17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
The Alters review: Surviving a space disaster with a little help from your selves
The Alters is not the first sci-fi game to test the consequences of cloning but it does so in a meaningful, thought-provoking manner as it explores the predicament of a lone astronaut stranded on a barren planet.
Warsaw-based 11-Bit Studios has a pedigree in morally challenging survival games that present difficult choices to the player. You never could save everyone in titles such as 2015's This War of Mine or 2019's Frostpunk – the task was as stark as deciding who would live and who would die.
In The Alters, you're trying to save yourself, an unremarkable space miner named Jan Dolski – the only one left alive of a mission by a vaguely shady corporation to locate a coveted rare element called rapidium that can speed up organic growth. Alone after his ship's catastrophic crash-landing, he realises there's no way he can survive without help even after finding his way to the crew's empty base on the planet.
However, Dolski is also running from his past, and possibly his present and future too. Back on Earth, he left behind an ex-wife, regrets about how he dealt with his drunken father, and guilt about his late mother. If only life could bestow a chance to put things right…?
After long-distance conversations with his corporate handler, Dolski learns that his shot at escaping the planet rests on cloning himself using rapidium – but each copy pulls from a different potential outcome in his life. Maybe the one who'd quit university to focus on an apprenticeship. Or the Jan who became at botanist at his wife's suggestion. Or the guy who got a PhD and became a scientist.
The Alters layers this character drama with resource-gathering on the planet surface, a task always mindful of the ticking clock of radiation damage and a hazy threat from alien anomalies. You might spend the equivalent of several daytime hours mining rocks for components to build and then pass the evening teasing out the overarching issues with the clones – the alternate versions of Jan with contrasting abilities but not always agreeable viewpoints.
It makes for an interesting game loop, overcoming the hostile environments outside and then negotiating with the others inside as you expand the base and draw on their knowledge to solve problems. Although the outside busywork can get a bit tedious, the game hangs together thanks in no small part to the remarkable performance by British actor Alex Jordan who invests Jan and his multiple Alters with distinct personalities.
Just like life itself, there are myriad ways in which Dolski's story can branch, depending on which Alters he awakens. This lends an innate replayability to his story that overcomes the repetitiveness of the gameplay. Who could resist a do-over of a second chance in your life story?
The Alters artfully balances the time pressures of Dolski's physical tasks with the emotional toll of managing the clones, a responsibility made all the heavier given that you're trying to rescue not just yourself but all your selves. Maybe living one life might easier after all…
