The Alters Hands-On Preview – “What If?”

The Alters is a video game developed and published by 11 bit studios. A large part of this team also created the outstanding This War of Mine. That is the extent of what I knew about The Alters, going into my time recently spent in Warsaw with the studio, and it was honestly all I needed to know. From the Anomaly games to This War of Mine and Frostpunk, 11 Bit Studios is a developer I trust (also as a publisher, following titles like Moonlighter, Children of Morta and The Invincible), so my recent hands-on time with The Alters and the story mode of Frostpunk 2 (preview of the earlier beta here) offered an opportunity to see if that trust would remain after an early look.

The Frostpunk 2 coverage will be in a few days, so I won't say more than my trust remains unsullied. Speaking solely about The Alters, from a game I knew nothing about except what was mentioned above and the nice amount of pink on show in the trailer, I'm now waiting for it to release because I want to play more.

Related Story The Alters Q&A – Creating a Game About the Roads Not Taken

So, what is The Alters? From what I've seen and been told, the best way I can describe it is that it's a story-driven third-person adventure game with survival elements and base-building mechanics. The theme of the game is the question the title of this preview asks: "What if?" What if you had decided to become a fluffer instead of a politician - Would you be happier with your life and feel less dirty? What if you were less careful when burying the corpse of your latest Tinder date? These are essential questions we all face in life and those that Jan Dolski will face.

Jan Dolski, voiced multiple times by Alex Jordan (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, Dragons Dogma 2, Final Fantasy XVI, Troy: A Total War Saga, Blasphemous, and many more), is stranded on an alien planet and is all by himself. He needs others to survive, so he will create alternate versions of himself where the "What if?" question is directly altered. The