The Alters Review – The madness of multitasking

This is going to be one of those reviews where I begin by talking about how hard I tried to like the game in question. And… yes. I did try really hard to like The Alters. On paper, it sounds good. Fantastic, even. I mean, cloning alternate versions of yourself based on the many what-if scenarios of your life? Sounds like peak science fiction to me. But when those ideas are put into practice, or rather, into the framework of a video game like The Alters, the end result is… less than pleasant. Well, at least it was for me.

That said, before I come off as too negative, I do understand what the game is trying to do on a fundamental level. The thing is… I don’t think the way it’s doing it is very fun or engaging. I’m generally not into these types of games, but that’s exactly my point: if you’re not already a fan of management sims that punish you for not perfectly allocating every nanosecond of your life, The Alters isn’t going to be the title to convert you, I think. And that, I suppose, is what I can give you: my perspective as a newcomer to the genre.

Me, myself, and I

Let’s start with the basics. What’s the game about? In a nutshell, you’re a guy called Jan Dolski, and you’re stuck inside a research base on a hostile planet where the sun will burn you alive if you don’t hurry and move elsewhere. Meaning, you need to build up your base, gather resources, conduct research and move to another, safer location on the planet that’s less prone to murder you. Now, here’s the problem: you’re alone, and this is quite a daunting mission for just one fella. So, by using a special substance called Rapidium, which you happen to stumble upon while exploring the planet, you essentially clone yourself, creating the titular “alters” – in other words, alternate versions of Jan. What kind of person would he become if he stood up to his abusive father instead of skipping town and running off? What if he decided to become a scientist? What if he did this or that? By analyzing the key branching points of his life and career, you create clones with completely different skill sets, personalities and life experiences to help you on your mission – after all, it’s our memories that essentially make up who we are, right?

That premise, as described above, is beyond fascinating to me. The in-game quantum computer gives you detailed descriptions of major turning points in Jan’s life, as well as the lives of his alters, allowing you to understand what makes them tick – which, as you might imagine, can come in handy when dealing with them. To someone like me, who was already a huge fan of alternate timelines and what-if scenarios in fiction, this part felt great, and I couldn’t wait to dive in.

Mastering multitasking

Gameplay-wise, the game is cut up into two big sections. The more prominent one is all about base management: you need to expand, build up and maintain your home away from home while completing various tasks that eventually culminate in moving the base to a safer location, away from the deadly sun. The other part involves actually going down onto the planet and scanning the surface for mineral deposits, anomalies and various other goodies that could help you in your mission. Both parts have their advantages. Resources are the lifeblood of your expedition: it's how you build and research everything you need in order to survive, so exploring every nook and cranny of the planet is key. Back on the base, you get to chat up your alters, play games with them or even organize movie nights to improve morale – you’ll need each alter to be happy and comfortable to keep the ball rolling.

Another important aspect of The Alters is role assignment and micromanagement. You can do things by yourself and start cooking meals, assembling new items at your workshop and fixing every leaky pipe… or you could just let an alter handle it. Different alters come with different strengths, so optimally, you want to assign the scientist to the research lab and the miner to the mining outpost and not vice versa, just to give you an example.

Micromanaging madness

So where did all this go wrong for me? At first, completing the tasks the game threw at me was fairly manageable. I mined some minerals, produced some items, and off I went. Easy. As I continued to progress, however, the tasks (and the various related issues) began to pile up. And the sun was getting closer and closer.

In order to build an item, I’d have to get a certain type of material, but in order to get that material, I’d need to do something else, and in order to do all that, I’d have to do another thing, and another thing, and it just keeps going like that. Your alters run out of food and complain. Something in the base breaks down and needs repairs. Accidents and injuries can occur. Discontent might grow. And don’t even get me started on the radiation filters. I’ve lost count of how many times my alters kept reminding me that we are, in fact, out of radiation filters. YES, JAN. I KNOW. I’m trying to do five hundred different things while the base is falling apart and all you do is complain about your oatmeal, JAN. Maybe if you stopped moaning about it and helped out, we wouldn’t be in this situation, JAN.

Ahem.

