11 Bit Studios has been a leader in the indie space ever since it established its unique spin on the survival and management genres with This War of Mine, a bleak, narrative-driven base management game. This War of Mine's best ideas were merged with more traditional city-building systems in Frostpunk and Frostpunk 2, which present similar themes of morality and survival at any cost. I've played all these games, and each has impressed me in its own way, elevating my opinion of 11 Bit Studios' development team with each playthrough. Even so, The Alters has left me completely floored.
A cursory understanding of 11 Bit Studios' previous survival games is helpful when analyzing The Alters, which is something of an amalgamation of This War of Mine's and Frostpunk's gameplay formulas: it retains the intense resource management of the Frostpunk games while incorporating a revamped rendition of This War of Mine's intimate, character-first decision-making. It's also the closest that 11 Bit Studios has come to an open-world game, injected with third-person exploration, action setpieces, and even some metroidvania staples here and there. Needless to say, it's a veritable hodgepodge of genre influences.
These systems are wrapped up in a dramatic, bizarre science-fiction narrative that explores themes of identity, fate, and regret. In stark contrast to This War of Mine and Frostpunk, whose stories are decidedly interpretable and loosely defined, The Alters is well-wrought, meticulously detailed, and complex. And while the protagonists of previous 11 Bit Studios games have been more or less blank slates upon which the player can project themselves, The Alters' leading man, Jan Dolski, is defined, plausible, and sympathetic. In fact, every version of him is.
The Alters Is an Astonishing New Survival Experience
The Alters' opening minutes make it clear how different it is from the rest of 11 Bit Studios' development portfolio. It opens with a shot of Jan Dolski's sleeping face, voiceover narration waxing lyrical about mistakes and life trajectory as red lights illuminate Dolski's shaking countenance. Dolski is part of an expedition called Project Dolly, founded with the aim of recovering the ultra-rare substance Rapidium, a new element proven to exist in several quantum planes simultaneously. Its potential applications are myriad, so there's a lot of optimism about Project Dolly's efforts.
But that optimism is quickly shattered, since those red lights painting Dolski's face in the intro are actually part of the ship's alarm system: the expedition crash lands on the Rapidium-rich planet it was seeking, but the entire crew is dead, save Jan Dolski. Alone and clueless, with nothing more than a mobile base and the planet's resources for survival, Dolski is eventually forced to create a new crew composed of the titular Alters, clones of himself who have experienced different life paths, their existence only possible because of the all-powerful Rapidium.
And thus , The Alters begins in earnest. Players control the aforementioned Jan Dolski, but they also command his various Alters, identified by their professions—Jan Technician, Jan Scientist, and so on. These clones arrived at their chosen professions as a result of their branching life paths. For instance, Jan Technician stood up to his abusive father, while Jan Dolski simply left the house and never looked back. As such, each Alter comes with specific perks and advantages, being more or less effective at certain tasks and therefore adding new dimensions to the survival gameplay loop.
They're also remarkably well-written and fully realized. In practice, they function much like Frostpunk's workers and engineers, assigned to jobs in and around the base in accordance with their expertise, but their personalities enrich The Alters in less quantifiable ways as well. They are all Jan Dolski, technically, but their distinct life paths have resulted in a wide array of equally distinct opinions, goals, fears, and desires. For example, some Alters are workaholics and therefore more tolerant of extended shifts, while other Alters have the opposite disposition and react to long shifts accordingly. These traits aren't random—they can all be traced to specific elements of a given Alter's history, profession, or value system, and can be intuited from dialog exchanges.
The result of these diverse gameplay and narrative choices is an unexpectedly robust social simulation. The choices that players make, both on the micro and macro scale, can have butterfly effects that impact the broader narrative as well as the moment-to-moment gameplay. For example, if you transgress an Alter's belief system, they may become more rebellious, working fewer hours until you raise their mood through discussions or actions like offering a gift or playing a surprisingly fun beer pong minigame.
In other words, your choices matter, and not just in a superficial way: they don't merely determine what dialog an NPC will spit out, or what cutscene will play at a certain moment. The choices that players make within The Alters' management gameplay, as well as in dialog exchanges and major story beats, can have ripple effects that lead to a wildly different overall experience. In some ways, it puts even the best story-driven RPGs to shame, which is hardly what one would expect from a management and survival game. Thankfully, these strengths don't come at the cost of The Alters' other gameplay systems.
The Alters' Gameplay Is Inventive and Ingenious
The Alters' story is informed by its gameplay, and vice versa. Much like Frostpunk, The Alters tasks players with locating specific planetary resources and harvesting them with the appropriate machinery. But unlike Frostpunk, players need to locate these resources via third-person exploration, which can be aided by equipment upgrades, like a climbing hook and a quasi-handgun used to dispatch dangerous anomalies. It's an ambitious evolution of 11 Bit Studios' survival gameplay formula, and while it's not perfect—Jan Dolski is a little awkward to control and gets stuck on terrain at times—it's definitely serviceable.
It's immensely satisfying to locate a new deposit of some precious resource, build an outpost, and connect it to the base via pylons, whose installation forms the backbone of some engaging environmental puzzles. There's a real sense that you've earned an outpost and the rewards that it yields, rather than just clicking a few buttons and having your minions build it for you.
Beyond the third-person exploration, The Alters assumes a gameplay loop that 11 Bit Studios fans are likely familiar with. You'll have to manage a small selection of resource categories, deciding whether to stock up for the next major upgrade or spend the resources on smaller, less impactful enhancements, like a second dormitory for your Alters or a gym that can improve their mood. The tension between these decisions is just as captivating as it is in Frostpunk and This War of Mine, though it should be noted that The Alters is actually quite easy in relation to those games, for better or worse.
It's hard to go into more detail about why The Alters is so great without spoiling the experience—it truly is a game that is best enjoyed with as few preconceived opinions as possible. What is more or less undeniable is The Alters' ingenuity, its clever and thoughtful narrative structure, and its satisfying, genre-defying gameplay loop. The Alters represents a massive step forward for 11 Bit Studios, positioning its greatest strengths in a new light, and ultimately unfolding into one of the best gaming experiences you're likely to have all year.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 86 /100 Critics Rec: 94%
- Released
- June 13, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Violence
- Developer(s)
- 11 Bit Studios
- Publisher(s)
- 11 Bit Studios
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Survival, Strategy, Management
- Thought-provoking story
- Clever social-simulation mechanics
- A unique blend of survival, RPG, management, and adventure genre staples
- Your choices actually impact the story
- Satisfying progression
- Occasionally awkward third-person controls
- Normal difficulty is a bit too easy
- Minor performance hiccups on PC
The Alters releases on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 on June 13, 2025. The Best War Games was provided a Steam code for this review.