The Alters

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This is a story about Jan Dolski - a man forced to clone himself into various different alters in order to survive. The bulk of the game is that of a base building/survival/crafting game with a strong storytelling hook: each clone comes from a moment in Jan's life when he could've chosen something different. This is visualized through the quantum computer which allows you to view the major moments of not only your life but that of your alters which by far feels like the most unique element of this game. The actual gameplay itself has some addicting skill trees to work through but even on the hardest difficulty by the last act the challenge is trivial. There's also this concept of removing anomalies that is extremely overused and while removing them is helpful due to how it affects the in-game economy the process becomes an annoyance as the game progresses. That being said the character work here is extremely well done with each alter having their challenges to work through not only coming to terms with surviving on this planet but their existence and how their imagined lifepath is reflected. There's also some other strong characters (in particular Lucas) but, and I'm assuming this was a budgetary decision, you never see their faces in conversation other than a basic portrait. That being said there's definitely still a strong story here even if the ending feels a bit moot due to a rather simple epilogue and the lack of witnessing the actual result in any meaningful way (you make some meaningful choices but you don't get to witness them play out). Overall though I really enjoyed this experience. I don't know if I'll go back for the other alters I didn't choose or any alternative endings anytime soon but this was worth playing.

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First game in many years that I started and finished inside of about a week. Really enjoyed this one. Great premise. Great mechanics to back it up. Surprising how well it works even though it’s a mashup of so many very different game styles. The moment to moment writing was often not very good, but the backstories in the branching paths you choose from were good, and some of the quieter emotional moments were good. Voice acting was just fine.

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