11 Bit Studios are no strangers to creating groundbreaking, new IP content that pushes the boundaries of gaming. The Alters is one of their most recent titles in 2025 and this is a game that caught my eye with its intriguing premise involving survival, strategy, exploration and base-building.
Does The Alters do enough to captivate you and is it worth checking out?
The Alters
The Alters is a game about survival in the harsh depths of space. The protagonist, Jan Dolski crash lands on a planet and upon awakening, finds himself as the sole survivor of a mission gone awry. After waking up and exploring a bit, you’ll soon find the escape pods of your crew members but with everyone inside of their pods, dead. Yup… On that bleak note, you’ll quickly come to terms with the fact that you’re the sole survivor of your mission and you need to escape while you still can.
Shortly afterwards you’ll find your mobile base of operations. Within the base, you’ll be able to withstand the environmental conditions of the planet provided you keep up a steady supply of radiation filters. Fast forward a bit and the story escalates when Jan discovers that he only has a few days left to survive before a nearby star burns him to a crisp. No pressure huh?
After getting the base moving, Jan manages to get in touch with the Ally Corporation who instructs him to make use of the ship’s quantum computer. However, what Jan doesn’t realise is that they’ve set him up to do something extremely illegal. After constructing an artificial “Womb” and cloning a sheep from a genetic sample, Jan is tasked with “Branching” his own DNA to create an “Alter”. Essentially a clone of himself but with completely different memories. This is where the game really kicks off and gets rather complex.
Once you successfully create your first “Alter”, Jan will have a conversation with him and it’s quite something. You’ll learn that he has a personality of his own as well as his own version of history that’s completely different to yours as the original Jan Dolski. You can also view this history at the quantum computer and you’ll see how it differs to your version of history and how it shaped them as a person.
Soon enough, you’ll end up creating another “Alter” for a specific reason. And later, another. And this is the premise of the game. Using your “Alters” for purposes to ensure your survival and the survival of the mission’s primary objective. The objective being finding and bringing back a rare resource known as “Rapidium”.
The Alters is a slow burn with the game gradually drip feeding you story content through conversations with your clones and with the Ally Corporation’s members. Players will have to explore out on the planet’s surface to find minerals and other resources to build equipment and tools as well as create new structures within their base of operations. As you progress so too will your capabilities in the base with more facilities being made available such as a Greenhouse for producing raw food, an Infirmary for treating the sick and more.
The Alters therefore blends survival with strategy and exploration. You can’t sit around for too long not doing anything because your clones will start to get antsy and their moods will fluctuate. This drives you forward in exploring and finding out more about the game’s world and its story since it’s essential in progressing ‘lest you end up dying to radiation or to rebellion.
The game’s core gameplay loop revolves around venturing out during the day when the planet’s radiation levels are low, finding resources, extracting them via mining outpost construction, and crafting equipment back at the base. Things get a lot more complicated when there’s multiple Alters back at the base and the storytelling truly keeps the game going in ways that I didn’t really expect. Without spoiling too much, The Alters has masterfully woven a tale of humanity into its framework and it’s the type of game that you’ll be thinking about for a long time after playing it.
The gameplay is fairly straightforward and the game is very text heavy in the form of conversations with the various Alters but thankfully these are fully voiced. The vocal performance of the various Alters is well done and you can immediately tell that they are different people based on their tone of voice. For example, the Refiner version of Jan is a very chilled out laid back guy where as the Technician version of Jan is quite aggressive.
If you lack the patience for a story driven game with a light management and exploration gameplay loop, The Alters will annoy you. However if you’re a fan of story driven titles that hook you and keep you going by slowly feeding you information, The Alters will check all the right boxes.
Yes the core gameplay loop can get repetitive over time but thankfully, because you have a lot of stuff to do every single day with either exploring or managing the base or your Alters, the repetition doesn’t get too intense before the game reaches its conclusion. Each conversation with the “Alters” themselves also feels well thought out and feeds you more information that you can use later on.
Graphically, the game looks flat out beautiful. The planet’s surface and the environment looks fantastic and the character models look excellent too. The variations in each version of Jan also really sell the fact that they are different people but are still the same core Jan body with slight variations. The voice acting in the game is well done and the soundtrack is excellent too. The background music really adds to the game’s suspense and overall tone.
Final Verdict:
The Alters is a very story driven game that draws on 11 Bit Studios strengths. This of course being incredibly gripping storytelling. The game doesn’t shy away from some hard hitting emotional storytelling and just like 11 Bit Studios other games such as Frostpunk and This War of Mine, will leave you with some complex human emotions and thoughts to feel.
This is a game that gets a solid recommendation from me, especially if you’re into philosophical questions and can appreciate story driven games that make you think. It may not be to everyone’s tastes though due to the slow paced storytelling.
The Alters Launch Trailer
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Game code was provided by the Publisher.
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