One of the best things about video games is anything that can be imagined can likely be made "real" in some way, and The Alters pushes the envelope when it comes to creatively weaving together ideas and video game mechanics. From the development studio of Frostpunk and This War of Mine, The Alters is described as a game about life-changing moments, as players must bring their Alters (variants from a different universe) aboard their ship, which crash-landed on a distant planet. Using their skills to save themselves, players must manage their alters' personalities, explore the surface of the crashed planet, and make it to safety before the sun rises, destroying everything, in ten days.

Game ZXC recently attended a brief preview of The Alters, hosted by lead designer Rafal Wlosek and game designer Marcin Lazowski. During the demonstration, we got a pretty good look at its base-building mechanics, social elements with the alters, exploration, and so forth, as well as how each mechanic loops and ties into the next.

In The Alters, players step into the shoes of Jan Dolski, who survives a crash landing on a distant planet. He was sent there on a mission to find Rapidium, a rare resource that accelerates the growth of things such as food. To survive the coming sunrise, he creates alters of himself to help manage resources, get the ship there, and so forth. All the while, he is forced to face and communicate with these versions of himself who made different choices—sometimes better, sometimes worse. Of course, these alters are a big focus for the story, but what's great is that there's no way to see them all in one playthrough, pushing tons of replay value.

Each Alter comes from Jan's Tree of Life, which highlights various key decisions that can yield different alters. Each of these key moments, the devs tell us, was designed to be relatable, as Jan's life is meant to resemble the common man. There are no situations such as defusing a bomb, for example, but whether someone stayed in their hometown, took a certain job or opportunity, got married, stayed together or divorced, and so forth. They are also created in ways to create interesting interactions with one another, as Jan's Miner alter is the polar opposite of his Scientist alter, for one example. The time limit of the sunrise also ensures players can't make them all, and so they must create those they deem helpful or interesting.

During our preview session, we saw a handful of the alters players can make, and players indeed make them. While it was not explained in full, players will use Rapidium and other resources to create a body and mind from the Tree of Life, bringing them into this timeline. This leads to some interesting scenarios, as the Jan Miner in his timeline was missing his arm. The act of us giving him a new body and a new arm led to a sort of phantom pain, which spurred his painkiller addiction. Players can either stop him in his tracks or enable him, with the choice coming up time and again, until he eventually cuts his arm off. The Jan Scientist was very mission-oriented and liked it when it was going well, but he was not happy with any decisions that detracted from it. And another one we were making, Jan Botanist, made a choice to move with his wife and retain the relationship, while the main Jan had forced his wife to stay home, leading to their divorce.

Players interact with their Alters mainly through dialogue, which will also showcase their emotions and thoughts in color schemes in the background. Overall, this social sim element of The Alters is an interesting one because they are all the same person but aren't. Their needs also supplement The Alter's base-building mechanics, which when seen from the overview screen, appears to operate a lot like Fallout Shelter. As one would expect, players will require certain rooms for resting, certain activities, and so forth, using base modules and such to maintain available space.

To support the story, surviving the sunrise, building the base, and creating Alters, players are able to explore the barren planet they are on. In a way, the traversal reminded us a lot of Death Stranding's gameplay, though there's no package balancing involved. Instead, players are to travel around the planet, taking note of where resources are, extracting them by placing mines and extractors when necessary, and using those resources to generate other things or compile resources to clear the way for the ship.

For example, the key exploration block we saw in The Alters' preview was a lava river. Players have to find a way forward, all while surviving heavily radiated areas, things like Magnetic Storms, and so forth. There are no aliens or anything for players to fight, notably, because the planet is desolate and the sun deadly.

In this way, the exploration, base building, and alter social gameplay all add up to common elements in video games, but they are strung together in uniquely creative ways. It remains to be seen how well The Alters makes its landing when it releases in H1 2024, but it's an exciting prospect, with no cap on its creativity.

The Alters is in development.