What you need to know
- 11 bit studios shared the first gameplay reveal trailer for The Alters as part of the Xbox Partner Preview event today.
- The trailer shows a look at Jan Dolski's quest to survive and escape a distant planet while stranded on a mobile base without the necessary team to run it.
- The Alters will be releasing later this year and coming to Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass on day one.
Polish indie developer and publisher, 11 bit studios, continues to show off. The firm officially gave players their first look at gameplay for the upcoming sci-fi adventure game The Alters during today's Xbox Partner Preview showcase for March. In addition to the brand-new gameplay trailer, 11 bit studios also announced that The Alters will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on both consoles and PC when it launches later this year.
The Alters first showed up with a teaser trailer last year during the summer PC Game Show event, with the studio continuing to dole out teases every few months. The game is a philosophical sci-fi adventure centered around Jan Dolski. Jan finds himself stranded on a distant planet with few resources that is orbiting a lethal, scorching star. Thankfully, he's got the entirety of a cutting-edge space station at his disposal. The downside? The station requires a staff of well-trained operators, and Jan is alone.
Well, kind of.
The discovery of a unique resource dubbed Rapidium leads to Jan having the ability to duplicate himself, but doing so requires him to revisit pivotal decisions from his past. These critical junctions allow Jan to explore the "what-ifs" of his life by creating an alternative version of himself who made a different choice during those decision points. The Alters are not just perfect duplicates of Jan, however. Each has its own set of emotions, quirks, qualms, and motivations stemming from their surroundings and life choices.
Jan's alters are all sentient beings with unique skill sets and goals, but ultimately they all share a common goal: to survive and escape. They'll have to work together as a team and utilize their strengths, but that doesn't mean they won't occasionally succumb to their whims and devolve into chaos.
The Alters is a unique social survival game from the creators of This War of Mine, and you can expect similarly deep, often harrowing moral decisions. Each 'Alter' represents an alternative reality version of Jan, cloned and designed around the predictions of a supercomputer. If you need a version of Jan that with engineering prowess, for example, the computer clones a version of Jan complete with synthetic memories of a timeline that may (or may not) exist. That engineering, nerdy version of Jan might have psychological problems, however, and navigating the way each "version" of Jan interacts with one another can create cascading problems. This War of Mine players will know exactly what I'm talking about here.
In 2023 11 bit studios, oft-known for Frostpunk and This War of Mine, signed a deal with Microsoft to bring more of their game portfolio to Xbox Game Pass. The Polish firm serves as both an independent developer and publisher, with a robust game catalog that includes recent releases such as The Invincible and The Thaumaturge, as well as additional upcoming titles Indika and Frostpunk 2.
