The Alters Review - Narrative Driven Survival

The Alters is a story driven, survival game where the main character, Jan Dolski, is stranded on an unhospitable planet alone during Project Dolly. Looking for a way to survive, he ends up using the ship's quantum computer to produce alternate versions of himself. These Alters are clones, yet not quite. They made a different decision that led them down a completely new life path from Jan, gaining the skills he needs in the harsh environment. 

The Alters Review | Surviving in Space

Taking a look at the survival aspect of The Alters, you have to mine resources from the planet either by hand or using a mining station. These mining stations, the main resource collectors, are connected by pylons to your moving base and unlock fast travel points around the map. The other resources are grown, crafted, or refined in the base itself. Once you have Alters, you'll assign them to specific rooms, referred to as modules, and give them tasks to complete. When finished, they'll ask to jump to another location that has something queued. 

The Alters is much closer to a colony or resource management game than a full-blown survival title. You can mine resources, refine ores, and grow food, but that's about it. There are items to craft, but most of them just improve your ability to explore the different areas the base stops at, as well as the efficiency of your resources. You can automate most of these processes and be completely hands-off on resource gathering by the endgame and even the midgame, depending on how you unlock research. 

These are fairly basic mechanics when it comes to surviving. There are three different mining stations, only five resources to mine, and one resource to grow. You'll get reminders when levels of certain things, like storage or food, are low, but you can typically restock your reserves quickly. Throughout my initial playthrough, I never felt like I was in danger of losing due to a lack of resources. The typical pressure of a survival game just wasn't present for me as I played. 

On top of the basic mechanics, you only have a certain number of days in each location. Changing locations isn't voluntary, but forced. If you stay until Sunrise, everyone is charred to a crisp, and the game ends. The moving base can be continuously changed, expanded multiple times, and have new modules added, but you cannot make any exterior location your permanent home.

Additionally, there is a definitive end to the title. This is quite different than the majority of games in the survival genre. While the story will have an ending, you're able to keep exploring, building your base, and crafting new items. That isn't the case in The Alters. When the story ends, so does the game.

You can go back an infinite number of times to replay days, change your dialogue choices, or use different Alters, but the game will always end. Being able to redo days increases the replayability. It's also necessary to do at least a second playthrough to select different Alters to create or pick a different major decision. This will reveal new endings, new lessons, and new cutscenes. 

Even with the replayability aspect, there's only a certain number of times you can adventure with Jan and his Alters before exhausting all new content. A definitive end, combined with limited time in each region, cuts down on the investment I have in the game. If there were more areas where you could farm without having to move locations, that would vastly increase my interest in The Alters as a survival title. At this moment, I view it as a well-written complex narrative adventure that merely uses the basics of survival to move the story along when there's no dialogue to delve into. 

Morality and Ethics in The Alters

Where The Alters really shines is in the way it presents morality in life-threatening survival situations. The narrative journey you experience is well written, emotionally evocative, and showcases the consequences of difficult choices, especially when both options are less than ideal. I wasn't ready for all the thinking I ended up doing. It compelled me to think over the different aspects of surviving, how those decisions could effect the crew, and what I was willing to do as the leader to ensure survival for as many people as possible. 

The story is incredibly profound, but it's not laid on you all at once. It's crafted in a way that you build up to the moral dilemmas. The story has joy and fun woven with the larger complexities, so it doesn't end up bogged down by the choices you face. The complexity of the situation and the drama that accompany it are balanced with breaks to play beer pong or watch movies.  

Morality is an angle not often explored in the survival genre. In games that I've played, you kill anyone who stands in your way, take resources no matter what, and do whatever it takes to stay alive. Having a character take the time to cognizantly mull over the potential consequences of his actions is a really unique take on the genre. 

This struggle over the morality of key decisions to ensure survival is what sets The Alters apart from other titles. The narrative is the best part of the game, hands down. It is what you'll recall when thinking about the title and what will draw you back to playing. 

The Bad and the Bugs in The Alters

While most of the game works extremely well, there are some aspects that detract from the experience. Being unable to skip certain cutscenes or dialogues is one of the design choices I don't personally agree with. Even though the scene in question is a key one, it doesn't dramatically change when going through a second playthrough or replaying the day. Having to sit through it can be frustrating, especially if you're rewatching it multiple times back to back.

Acts 1 and 2 were relatively bug-free, with the major issue involving Jan getting stuck on terrain elements. The frequency of this increased in Act 3, along with issues seeing Interal Veins. The veins were missing or the core was missing in multiple instances of the mechanic. This also affected the Interal animations added to other locations outside of the veins. I ended up wandering around and almost blacking out from Radiation due to not being able to find the core. 

Another issue was ALX getting stuck in places, such as the sky, that made collecting them impossible. Sometimes they rolled into the environment, or became stuck between items that made them inaccessible. Though these were relatively small in number of occurrences, they still negatively impacted gameplay. 

The Alters Review | Final Thoughts

The Alters is a solid narrative entry wrapped in basic survival mechanics. The focus of the game, and the highlighting feature, is the storyline. It has some replayability, but comes with a definitive ending and some restrictive base building that brings it closer to a colony management title than a true survival game. A single playthrough can take anywhere between 12-30 hours, depending on how often you redo days. If you're like me and played until the end without going back in time, you can finish the game in a single weekend. 

With few bugs to get in the way of your experience, The Alters is a well executed meshing of survival and story. Though the forced base movement and definitive ending make it less of a survival game, the narrative makes up for those shortcomings. 

The Alters was reviewed on PC via Steam over the course of 35 hours with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the course of the review.