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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

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Previews:​

Game Informer

After spending over two hours with The Alters, 11 Bit Studios' immersive survival with a multiversal twist has skyrocketed up my most-anticipated list. I can't wait to see how Jan's story plays out when The Alters arrives on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC later this year.

IGN

It’s a cross-celestial blend of movies Moon and The Martian with dashes of Death Stranding’s aesthetic thrown into the mix that makes for an intriguing proposition. But while The Alters appears to be ticking many good boxes story-wise, I am wary of the moment-to-moment gameplay wearing thin over time if it doesn’t develop significantly past these first handful of hours. I am looking forward to seeing more, though, and finding out where the mystery leads.

The Gamer

I’m not a Death Stranding fan, so I expected this sort of thing to bore me, but the environments are so otherworldly that I couldn’t help but look forward to leaving my base. This is where The Alters’ influences become apparent, as I was immediately reminded of Interstellar and Annihilation. The planet looks almost like ours, but has just enough strangeness to feel frightening.

I’m not fully convinced by The Alters yet. Some of the writing is a little lacklustre, and the facial animations of the characters aren’t very convincing yet. I can’t help but feel that the emotional turmoil of these Alters would be more meaningful if I saw it on their faces instead of in bubbles over their heads that indicate how their feelings are changing. But conceptually, there’s a lot of promise here, with a compelling sense of mystery at the game’s core and strong mechanics that left me sorry to put it down.

Screen Rant

Don’t call The Alters a “game about clones,” because that’s selling it short. The new upcoming release by 11 Bit Studios presents a fresh-feeling and mesmerizing sci-fi adventure, complete with top-notch atmospheric visuals and a magnificent soundtrack that could end up on best-of lists. While certain individual components of The Alters will seem immediately familiar – there's a little The Sims, Duncan Jones’s Moon, maybe a touch of Observation – it's safe to say that they've never been merged together like this before, or leveraged to tell a story that veers between shuffling discomfort, thrilling exploration, and emotional candor.

Game Rant

The Alters is different, to say the least, because of how it pulls together and uniquely combines otherwise common gameplay elements. This ranges from common Sci-Fi tropes, intensive management, and survival gameplay to free exploration, resource gathering, and social simulation gameplay. At a glance, The Alters' story and gameplay approach appear so far outside the box that it's hard to imagine this all working together seamlessly, but it does just that.

TechRaptor

I thoroughly enjoyed The Alters as someone who enjoys a moderate amount of resource balancing and gets stuck into a good story.

The DNA of Frostpunk and This War of Mine is very present but it feels like The Alters is being set up as a more casual entry into the rest of what 11Bit has to offer. If those elements tickle your fancy then 11Bit already has the next game for you to try.

After getting only a few hours on the game I was left wanting more, I want to know how much deeper the mechanics go as well as what's going on with the mysterious corporation behind Project Dolly.

PCGamesN

The Alters is an emotional sci-fi game. The Alters is a third-person survival game. The Alters is… a narrative adventure game? It’s a lot of things, apparently, and playing it for myself I can see why that perspective changes depending on who you speak to. The Alters means different things to different people.

While the generic survival aspect of The Altars doesn’t strike a chord with me, whatever happens inside the base absolutely does. It’s a fascinating experiment in self, and I want to see how Jan copes. I just hope it doesn’t force me to take a look at myself. That would be terrible.

 

[Punished Miku]

Loved this trailer. Definitely excited for this one.

 

[Bartski]

screams finally something fresh

 

[Danjin44]

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

 

[Punished Miku]

I think you won this round

 

[Kuranghi]

This looks super amazing, I'm excited for it.

 

[GHG]

Looks like a really interesting concept.

Hopefully they deliver.

 

[jshackles]

Been waiting for this, love a good experimental Sci-Fi game. Hope it delivers.

 

[IAmRei]

My not cup of tea, but looks interesting

 

[Shubh_C63]

The game has playable demo during Steam's Next Fest and a survey after it. Good game, good graphics.

 

[ultrazilla]

Super impressed with the demo. My brother Solarstrike and I were on Discord while we both played through it. One of the best demos from the Steam Fest.
Impressive Unreal Engine 5 showing here with tons of graphic options, controls are good(could use a few tweaks on character speed in the base/hub) music is good,
ambience is next level. Story seems very cool. Wishlisted

 

[Bartski]

Go check out the demo. Liked it a lot. It ends way before all systems really have a chance to develop but I have a very good feeling about this. Not sure about the narrative side just yet but it's finally something that feels original and not an iteration of games we've played before - maybe except for this studio's previous stuff and the base management race against the clock part of it. I'll be picking this up eventually when it launches on console.