My point is that, as someone relatively new to management games, I found that the mechanics soon got in the way of enjoying the otherwise intriguing setting and premise. It’s hard to get immersed in the experience when your head is full of numbers and tasks and checklists and you’re trying to do the math for how many rations you still need so that people don’t starve, how many rad filters have to be queued up in the workshop and how many minerals you still need to mine in order to make a drill that clears away a pile of rubble blocking the way so you can explore the rest of the planet and find the qubit chip to upgrade your base with and I’M GOING INSANE.

Ahem.

At first, I honestly enjoyed the absolute chaos of it all; the game felt tough but fair, and I’d heave a relieved sigh whenever I just barely managed to overcome a massive crisis. But the pressure rarely let up, I found: the game just kept pushing me harder and harder, and eventually, that broke me. I was no longer enjoying myself: I was mechanically clicking buttons to craft things while trying to make my numbers go up. Everything became bland, tedious and repetitive. Every success was marred by new problems and failures. Every time I felt like I’d taken a step forward, the game forced me to take three steps back.

Again and again and again

Now, I realize that failure is very much expected in this sort of game. I went into The Alters completely blind, so obviously, I made mistakes along the way. Once I got the hang of things, though, I became somewhat more efficient, but it was too little, too late. Things had spiraled out of control, and I lacked the necessary resources to fix them – in fact, some of my mistakes resulted in unrecoverable tragedies at times. The game has a time limit, too, as that whole “escape the sun” thing isn’t just for show: if you take too long to sort things out, you’ll be hit with a Game Over. Oops. So what options are you left with? Accept your losses and keep going? Sure, but there’s no guarantee this won’t just delay the inevitable, which means you’ve wasted your time trying to salvage a doomed timeline like someone who’s just murdered a key NPC in Morrowind. The other option is to go back to an earlier state in your playthrough (the game saves your progress at the beginning of each day) and try again, now armed with the gift of foresight.

My main problem here is that having to replay earlier days, potentially even weeks, made me feel beyond miserable, and I simply could not see the fun in endlessly re-doing the same things over and over again until I finally figured out the winning strategy. This issue is further amplified by the fact that the core mechanics of the game aren’t particularly engaging and feel more like busywork than anything. Which means having to re-do a whole week’s worth of chores is… not a particularly pleasant prospect. It sure is a mood killer, though, and the mood is the last thing you want sabotaged in a sci-fi game like this. I understand that everything I’ve just described could be seen as the main draw of the game to someone who wants to be challenged and doesn’t mind the repetition. There is a target audience for all this, but I’m forced to draw the unpleasant conclusion that I’m simply not in that group, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t change that. The way the mechanics are designed, and how everything seems to be built around the idea that you’ll be potentially re-doing earlier parts of the game to fix prior mistakes is just too much of a deal-breaker for me.

No more rad filters for me

The AltersPlatform: Windows, PS5, XBox Series SXGenre: AdventureDeveloper: 11 bit studiosPublisher: 11 bit studiosRelease: 06/13/2025The bottom line is that The Alters is a great idea for a thought-provoking sci-fi adventure, but the way this idea was executed as a video game just didn’t really click with me at all. I would’ve loved to explore the stories of my alters and the obvious moral dilemmas pertaining to cloning, but the myriad chores and various other problems always got in the way – I was trying my best to enjoy the experience, to stop and smell the space roses, so to speak, but every positive moment I had with the game ended up being drowned out by a tidal wave of tedium and the constant stress of having to manage a million different things on a time limit. The resulting frustration made me no longer see the alters as characters: all that remained were quotas to be filled, checkboxes to be checked and tasks to be completed. I never really got a chance to breathe or have the time to properly enjoy the otherwise fantastic concept – or anything else offered by the narrative.

That said, it would be unfair of me to call The Alters a bad game, because I really don’t think it is – however, if this is your first venture into the base/time management genre, and you’re simply here to try and enjoy the story and the characters because the whole “guy clones alternate versions of himself” premise sounded interesting to you on paper, you might find that the game’s mechanics ultimately become too much of an obstacle to your enjoyment.

The Alters is available on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Game Pass.