The Alters — Therapy Bros
Review
In my preview last year, The Alters felt handcrafted for a cinematic experience exploring the relationships between you and the alters. The cinematic elements are not that prominent, but I was not ready for how much work these relationships would be to maintain while the planet’s sun was about to fry us all alive. Sure, we’re always on the verge of collapse from radiation storms and just hoping to make it through the day alive, but have you considered that you hurt this alter’s fee-fees today?
11 bit studios developers know how to put the player through the meat grinder of constant frustration and bare survival. But the people you depend on to survive in this game are also the ones you sometimes want to strangle, just like real family. If you are the type who tries to make everybody happy, you will probably go insane in The Alters. No matter what you do for them, you will not make them happy.
If that is not enough to discourage you, the survival gameplay will keep you racing against time through a torrent of challenges and busywork, evading weird gelatinous anomalies, and trying to find the specific spots for mining structures. All so you can mine the Rapidium required to create more needy alters who will ask for more things while talking about their feelings. And here I thought rolling through a hostile planet would be hard, but playing shrink for a crew of therapy bros is a reimagining of hell.
Space Whac-A-Mole
To be fair, I enjoy the base building, the mini-games (especially beer pong) and some in-game movies are funny. I also enjoyed some crafting, but a lot feels unbalanced, with some items taking such a long time to build, while the base modules are implemented instantly. This just doesn’t seem realistic for survival technology on a hostile planet, and it clashes with the overall attempt at realism in the setting.
When you come upon an anomaly, you have to use a device the scientist called a “luminator” to blast their core, which is a big ball bouncing inside the gelatinous blob. It’s like a pinball game, but you have to follow the ball with your cursor to disintegrate them. It’s supposed to be a fun gameplay element, but it falls flat and feels like ‘pop-a-mole’. It’s just not fun having to blast several when you’re low on batteries. And if they are everywhere all the time, they can’t really be called anomalies.
Overall, the gameplay feels uneven. There is not much to do in the evenings and during radiation storms, and working inside is too slow after shifts. You can talk to your alters sometimes, but most of the time they don’t have interesting things to say, and the dialogue feels way too slow. They will go on about their life story, but they sound so petty, considering we will all die if we don’t focus on the tasks required to survive. They don’t seem to take that constant threat seriously.
Faux Physics
There were also a few niggling issues with controls, performance, and general ease of use. Some mechanics are not explained very well, and finding the right spot to mine a deep deposit can take longer than it should. Especially when you are constantly evading the anomalies and running out of batteries. The physics of the planet itself feels too gamey, and that gamification diminishes the realism in the setting.
Moving around the base is also a bit of a hassle, especially when you have to talk to an alter. Why is that they can just send me voice messages, but I have to find them physically in the base to talk to them every time a new conversation cue pops up? You have to go up or down the elevators, walk through the modules to find them, get close enough to the NPC hitbox just to start a new conversation so they can whine at you.
The planet levels can be tricky to navigate, with a bit of interesting vertical design, but the fact that you cannot jump or jetpack really hampers the exploration with a hook-based gamey mechanic. This also makes the level design feel flattened, full of invisible walls and on-rails rather than open-ended, lacking cool things to discover. There seems to be only laid-out routes already in place for you to follow; you are not here to find your own path.
Lifeless Everyman
I really tried my best to care, but I don’t think Jan Dolski is a compelling character, and the alters felt even more one-dimensional and flat, sometimes a caricature, especially the scientist. And the corporation’s side characters are also quite annoying, especially Lucas, always going on about his grandma all the time. Sorry, I do not care. And stop asking for more and more Rapidium; stop being so greedy. It’s like these people don’t see I am trying to get away from an apocalyptic sun over here.
If the alters need to talk, they should wait until the end of the day to bring it up, when there’s not much to do since you can’t go outside, and work is too slow. Instead, the alters ask to talk when you are right in the middle of a dangerous errand outside, and they just get in the way. If there is no food ready to eat, they have no agency to go to the kitchen and cook for themselves. They have the nerve ask you to cook for them while you’re out there fighting for your life; they act worse than helpless children.
And honestly, I tried my best to be tolerant of their flaws, to be polite to them, to hear them out at first. I really, really tried. I spent resources and time to craft crap they asked for. And they still act spoiled and whiny after that. I’d understand if all the issues I had were just because I was selecting the worst possible dialogue options, but I tried my very best to hear them out, help them out, and work with them. And what do I get? More whining, more complaints, more interruptions and poor attitude.
