Why The Alters is the Must-Watch Sci-Fi Video Game of the Year: A Sneak Peek

Following the important war story of This War of Mine, developers 11bits are moving into 3D with a hybrid experience mixing construction, survival, and sci-fi adventure. The Alters tells the scope of choices, “ these tiny, binary decisions that are often made in nanoseconds, but can influence a lifetime » as the studio puts it so well, through the prism of the alters of Jan Dolski, a space worker engaged in a race against death. Polish creators invited us to Warsaw, behind closed doors, to let us approach the first two hours of this new game which promises to be very special.

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Inaugurated with a few evocative words from the poet Tomas Transtromer, The Alters opens with the monologue of an astronaut more disturbed and absorbed by the introspection of his past choices than by the imminence of the grounding of his ship on a desolate planet . What follows is the crash, a vain attempt to receive a sign of life from the rest of the crew, and then here we are, with our feet stuck, on the immensity of a planet with very particular energies. Sealed in heavy armor which does not prevent him from moving at a very comfortable speed Jan Dolski, our space explorer, crosses a biome whose immense tension is felt in the vibrations of a dense and palpable sound design. And then the music – by Piotr Musiał, brilliant composer of Frostpunk – quickly becomes an omnipresent element, deploying a masterful force which drapes with great style a dark and polished artistic direction, Returnal style. The image has its faults, the inexperience of 11bits in the animation of its 3D faces is visible, but the atmosphere, and the play of shadow and light provide sufficient work to offer a captivating rendering.

Jan Dolski appears to be the sole survivor of a failed expedition, but his crushing loneliness is a minor problem in the mess he's gotten himself into: The planet he's landed on slowly turns its face toward a giant sun, portending the arrival of deadly radiation. For his survival, its base must always remain in motion, which requires the achievement of a slew of micro-objectives in renewable biomes, but for the moment quite similar. In his exploration of the place, Dolski is unable to jump, but he will be able to equip himself with very useful accessories such as a grappling hook to cling to long walls, craftable from the workshop of your HQ. The harvest of organic elements and other transformable resources therefore becomes a crucial aspect of the experience. Very quickly, our adventurer must, for example, use a scanner in search of aqueous foodstuffs, leaving us a little haggard in the face of manipulations and objectives that are not always clear. The activity, as a whole, nevertheless seems sufficiently studied to imagine a crafting system which will prove to be mastered and deep, but which can, in the event of an overdose, presage a somewhat painful gameplay loop.

The Post-Moon by Duncan Jones

Back home after a first expedition where he unearths a special substance, Rapidium, Dolski will quickly be able to create his first alter to help him in his daily tasks. A starting point that we cannot help but compare to Moon, this science fiction masterpiece by Duncan Jones in which an astronaut isolated on a lunar station comes face to face with his own clone, thinking it is a hallucination. An inspiration among other brilliant cinematographic references that we can only salute, with the difference that 11 bits insists that we make the distinction between clones and alters, the latter being mainly alternative versions of Jan, i.e. products of different past choices. Each alter is destined to have its own personality and story, which will likely often plunge Dolski into a myriad of melancholy meditations. Moreover, each time he is confronted with the creation of a new version of himself, he must face a timeline, a very successful visual representation of all of his culminating choices, the latter of which can encourage the activating an alter.

The vocal performance of actor Alex Jordan – also a voice actor on the sex noises in Baldur's Gate 3, for the record – for each character is quite remarkable in this regard, his voice adopting new tones with each alter encountered, enough to reinforce their individuality. Maintaining good relationships with these fellow human beings constitutes a fundamental and very pleasant pillar of the game. This is how many dialogue choices will present themselves to you, which constantly alter the mood of your interlocutor, a misplaced remark can quickly make him anxious or even aggressive. So many interesting parameters to take into account that have a direct impact on their productivity, and not on the course of history. Because yes, the alters serve you above all as substitutes and represent sorts of specialized archetypes : Jan the technician and Jan the scientist will, for example, be able to relieve you quite quickly of some secondary tasks that are too tedious. A devilishly clever system, although we still accuse interactions that are quite poor in terms of intensitythe temptation to skip some, sometimes too long, being palpable.

What remains to be seen…

A plethora of aspects have not yet been mentioned in this extract from The Alters. Time is meant to be a particularly notable dimension of the experience, with Jan's survival akin to a race against death. But if the days pass each time our hero must take a well-deserved rest to recharge his batteries, no constraints yet seem to have a lasting impact on the gameplay, except when the radiation attacks us after dark. It's also difficult to guess if the alters have a progression system. For now, the only improvable element of the experience remains your base, which can pleasantly be enhanced with new rooms to accompany your storage warehouses, your communication room, the machinery, the bedroom or even the kitchen. It remains to be seen where to place them in this Tetris-style modular space, which is quite limited in terms of placement. In this sense, the construction aspect of the game is still very basic and we just want to see more.