankly, quite annoying to juggle everything. But as I prefaced, I am not very good at these kind of games and will probably never be. Some people love all of that pressure and while I do not mind a taste of it, I struggled to indulge on the full meal that this game tips all over you. Even still, everything is very well designed and accomplishing tasks or organising things just right never fails to unleash that dopamine rush. Being rich in resources and having a good relationship with your Alters is a rare occurrence at the same time, but once you hit that stride and it all goes well, not much is more satisfying. Just be sure to hold your nerve when it all inevitably comes crashing down!