The Alters is a game that shows much promise. Like many of you, I was intrigued by its trailer, promising a science fiction story straight out of Hollywood films like Moon, and The Martian, tasking the player with surviving and escaping a hostile alien planet, while dealing with other versions of yourself.
Ridley Scott’s film is one of my all-time favourites, and Robinson Crusoe on Mars was something I watched multiple times as a kid, so the premise was right up my alley. And then the demo dropped so I went and checked it out.
Covering the opening hour or so of the game, it drops you right into the survival aspect: you’re Jan Dolski, lone–for now–survivor of an expedition racing against time to get offworld, only you can’t do it all alone. Lucky for you, your weird movable giant wheel base is all set up for cloning, first a sheep as a test, and then a… You. Only this is not just another you, but a you whose life branched off in another direction at a significant moment. An Alter.
The finished game promises many multiple Alters with a variety of looks, character quirks, and crucially, space guy skills. As far as I could tell from a look at the life-line’s branching paths, narrative & ludic needs necessitate that every one of these Alters was destined to eventually be on this trip in some capacity; no artists or rock stars it would seem, but who knows… Maybe in DLC?
If it sounds like I’m less than impressed with The Alters after the demo… Well you’d be right in some ways. It is a fairly short demo and tries to cram in as much gameplay as it can, from the survival aspects of base management and resource gathering, to dealing with the Alters, which takes on an adventure-game-esque conversation and persuasion system.
As a result, I feel like the former gets rushed through. I’m not a huge fan of games on a time limit (I grew up with Sonic 2, people, you understand), and even in the tutorialising first section of setting up sensors, I had to stop halfway and rush back to base because of some kind of radiation exposure thing. And this is a pet-peeve, but I don’t like when essentially 2.5D spaces allow you to run around in 3D but then don’t have tighter stopping distances, or interesting things to interact with. If you’re giving me background clutter, give me reasons to care about it!
All of that can be tweaked and fixed by, or even after, release. But the meat of the game–or rather, one out of two patties in this double smash space-burger, is the whole Alter system. And that’s really still the most interesting part.
I can’t say that Jan Dolski is an immediately endearing character, nor is the length of the demo enough time to change that impression. He’s very much of the “What the hell is going on?” Kind of protagonist, but you do feel for him thrown in at the deep end, guided by a literally faceless corporate person into making Alters. The first one you make isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine either, but I guess space truckers are all a bit alike. Alex Jordan does a great job even as the two Dolskis in the demo, so I’m really looking forward to the full breadth of his performance.
(I wonder if he got full pay per role? One can hope.)
I mentioned split personalities at the beginning because I see The Alters’s biggest potential problem as being one of pacing. When one is almost always on the clock, things can quickly get out of hand. This is less of a concern in purely narrative games where time can and does literally stop for character development, but when every step outside the base is one step closer to danger, to resources dwindling, to time running out, are you really bothered about unraveling your childhood trauma with a guy who kinda looks like you?
That’s a question I hope 11 Bit Studios answers successfully when the game releases. I think they can polish up a lot of those control quirks, and even the pacing. I think it looks pretty good, especially the alien outdoors. I am still looking forward to The Alters… Just maybe slightly less than I was before.
-VKB