The Alters: Deluxe Edition

The Alters is a highly atmospheric sci-fi character study mixed with simple but effective resource and base management that cleverly builds existential and interpersonal pressure throughout its story.

The Alters is an engrossing survival adventure that delicately balances captivating self-reflection and engaging base management

The Alters achieves something tense and new by merging strategy base-building with third-person exploration and a sci-fi story about cloning yourself. But repetition and complicated busywork mar the overall effect.

Wildly unpredictable but always enjoyable, The Alters is a masterclass in high-tension gaming.

The moral implications of cloning yourself aren't lost in all the resource and base management systems.

The Alters is 11 Bit Studios' magnum opus; a tense, thrilling, thoughtful game that makes you question what kind of person you want to be.

It can be very difficult to take these games that are focused on complex system management and add a nice layer of humanity to it all, offering a reason beyond simple efficiencies and problem-solving for people to engage, but 11 Bit Studios does it well and has once again succeeded with The Alters.

There were times I wished The Alters was a pure adventure game without any of the survival elements, but that friction is what makes it work. While the interpersonal relationships and conflicts between the Jans are the heart of the experience for me, and what I can wholeheartedly recommend, I came to appreciate the basic survival loop as a way to add more agency to all the choices I made. Like all the best sci-fi stories, The Alters will leave you with plenty of philosophical questions to chew on.

Hardcore Gamer's official review on the new sci-fi strategy game The Alters.

The Alters is a cerebral, thought-provoking, and beefy story-driven survival game, and undoubtedly 11 Bit Studios' magnum opus.