Planet Consciousness
How could someone decide to abandon the mission and go by himself into the wilderness of a hostile planet with radioactive storms? How does that make sense? Just because I opted for a humane choice to help keep them alive. He was the first alter I created, and I liked him at first. He was always unruly, but to actually abandon the mission and go at it alone in the middle of this wasteland? It makes no sense.
Less is more. Considering what they go through to be created with Rapidium, the alters would be more impactful as characters if they were less self-absorbed and more interested in their connection with the planet. The game could have had a deeper insight into the ideas that only come up in the third act, when I was already sick of them all. The planet itself is a more interesting character than the alters.
And that is something Polish science fiction has always excelled at: conceiving intelligent alien life as planetary more than species-based. Solaris is a unique science fiction novel/film because the ‘visitors’ from the ocean were less self-absorbed in how they showed their inner life. They were more invested in something bigger than themselves, whereas the alters sound too bound up in their branched quantum timelines; the character development feels less organic as a consequence.
Unresponsive Systems
A day-one patch should address most of the issues I had, but still, some players might want to wait out a while if they prefer to play a polished build. During my playthrough, there were significant crashes, frame rate dips, as well as several minor issues in functionality and user experience. Some areas seem to experience more issues than others, and optimization is all over the place.
For some reason, the game sometimes takes several minutes to load in the beginning. At first, I thought it was just setting up for the first time, but every time I restart the game, it loads again. I’m not sure what’s going under the hood with the ‘preparing shaders’ and whatnot, but other more resource-intensive games don’t take this long to load, so this just seems like poor optimization.
When the game works, it works fine, and the gameplay loop is solid, but sometimes the interruption bubbles from alters never stopped. I gave them jobs, but they didn’t seem to be doing them. The “crunch” overtime switch in Assignments didn’t seem effective; my alters seemed unproductive most of the time, focused on other things. When I needed something done urgently, I felt like I had to do it myself because it would take them longer to do it.
Universe of Oz
I was really looking forward to The Alters, but it frustrated me more than it engaged me. My past reviews and previews show my record as a fan of 11 bit studios since This War of Mine, and my preview was enthusiastic. There is a core of great ideas here that could improve in the execution; questions of free will and determinism, and what our choices can do. But these ideas are reduced to a Wizard of Oz drama, where the alters were like the Tin Woodman and such, all there to help me “become a better person”.
I hoped there would be more exploration and mystery in a space survival game, but most of the time I felt stuck having pointless conversations rather than actually being able to do what needs to be done to survive. We get these survival systems and this cool base, and then it feels like we are not allowed to play with them because of constant interruptions, uncollaborative systems, and whiny alters. The potential of the gameplay gets watered down in this stream of petty issues and complaints.
When life is hard and uncomfortable, people bear down and take it. You don’t have the time or the energy to open up to people when you’re living rough. You don’t have the luxury of sharing your feelings, making yourself the centre of the universe. You wake up, do your job, and find ways to cope. You don’t make it everybody’s business to care about every little thing that hurts in your head. You man up and move on. Especially when you are facing solar annihilation with a crew of unhinged alter egomaniacs.
PS: I wrote most of this review after an event halfway through the storyline. It was a frustrating experience, which prompted this rather negative review, alongside the process wrapping my head around the game’s systems. I have cooled off since then, and I see now that I became too involved with the player character and the cast of alters. In retrospect, while I stand by the criticism, the game is not bad, though also not quite great. If you tend to become too involved in a story and lash out at the characters, you might want to play this in small doses to avoid the frustration. You have to be able to separate your work life and your personal life with the alters. There are multiple endings and variations to explore once you have a handle on it.
Disclosure: The Alters was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer over the course of 50 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.
Rating: 6.5 / Serviceable.
The Good
Cool modular base building;
Engaging worldbuilding;
Stunning alien landscapes;
Compelling narrative hook;
Potential for a deeper engagement with the alien planet.
The Bad
Too many interruptions from alters;
Too much therapy busywork;
Anomalies all the time everywhere;
Unbalanced crafting and base building;
Performance and optimization issues;
Inconsistent character development;
The alters are mostly assholes, lunatics, or whiners.
Gallery
The Alters will release on June 13 on Steam, GOG, Epic, PlayStation, and Xbox. More information on the official website.