I recently completed The Alters after about 24 hours of gameplay via Xbox Game Pass. Overall, I found the experience to be unexpectedly poignant and also refreshing.

The general premise of the game is that you are Jan Dolski, sole survivor of a crash landing on a hostile planet. Getting your bearings, you discover that while the mobile expedition base is intact, there is no realistic way you can manage all of its components by yourself and still escape a scorching sun just over the horizon. In the midst of despair, you find Rapidium, the MacGuffin mineral that precipitated the expedition in the first place. With Rapidium’s special properties – plus a Quantum Computer and Mind Records – you are able to clone yourself and selectively modify the clone’s memories such that they made different choices at pivotal moments in your past, thereby specializing in different fields (such as Scientist, Refiner, Doctor, etc). You must then balance exploration for resources, base management, and keeping your surly other selves happy long enough to (all?) get rescued.

The first kind of obstacle I encountered with the game… was its very premise. I actually felt like the various Jans getting physically pulled from other dimensions would have been more believable. After all, you do actually encounter numerous “anomalies” as enemies to fight or flee from on the alien world you are stranded on. But the game does a good job of exploring multiple facets of its own seemingly-shaky premise, so if that is a potential hang-up, well, please dial again.

The only other sort of criticism I have with the game is the sort of stark shift in gameplay that happens within each Act. At the beginning of each section, you are typically left dangerously low on supplies in the midst of an unknown landscape, knowing that the game-ending sun with be coming up behind you after an unknown amount of days. This part feels exciting and strategic, as you attempt to balance securing resource locations with longer scouting trips. Once the map has been filled out though, you wind up ending yours days within 5 minutes by holding down a button at a mining drill (which fast-forwards time) before clocking out. At one point, I started to avoid leaving a specific Act so I could “farm” research unlocks and add the maximum number of sections to my mobile base. The difference between that and how I felt immediately after getting to the next Act was enormous. I just wish the ebbs and flows were more uniform, ya know?

Of course, I would be remiss to not mention the Alters themselves. While you are out and about (or even farming resources), the Alters will get into certain moods and come to you with requests that might require the diversion of resources. It is during these times that you learn more about your alternative paths and what could have been. This sort of thing could easily have devolved into some on-the-nose proselytizing, but… it doesn’t. None of your other selves really have fairy tale lives, and in spite of diverging several possibly ways, all end up choosing to participate in Project Dolly in the end. Was that narrative convenience? The constraints of the Quantum Computer in altering the Mind Records of the clones? Or is it a broader commentary on the choices you make in life and how you must seek meaning in them even if you end up in the same place?

Overall, I would consider The Alters to be a top-tier Game Pass game. There is technically some replayability as you cannot choose all of the available Alters within a single play-through. Additionally, there are higher difficulties that probably make the second half of each Act more exciting from a resource juggling perspective. Regardless, hats off to the devs for making an engaging game, and also releasing it for $35 MSRP.