When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
Have you ever wondered what your life might look like had you walked a different path?
That’s the fundamental question upcomingXbox Game Passtitle"The Alters"is looking to explore.
Think you can survive on a planet in a triple binary star system blanketed with radiation and molten metal oceans?
In The Alters, you play as Jan Dolski in a race against sunlight itself.
Crash-landed on a remote and hostile planet, Jan’s entire crew didn’t survive the fall.
Set on a hostile and dangerous planet, Jan Dolski finds himself at the mercy of cosmic elements.
Think you can survive on a planet in a triple binary star system blanketed with radiation and molten metal oceans?
Because The Alters is pure Unreal Engine sci-fi cinema.
From the opening, The Alters makes its mark as something special.
Jan Dolski wakes up in his escape pod, following a space ship disaster.
Think you can survive on a planet in a triple binary star system blanketed with radiation and molten metal oceans?
This is not a planet where life could realistically survive.
Yet, that’s your job here.
The soundtrack is also suitably immense, encapsulating sci-fi blockbuster majesty with a twinge of creeping paranoia.
The habitat overview will be familiar to Fallout Shelter players.
It’s here where things start to get truly weird.
that you realize you’re going to need a full crew.
Well, not really, but sort of.
The tree of life screen maps out Jan’s major life-branching moments, allowing you to choose which “version” of Jan to re-create next as the needs arise.
Although these aren’t exactly clones, they’reAlters, and we get the game’s namesake here.
It’s an absolute mindfuck, to coin a phrase.
Imagine waking up in another reality.
You’re still you.
It’s no longer your life.
You’re not the true “you” in this reality.
Indeed, The Alters might be a survival game with the trappings therein.
Find a version of Jan in his quantum tree of life that went to university to study botany.
Find one that went to college for that.
The problem is, each life path comes with its triumphs and its failings.
He wasn’t happy about it.
Indeed, Jan’s Alters are often … less-than-sane, potentially.
In this reality, Jan is divorced, and he perhaps didn’t reach his full potential.
The different Jans often reminisce about memories they actually do share.
A common theme is love for Jan’s ailing mother, and rejection of a disappointing father.
Some might even be jealous.
The writing team show an incredible proficiency for self-awareness and clever character writing.
The Alters forces you to be introspective.
Will all of Jan’s Alters stay on friendly terms?
What if you manage their emotions poorly?
How much will you compromise and mediate?
Who will need to be sacrificed for the wider group?
Does Jan deserve to survive more than the others, since this ishisreality?
I also played guitar and front-manned a band.
One of my songs was even played during Blizzcon at their original World of Warcraft song contest event.
I lacked the drive to learn and improve my guitar playing, though.
What if I had started at a younger age?
The series of events that led me to this article are wild and erratic.
I never wanted to, nor planned to be a professional writer.
Somehow, the casual blogging led me here, to this very moment, ten years later.
What events led you here, to reading this sentence?
The Alters is a game about “what if?”
Take control of Jan Dolski in an impossible situation.
