The Alters will be released on June 13, 2025. It’s quite the ride from the unique twist on base building to the psychological strings that are pulled along your journey. Choices have real consequences, and failure is not a single choice but a series of misfortune events that lead to your demise.

To say I felt the whole you have crashed landed on an alien planet. Along with surviving by harvesting resources and advancing technology. Was starting to feel a little dull was an understatement. That was until I played the demo for The Alters back in almost a year ago. I knew during that demo that The Alters was going to be different.

Fast forward almost a year from then. I had thought about the game a couple of times before. It I felt could be so good of a game that I could not wait to release it. I was even more excited as I got an early release version to check it out.

The game instantly felt familiar while I was rerunning the part the demo led up to. Almost like there had been little time since then. Then things got a lot more complex in the way I was hoping things would go.

I made it to the third act in my first real playthrough of the game before things came to an end. Little choices that I felt were the best possible choices in not-so-great situations ended up being worse than expected. Things started to go downhill quickly after I lost my first alter. In the end, my crew revolted and that was it for me.

I was forced to either start over from the start or reload from a former saved day. The game saves every day when your character first wakes up. I felt the mistakes I made were far beyond just turning back time by a couple of days and trying to move forward from there. So, I started over again.

There ends up being quite a lot of chatting back and for between your characters and those who are externally putting pressure on the situation. Thankfully the game lets you skip over things if you like. There were however moments when I slowed down to make sure I made different choices.

There is sure an element of replayability as my second time around things were slightly different. I was able to get more side activities done than before. Also, the character that I had lost survived. However, the game was not done teaching me a lesson about cruel fate. It seems some of my alerts must go to suffer regardless of my actions. Almost like death might been a better option for some of them in the early game.

This game pushed me from an emotional and ethical state of mind. There was enough back story and relating with some of the characters that I was more willing to side with them in conflicts with the others. Along with going out of my way for the things they asked.

There were also ethical barriers I would not dare to cross in the real world. In a video game, on the other hand, I was. I went down some dark rabbit holes. Wondering how my choices would come back to haunt me later. Some of them would in a bigger fashion than others.

As far as the base building elements of the game goes there were a bit different than any survival game, I'm used to playing. The biggest is that the entire base moves from one location to another as it’s a giant wheel after all.

Over time you can research further upgrades. This includes new room types for your alters to enjoy, better storage, and even more space to build in. Early on you can research everything you want. Later, things started to become locked by a rare-to-get element that I spent many days chasing after.

The cool thing is you can rearrange your base as needed without having to spend extra resources rebuilding a room. Due to that, I often rethink my base layout from a user standability to optimizing it to get more useable building space out of it. After all, it is quite an odd shape to be building in creating some challenges as you slowly expand it out.

You also only get so much time in each area. The planet's orbit in the solar system has an impact on how hot each area gets. As each day passes the sun gets closer, you start to lose working hours outdoors and other sinister things start to occur on the planet's surface at each location.

I would also find myself in situations where I simply did not have enough fuel (organics) or fuel capacity to take everything with me. On the surface, you can build mining outposts and pylons to bring them power. If you have enough spare space between the moves, it all gets packed up. If you don’t you are just abandoning things. Having to spend some extra resources at the next location to get set up again.

In one of my play thoughts, I was even in such a dire situation to only have hours remaining to remove. I had to start deleting rooms out of my base to reduce my fuel cost to move. That changed my way of thinking about how to build for the next area I found myself in. After all the more common elements of metals, minerals, and organics are not that hard to come by.

As far as the alters themselves this is where the whole humans will live to see horrors behind their imagen kind of takes hold depending on how you feel about the situation. The Alters are more or less cloned DNA of yourself with different memories.

I can’t think of the horror that must have been on each one of their minds when I woke them up. For them finding out not only are they a clone. All the memories they had were not their own. Large chunks of those memories never even happened.

As it would turn out and be true to the game as well. There were many choices your character could have made growing out that had an impact on the kind of person and career he would end up having.

Each of those major decisions forked off into creating a different outcome. Allowing you to pick differently trained Alerts. This allowed you to fill different roles you felt you needed to survive.

The game even gives a bit of a backstory about the major events in the Alters's life. Giving a bit of an inside into some of the quarks they came with. This information could be used in dealing with each one in different situations Along with trying to work out who might not be a good fit around the group you are building.

For the most part, it felt like many of these alters were optional. Many of the different kinds of workers just give a bonus for their special role like mining or refining. They can also fill in most general roles.

There are some specialized rooms however that require the right kind of Alter to run them. Like the research lab where only the scientist can work in. Since his research allows you to unlock new rooms and other advancements. That one seems quite critical and required to have.

Research would end up playing quite a critical role. I made sure the scientist was working every day on something in his lab. That went on for quite a while until made it to the late game where you started to need special material.

All my other Alters would rotate around to fill in gaps. If I could have them work in their specialized area first of every day I would. The game has a nice way to help you micromanage them. On top of that once they are done with work in one area they will ask if they can be moved elsewhere. Making things even similar allows you to focus on more demanding tasks at hand.

Exploration is also a huge part of The Alters. During the day if I was not needed to help gather some resources were short on. I’d just go off on my little adventures. While the game starts rather safe. Over time you do end up encountering some strange things in each location. Even more so the closer to the sun that location ends up being.

This was also perhaps the part of the game I enjoyed the post. I do love exploring different areas in games in general. While I was always on the lookout for further resource patches to set up mining at.

There were also far more interesting things to discover. Sometimes it felt like I was not discovering things soon enough for something meaningful to become of it. This I felt in a way would create some fun if I chose to play the game again down the road. As the game is made you can’t do everything you wanted if you tried.

There comes a point where it feels like you are getting closer to having to move to the next area. Were more things mounting down on you. The Alters end up fighting with each other, those you are in contact with far away are asking for further things. Then you have storms and just general stuff breaking down.

At the end of each day when I could no longer be outside of the base due to radiation. I’d often try and catch up with my Alteras to see what their latest demands were. Along with finishing off any tasks in the base that needed to be done that they failed to finish.

I would often be doing many things from cooking to crafting items. There would also be the rare moments where I got to hang out with my Alters. There came a point when I was able to expand my moving base to meet most demands for rooms that I either had or my Alters. It would even sometimes become easy to get lost in my maze-like base as I move rooms around to fit more things in like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Final Thoughts

While The Alters has quite a few different elements in it from base building to managing your Alters. It was all done enjoyably. Sure, sometimes the conversations with an individual Alter would feel like it went on for a bit long. Some of them were quite compassionate about a certain ordeal going on. Letting you know as the player to try and pay a little more attention.

At the end of the day. You just hope the choices you made from siding with certain Alters over others. Over choosing to go after one objective over another. Along with how you managed your day to daytime. Were all good enough to survive to see the next area of the game. Where challenges would become even harder to face. At least you were not doing it alone. You had your little army of Alters to assist along the way.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about The Alters.

Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.

Disclosure. This review was written a couple of days before the official release of the game. Any small bugs I encountered such as visual bugs were already listed as known or fixed for the release version of the game.