The Alters Review A Thoughtful Meditation on Identity, Regret, and the Roads Not Taken
Let’s get something out of the way: I’m not going to spend much time talking about the gameplay or graphics of The Alters. Both are excellent—slick, polished, immersive, and mechanically sound. But to focus on those would miss the point. What lingers after the credits roll isn’t how well it plays or how good it looks, but how deeply it speaks. This is a game that hits on a more personal frequency, speaking not to the player’s skill, but to their soul. It’s not about surviving a planet—it’s about surviving yourself.
It’s not about surviving a planet—it’s about surviving yourself.
Beauty in Function: The Presentation of Survival
That said, it would be a disservice not to acknowledge just how well The Alters plays and looks. The gameplay strikes a careful balance between resource management and narrative interaction, never letting one overpower the other. It’s a survival sim at its core, but every system feels narratively justified—every broken module or dwindling resource mirrors Jan’s inner state. The interface is clean but tactile, inviting you to inhabit the machinery of your desperate hope. And the visuals—hauntingly beautiful. The alien planet is both stark and poetic, bathed in long shadows and surreal light. Interiors are claustrophobic but meticulously crafted, each corridor echoing with mechanical hums and emotional weight. It’s not just atmospheric—it’s symbolic. The world you move through feels like a reflection of the fractured self: desolate, compartmentalized, and constantly in need of repair.
A Sci-Fi Premise with a Human Soul
You play as Jan Dolski, a lone builder stranded on a desolate, sun-scorched planet. Survival, at first, appears to be the goal—maintain life support, repair systems, and keep moving. But the game’s true core lies in its central mechanic: The Alters. Using experimental technology, Jan creates alternate versions of himself, each drawn from the forks in his past—what if he had picked research instead of a corporate job? What if he’d run away from home? What if he hadn’t left that one relationship and gone with his ex-wife to a different country?
Each “Alter” is a manifestation of a life not lived, a tangible embodiment of Robert Frost’s proverbial “road not taken.” These aren’t mere clones—they are fully-formed individuals with their own memories, opinions, desires, and, crucially, resentments. They are Jan, but not this Jan. And they remember everything he chose to forget.
They are Jan, but not this Jan. And they remember everything he chose to forget.
A Philosophical Spiral: The Self as a Multitude
The philosophical richness of The Alters cannot be overstated. Its premise taps into existentialism, particularly Sartre’s notion of bad faith—the idea that we lie to ourselves to avoid the responsibility of freedom. Each Alter is a reckoning with Jan’s choices. There is no room for self-deception here. Did he make the “right” choices? What even is the right choice in a world where every option carries both opportunity and loss?
The game also channels Derek Parfit’s theories of personal identity—the idea that identity is not fixed but fluid, defined more by psychological continuity than any immutable self. As Jan interacts with these alternate selves, the lines blur: Is he still “Jan” if so many of his other selves claim equal validity?
And beneath it all lies a quiet invocation of Kierkegaard: life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward. The Alters forces you to look back—not in nostalgia, but in confrontation.
And beneath it all lies a quiet invocation of Kierkegaard: life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward. The Alters forces you to look back—not in nostalgia, but in confrontation.
Echoes from Other Universes: A Web of Familiar Parallels
The Alters evokes powerful echoes from across media. There are shades of Black Mirror—particularly the episode “White Christmas”—in the ethical complexity of duplicating consciousness. It mirrors the emotional ache of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where memory and identity intermingle with longing and regret. And it carries the narrative DNA of The Man from Earth, that haunting tale of a man who outlives his own identities.
Gamers will recognize its kindred spirit in Soma, BioShock Infinite, and The Talos Principle—all games that ask players not just to solve puzzles, but to feel the consequences of those puzzles. Like Disco Elysium, The Alters turns the player’s internal monologue into gameplay, making your mind itself a battleground.
And this is where The Alters stabs you deepest: it doesn’t punish you for making the wrong choices—it punishes you for realizing that every choice is a trade-off. You didn’t fail by choosing one path. You just lost all the others.
The Emotional Landscape: Where Survival Meets Soul
But what truly elevates The Alters is not just its philosophical scaffolding. It’s the human moments. Sitting across from an Alter who chose love over career, and seeing the contempt in his eyes. Watching another version of yourself break down because he remembers a family you chose to forget. Realizing that in creating others to help you survive, you’ve resurrected all the versions of yourself you tried to bury.
And this is where The Alters stabs you deepest: it doesn’t punish you for making the wrong choices—it punishes you for realizing that every choice is a trade-off. You didn’t fail by choosing one path. You just lost all the others.
That is the essential truth of the game: we are all walking graveyards of the people we might have been. And yet, we go on.
That is the essential truth of the game: we are all walking graveyards of the people we might have been. And yet, we go on.
Final Thoughts: A Game that Lives in You
The Alters isn’t a game you finish. It’s a game you carry. It’s not about branching narratives—it’s about converging selves. It reminds us that survival isn’t just about keeping your body alive, but about reconciling your soul with its own echoes.
In a medium often obsessed with power fantasies and clear victories, The Alters dares to offer ambiguity, to linger in the bittersweet. It’s a quiet triumph—a testament to the idea that the most meaningful journeys aren’t those where you conquer the world, but where you make peace with the versions of yourself you never got to be.
Developer: 11 Bit Studios
Country of Origin: Poland
Publisher: 11 Bit Studios
Release Date: June 12, 2025 (PC, PS5, XBox)
The PS5 version of the game was played for this review of The Alters.
Thank you for reading our review of The Alters.
Playing the game already? Check out our walkthrough of the game!
For more interesting articles about indie games, be sure to check out the links below.
- Into Indie Games Homepage
- to a T Walkthrough
- The Precinct Review
- Preview: Elroy and the Aliens – Return to 1993 in this Cosmic Adventure
- Ruffy and the Riverside Walkthrough – The Hunt for the Adventure Stars
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