The Alters
See more of The Alters in the upcoming title with some new gameplay that shows the base-building we will have to do with The Alters
If you are like me and have been waiting to see what The Alters is going to offer up for gameplay, then kick back and get ready. It looks as if 11 Bit Studios is ready to share that look with us all while making us wonder just a bit more about how the story is going to play out. Maybe I missed it before too, but I did not think that The Alters was going to be just a base-building game on the PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Yet here we are and here we go with a look at just how the various Jans out there are going to be melding together in some form or fashion. That is another part of the core to it all, unless that is a rug that is going to get pulled out from under us too…
As you will be able to see here in The Alters, we are going to have a core gameplay loop that looks and feels a bit like a title like Fallout Shelter were. Although, this one looks like it will be an above-ground base we will be expanding on. That and we will be piloting around the various Jans in the game to get everything done. A good choice as it seems like none of them are keen on each other and all of the Alters here have a bit of self-hatred in the mix. This makes me feel like we are going to see one of them sabotage the whole base at some point in the story just to make things a bit rougher for us all to survive. Have a look and see just what we are now working with when the game drops in 2024.
The Alters — All By Myselves
11 Bit Studios unveiled a gripping new trailer for The Alters, their enigmatic sci-fi adventure, based on an all-new original IP. The trailer offers a first look at gameplay and introduces the protagonist Jan: a simple worker confronted by insurmountable odds, stranded alone on a distant planet. Or rather, many Jans — alternate versions of our protagonist with their own varied life paths — making them similar yet different all at the same time. Building relationships amongst the various Jans will be crucial to their collective survival.
Forged in the spirit of meaningful entertainment, The Alters is a base-building survival game driven by life-defining choices and exploring the diverse paths one could take. The inhospitable planet where Jan crash-landed is turning toward a massive sun, causing radiation levels to soar; in this desperate race against time, Jan must harness local Rapidium crystals to create his many versions: the “Alters”.
Set within an ever-moving mobile base, both teamwork and building a wide range of expertise are indispensable for survival. By selecting diverging paths for the other Jans during the alteration process, they acquire distinct skill sets. They become invaluable, not only for maintaining the base, but also for tasks like cooking, crafting tools for surface exploration, and gathering essential resources.
However, the Alters are more than mere resources. They are sentient beings with their own emotions, problems, goals, and sometimes, existential doubts about their purpose. Despite their differences, their collective goal is to escape, echoing Jan’s determination to survive: I’ll just do it all by myselves.
The Alters is coming to PC and current-gen consoles in 2024.
I am a little taken back by this for The Alters yet still very interested. The premise had me hooked from before with each new "clone" having a drastically different life path they were on before being pulled in. Now it feels like a gimmick to explain how we have so many helpers in the base as we flesh that all out for the reasons we will be given. Hopefully, we will be able to hop between all of the Jans in the game with ease, at least if we are being tasked to do all of the actions that are normally automated in games like this. I am very interested to see how The Alters moves forward still, but still working on the fact of the type of game it turned out to be here.
Did you know that The Alters was going to be a base-building title from the start or did you think it was going to be a different kind of game? Will the base take a back seat to the intriguing story that the team seems to be writing here or will it be used to explain how we have so many in the world that can do all the various jobs? Will we see one of them fully turn on the crew in the story or will it be about them all getting together to build the best base they can ever build out there? Feel free to share your thoughts and discussion in the comment section below. There is more for The Alters, for sure, and we will share all of that here as best as we can. Please keep on checking back for all of those updates and much more.
