Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
I’ve played and streamed a fair bit of this game, and was blown away. What I thought I was getting was a simulation game with your character creating copies of themselves to produce more product efficiently, in a sufficiently sci-fi settings. What I did not expect was the heavy focus on humanity, self, and morals.
Developer
11 bit Studio
Platforms
PC
PS5
Xbox Series
HLTB
Posted @
16hrs
+ + Compelling Story
+ Gameplay Loop
– AI controversy
There are spoilers to the nature of the game ahead: The game starts you off in a mining survey gone wrong. You’re alone, you’re in imminent danger of the sun cooking you to death, and you can’t do this by yourself. Luckily for you, Rapidium is this galaxy’s new rare resource and you crashed on a planet full of it. Rapidium (helpfully named much like Avatar’s Unobtanium) speeds up time – useful for so many applications such as allowing crops to grow in hours. I bet you can already see what we’ll be using it for.
So we take our rapidium, and apply it to some of our DNA, and suddenly we have clones. but we don’t want copies of ourselves, we want specialists. We want Scientists, Miners, Botanists, an entire crew worth of different experienced people to make a proper team and this is where The Alters really lets loose.
I don’t know about you, but I have often wondered “what if i had have made a different choice in this part of my life”, what if i didn’t listen to the guidance counselor or my folks in 2002, and studied game design despite there being “no future in it”. What if I had paid more attention to relationships better, what if I had taken that job that was too scary. The Alters takes this question and opens it further – what if you could talk to those people who lived that life, and face those choices and see how it might change you, and what lessons they could teach you. It’s a fascinating thing, and even though this is a character, I still felt so much connection and empathy to the story.
Speaking of which, the story gave me vast flashbacks to Death Stranding. The way you interact with NPCs, the vague Sci-Fi explanations, the lack of contact and not knowing who to trust, definitely seemed inspired. Being that the game is about a journey from A to B, with acts involving constant retreading of the same grounds but slowly increasing your tools and exploration, I was heavily reminded of Hideo Kojima’s latest works. On the upside, I found this story (so far – at the time of writing, I have only completed act 1) much more grounded in plausible Sci-Fi. Themes of corporate greed, exploration, and humanity felt much more in line with movies such as Duncan Jones’ Moon, and I have enjoyed every second I’ve played so far.
Leave a Reply