"Some say cloning is playing God, but I say its just playing with myself."
-Thomas Prime, (currently hiding from the others)

You open your eyes as Jan Dolski, an ordinary worker, who gets stranded on a world where the sun climbs higher every second, ready to burn you alive if you stop moving. The crew is dead and your only chance of survival is using the Altering Machine, to create alternate versions of yourself and have a crew of you. The machine doesnt make a plain biological duplicate of Jan. Instead, it digs into his past choices and rewinds the tape of his life. Each time you use it, you pick a moment where Jan could have chosen differently (career, relationships, habits, etc), and the machine spits out a fully grown clone who lived that alternate life path.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3559531875

The survival mechanics are simple enough that anyone can pick them up, even if youve never touched the genre before. Collecting resources, upgrading modules, fixing parts of the ship and moving forward all feels very natural. What makes the game stand out to me, is the story that you share with your Alters. There are surprisingly warm or emotional moments and the dialogue/story is a big part of the experience. But this is also a reason why this game might not be for everyone. The dialogue length might test your patience if you prefer faster pacing. This game doesn't have non stop action.

For Jan, cloning is literally his only shot at surviving. But every time he makes a new Alter, it means pulling a whole new 'person' into this nightmare with him. That eats at him. For Jan there is nothing cool about it, its necessary, it's survival. But also self-therapy, or self-torment, depending on the Alter. Kinda made me wonder about the idea of cloning a crew of myself. But then who could actually handle even two of me? It's a good thing my survival wouldn't depend on making copies of myself, half the time I'd be too busy double-stacking myself to fix the damn base. Ahm..

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3558888597

Highly recommended! The Alters is a survival game wrapped in a personal story about identity, about regret and what it means to live with yourself (literally). If you like story driven survival this one is for you. I'd even go so far as to say it's worth having more than one of you play it. （。々°）

Good game with fun exploration and story bogged down by malicious hidden timegates (in-game time) during progression while putting you on a death timer that forces you to rush every objective story constantly or risk have an objectively bricked save you need to savescum/roll back.

it's a resource management and survival game that's heavy on the plot - and that plot is very dependent on player choices.

While some negative reviews called out the Alters (in game characters) as being overly hard to please I didn't find this to be the case. You need to read their reactions and understand what responses will annoy them. You also need to provide them some creature comforts. While these compete for resources with things needed for immediate survival, I didn't find it hard to provide both - you just have to make good decisions about prioritization.

Some other reviews have called out the time pressure. Again, I didn't find it too bad. It definitely make you focus and make tradeoffs but it never felt particularly punitive. Admittedly this was on Normal difficulty.

Overall, if you're a fan of the more challenging aspects of the genre and aren't looking for a cozier experience that you can relax into and take your time with, you won't be disappointed.

it's a good game

10/10 Fantastic game.
Cast:
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan
Jan Dolski - Alex Jordan

Far too many rock formations to clear from cliffs.
Far too many radiated energy-fluxes.

Bugs that cause problems when placing Gravity Sensors atop the canyons.
That stuff is just awful. How much rock-climbing in comparison to energy resources?'

Then after all that. Building the damn thing, climbing to the top,
seeing the white outlining for the placement of the Gravity Sensor.

A top a canyon, where placing it
MAIN mission critical is bugged.
Glitched.
Terrible.

Too many Anomalies in the way.
A few would be fine, but this is more crowded than a german bath house.


Far too little time to accomplish said objective.
Game would be great if we had more time.

Instead this is a ♥♥♥♥ game.

Very unique story and great complimenting survival game mechanics... some days go quite sluggish but then I remember how Ijon Tichy in Stanislaw Lem's excellent novella "The Seventh Voyage" manages to save and stop arguing with himself ;) Pretty sure the developers well aware of this excellent story which inspired their game amongst others. I've only just finished Act2 but this is a very solid survival choose your own adventure, even if the writing is sloppy sometimes Like when its forced to choose between two solutions and one is not really solidly sounded why it would be the better choice and its just a plot device to channel the rebellion either way instead of coming up with something more profound and better arguments why would some Alters dislike what you've chosen

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I didnt think they made games this well written anymore

Just finished it, amazing game, really great hard SciFi Story with great graphics and sound design, many cool twists and interesting mechanics.

Such an easy recommendation. Took 25 hours to finish, but man, what a unique, immersive 25 hours they were. And you WILL likely want to replay at least the last 1/3, if not the entire thing again, so really it's 32-33 hours or more. I was glued to the screen for my entire first playthrough.

If you like story-driven games and sci-fi, games that aren't just hella enjoyable but also make you think about life, play this. Those Polish studios sure know how to write gritty stories for adults, full of depth and realness.