A rolling space base, a sun that wants you dead, and a crew made from your own “what‑ifs.” The Alters turns survival into a therapy session you can’t pause—and it’s one of 2025’s most memorable games.
If you’ve ever stared out a window wondering how life would look had you taken that other job, stayed in school, or made that call… The Alters weaponizes that feeling. 11 bit studios—the minds behind This War of Mine and Frostpunk—returns with a survival game where your only crewmates are alternate versions of yourself. You play Jan Dolski, a stranded miner who drives a massive wheel‑shaped base across a hostile planet to outrun deadly sunrise, harvesting a mysterious element called Rapidium to create “Alters” in a cloning chamber ominously dubbed the Womb. It’s a premise that sounds wild and plays even better.
The setup: a mobile haven and a bad relationship with the sun
Your home is a circular, mobile base—picture a sci‑fi hamster wheel bristling with modules—that trundles across the planet to avoid lethal radiation. Inside, you expand workshops, research labs, farms, and bunks; outside, you sprint into alien valleys for minerals before dawn roasts you. When the to‑do list outgrows your two hands (it will), you “branch” Jan’s life at pivotal decisions to summon specialist selves: Jan the Botanist, Jan the Miner, Jan the Scientist, and so on. They’re not faceless clones; they’re fully formed people shaped by the roads you didn’t take.
How it plays: pressure cooker management, on foot and on wheels
Moment to moment, The Alters braids three loops: third‑person excursions for resources, base‑building and research, and crew management. The planet throws hazards—anomalies to purge, storms to plan around—while your base needs fuel, filters, power, and parts to keep rolling. Time is your scarcest resource; you’ll often choose which important task to fail gracefully today so you can succeed tomorrow. That friction is the point, and when it clicks, the loop is magnetic.
The heart of it: a cast of… you
Create an Alter and you don’t just get a skill; you inherit a backstory and baggage. Jan who stayed in school bristles at Jan who didn’t. The one who took the fast‑money job might resent the idealist. These people need food, rest, and—this is the kicker—emotional attention. Neglect them and tensions flare; manage them and you get a choir of competence and small, human moments. The game occasionally stages startling scenes (a wake for a lab subject, hard ethical calls about who gets saved) that land precisely because the cast is you. Credit to actor Alex Jordan, who voices every Jan with nuance after an eye‑watering 400+ hours in the booth; it’s a one‑man ensemble that carries the drama.
The tone: existential, but not precious
11 bit’s best trick is marrying heady themes to tactile play. The Alters turns identity, regret, and labor into systems you can poke—less a lecture, more a stress test. It even becomes, unexpectedly, a parable about emotional labor: keeping all these dependent selves fed, safe, and seen feels like parenting, in ways that are both funny and uncomfortably real.
The rules of engagement (and what you can’t do)
If your first question is, “Can I romance my clones?” the developers beat you to it with a firm, meme‑flavored “no.” This isn’t Mass Effect; the relationships are fraught, but familial and philosophical rather than flirty. It’s a good guardrail that keeps the narrative pointed at accountability rather than novelty.
The pacing: demanding, sometimes punishing, mostly rewarding
Expect to live by timers and triage. A day’s plan collapses because a filter breaks; a research chain slips because someone skipped lunch; the wheel can’t move until you build one more line of pylons. You’ll mutter “just one more day” and then realize you’ve played three. By Acts 2 and 3, the travel‑research‑maintain cadence can flatten into repetition, and the final act in particular drags for some players, but the landing sticks thanks to strong character payoffs.
How long is it?
A focused run sits around 18–20 hours, with 25-ish if you’re thorough; chasing every Alter arc or alternate outcome pushes well beyond that. It feels replayable—both because you can’t see every Alter’s story in one go and because the game is built around “what if I’d prioritized differently?”
Craft and performance: solid art, some bumps under the hood
Visually, the game’s “rolling ark” and storm‑scoured biomes look striking, and Unreal Engine 5 gives the materials a convincing sheen. On PC, shader pre‑compilation helps avoid the typical UE hitching, and performance can be excellent—though not universally. Some reviewers and players report stutters, crashes, and a few progress‑blocking bugs, especially around launch. My read after surveying the community and tech coverage: most rigs are fine, some see chug, and a small minority get snarled by nasty save issues—enough to flag, not enough to skip. Patches since release have improved things, but if you’re allergic to instability, Game Pass is a painless first stop.
The soundtrack and VO: one voice, many lives
Piotr Musiał’s score hums with melancholy momentum, but it’s the VO that steals scenes. Again, Alex Jordan’s performance—eleven different Jans without sliding into cartoonish caricature—does a ton of heavy lifting, including a surprisingly tender in‑universe ballad. It’s an impressive “one man band” feat that elevates conversations from boxes of text to miniature dramas.
The meta story: great reviews, and a controversy worth noting
Critically, The Alters landed strong: an 85 on Metacritic for PC and an OpenCritic “Mighty” average around 86 with over 90% of critics recommending it. That’s consensus‑good across the board, with standout praise from PC Gamer (90) and a warm review at GameSpot calling it an engrossing balancing act of self‑reflection and base management.
The blemish? Post‑launch, players spotted leftover AI prompts in certain localized text and background assets. 11 bit acknowledged limited, placeholder use of generative AI for translations and temp flavor text that wasn’t fully scrubbed before release and apologized for not disclosing it—a misstep given Steam’s disclosure rules. The studio says the intent was human‑authored final content; the optics, understandably, frustrated some fans. It didn’t sink the game, but transparency matters, and the team has owned it.
The bottom line
The Alters is the rare survival game that makes you sweat both the supply chain and your soul. Its best hours are an exquisite, anxious juggle where every minute and conversation matters. The final stretch can overstay and a few technical hiccups persist, but the core loop—plan, push, reflect—sings. If you like 11 bit’s brand of moral calculus, or you enjoy management sims with teeth, this is an easy recommendation; if timers and micro‑management give you hives, it may feel like working two jobs. Either way, it’s a game you’ll think about long after your Jans roll off into the sunrise.
Should you buy it, and where to play?
It’s out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, priced at $34.99 on PC with day‑one availability on PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (but not the lower‑tier Standard/Core libraries). That’s a fair tag for a 20‑ish‑hour narrative survival trip, and Game Pass makes sampling painless.
Verdict (TL;DR)
Play it if… you want a nerve‑jangling survival sim where the best upgrade is honest self‑reflection, and the best crewmate is… also you.
Skip it if… you loathe timers, can’t stand routine maintenance, or need a purely zen base‑builder.
Score: A tense, thoughtful 8.5 out of 10 in our hearts.
