ne and Frostpunk, the studio moves away from large-scale social themes to dive headfirst into a science fiction universe, between the isolation of Alone on Mars, the dark atmosphere of Blade Runner and the mysterious environment from The Island. a bold risk for the Polish studio which is launching for the first time into the third-person survival game. Here is a preview of what awaits you in this fascinating universe.
The Alters plunges us into a dystopian future where, inspired by the film Alien, Earth sends reconnaissance missions to the four corners of space in the hope of finding rare resources. Here we play Jan Dolski, an ordinary man faced with extraordinary circumstances. A mechanic by trade, he finds himself alone in a devastated mining station after an accident. As you might expect, it’s going to be about survival and feeling alone, but not for as long as you might imagine. The Alters offers an immersive 3D experience, alternating between third-person view and side scrolling depending on the gameplay phases. Everything is enhanced by the graphic power of Unreal Engine 5, offering striking landscapes from the first moments of play. We thus discover an inhospitable and hostile planet, a star entirely composed of rocks, where each step reveals a new threat.
Magnificent and convincing from the first moments
The lighting effects are particularly sumptuous, as are the different volumetric effects (clouds, fog and smoke). The attention to detail is remarkable and this first exploration among the rocks is striking. To accompany everything, it must be said that for a third-person game made by a studio that is not used to the genre, the animations are more than correct. They are fluid and rather realistic.
After spending a little time outside, we discover our mobile base, designed to house astronauts during their mission. Once there, the problems begin: we learn that in 7 days, with the rotation of the planet, our dear Jan Dolski will find himself exposed to solar radiation. We will therefore have to act quickly, very quickly. The countdown begins, but it’s not about completing tasks without rest. Indeed, Jan absolutely must sleep to avoid falling from exhaustion. You must therefore always monitor (and understand) your interface and your endurance gauge at the bottom left of the screen. And it is clear that everything is not very clear on this subject, as with many other gameplay elements. The player is left to his own devices and it is up to him to understand the mechanics. On several occasions, we had to call on a developer to figure out how to unlock a situation or even grasp a basic game mechanic. Which is quite abnormal, especially since we started our demo… at the very beginning of the game. It is difficult to know if this lack of clarity is intentional, to force the player to learn on their own, or if it is simply a lack of pedagogy. But the result is the same, it’s frustrating.
Good and bad in The Alters
After exploring the base, the game forces us to go back outside (always with a suit) to search for minerals. The exploration of the planet indeed plays a crucial role. One must navigate hostile environments, manage vital resources and avoid dangers like magnetic storms and highly irradiated areas. You must find ways to cross natural obstacles, like rivers of lava, using tools and equipment that you craft from collected resources. You will eventually get your hands on a curious mineral, rapidium. After reporting this to your one and only contact with Earth (via an intercom in your base communications room), you will learn that this is in fact one of the reasons for this whole thing. mission, since it offers formidable cloning capabilities. An extraordinary scientific discovery that literally allows living beings to be duplicated.
After creating a sheep to get started with, your contact asks you to test the resource on yourself, to create… an alter. That is, a clone of yourself, but with its own life and experience. It’s a shame that the game doesn’t dwell more on how cloning works and its implications, if only for the story. Everything went by a bit quickly and ultimately, no explanation fills this gap, at least not during the 3.5 hours of play that we were able to see.
The choice of alters
Each Quirk comes from Jan’s Tree of Life, which represents key moments in her life. These moments are meant to reflect ordinary life choices like marriage, careers, and family decisions. For example, Jan’s “Miner” alter may have a completely opposite personality and skillset than the “Scientist” alter. The interactions between them, often conflicting, add a unique depth to relationship management. Because yes, ultimately, the goal is to have as many alters as possible to help you leave the planet. The more, the merrier, or at least we can help each other thanks to each other’s different skills and intelligence. You are free to choose in the tree of life which alter to give birth to first, depending on your needs or desires of the moment.
Dialogues with inconsistent quality
This is also where you will be able to form friendships (or quite the opposite) with some of your clones/alters. A bit like the Star Wars clone army, in short. Different personalities emerge from one and the same individual. If the idea is excellent, its implementation is sometimes laborious, because of the writing that is sometimes a little heavy and without much interest. We sometimes find ourselves listening to characters talk and spout information that doesn’t add much to the plot and is sometimes quite meaningless. This is a shame because the game lets you make many choices in the dialogues, and each interaction has an impact on the relationships with your different alters.
Additionally, these Quirks become essential to the character’s survival and solving the mysteries surrounding their situation. Through these interactions, the game explores deep themes related to identity, life choices, and the consequences of our decisions, delivering rich and emotionally charged storytelling at multiple points. It’s a shame that the quality of the storytelling is inconsistent, because the potential was really there.
Exploration and crafting
The first steps in exploration go through crafting stages which, again, are sometimes a little laborious due to unintuitive game mechanics. For example, you have to collect iron to make small radars to place on the ground in order to find another resource. So far so good. But things get complicated when it becomes necessary to position them to find the resource in question. At that point, the player is literally lost and, on site, many journalists had to call on developers to understand and resolve the situation. Even several days later, while writing these lines, it is clear that the solution still remains unclear in our minds and that we have been able to resolve the situation several times only by luck. It’s a shame because the idea is good, but the implementation is also a little chaotic.
Lots of great promises for The Alters
Same observation for the numerous back and forths that The Alters forces us to make between our base and the different places we explore. Each time, a micro-loading is necessary, which completely disrupts the gaming experience. Fortunately, crafting is done via automatic acceleration of time, so there is no question of building in real time like in No Man’s Sky for example. A very good point which therefore allows you to concentrate on the essentials: your resources and your relationships with your alters and the overall management of our base. Like in a giant game of Tetris, you will have to improve and expand your base by following a grid system and respecting space constraints. You are free to completely disrupt the order of the different rooms so that the essentials for your survival are accessible via the different means of access. A very good point which gives the player the impression of having increased control over the management of the base. Overall, after more than 3 hours of play, it is clear that despite its weaknesses, The Alters remains satisfying to play. There is still work to be done, but the impression of being faced with a beautiful work of science fiction is very present. The whole thing is also based on a pretty brilliant idea where all hopes rest on different versions of our character. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to discover what the Quirk system really had to offer…
WE’RE WAITING FOR IT… WITH CURIOSITY
Right now, The Alters still has work to iron out all of its issues, but it’s very clear where 11-bit Studio wants to take us. And the destination is very beautiful and could be a very nice homage to science fiction as a whole. There is no doubt that by improving certain things, this title has all the cards in hand to become an essential management game.