“What if you had made different choices? What if you could meet the person you could’ve become?” — The Alters, 11 bit studios

What happens when you cook up the perfect concoction of The Sims, Fallout Shelter, Mickey 17, and throw in the good old elements of an RPG? No hard guesses—you get the RPG you never knew you needed. And this is exactly what The Alters brings to our PCs in 2025.

The Plot

At its core, The Alters is a sci-fi survival simulator with a distinctive twist. While not explicitly revealed, it's safe to assume—given the plotline and visual cues—that the story is set in the far future, where Homo sapiens are now a spacefaring species.

The game starts with a bang: Jan Dolski, a difficult man looking to escape his troubled past, embarks on a high-stakes expedition to a distant planet in search of Rapidium—an elusive element with time-accelerating properties.

But things go awfully wrong. The rest of the crew dies upon landing, and Jan discovers he’s all alone, at risk of being burned alive by the rising sun. The good news? Sunrise is still a few days away. The bad news? You need to outrun the sun, complete your mission, and rendezvous with the rescue team before it’s too late.

With death just days away, Jan must use the Tree of Life, a quantum computer system, to simulate alternate versions of himself—Alters—each created from a fork in his personal timeline based on critical decisions made in the past.

The Illusion of Choice

Most RPGs offer a neatly curated illusion of choice without real consequence. This is exactly where The Alters brings something groundbreaking to the table.

Unlike Detroit: Become Human (2018), which focused on branching narratives, The Alters—developed by 11 bit studios (of This War of Mine fame)—flips the camera inward. Every decision Jan Dolski makes spawns an Alter: a living, breathing version of who he could have been. A coward. A scientist. A cynic. A father.

This mechanic isn’t just clever. It’s gut-wrenching.

Unlike other RPGs, you don’t just see the consequences of your choices—you live with them. You interact with them.

Sometimes, you argue with them. And they remember.

A Mirror, Not a Power Trip

Forget plot points, game mechanics, or visual fidelity—what The Alters offers is something far more rare: emotional resonance. A new perspective for gamers who are tired of being the chosen one.

As Jan, a working-class technician, you are no hero. You're just a man on a decaying solar platform, trying to outrun death while facing your fragmented identity. As external pressures mount, players are forced to make genuinely difficult moral choices—often leading to intense conflicts among the Alters, no matter what you choose.

It often feels like a “Kobayashi Maru” scenario—a no-win situation testing how you deal with the impossible.

Each Alter you create is a fork in the road—a past you abandoned. Throughout the game, you don’t just ask:
“What should I do?”

You ask:
“Who would I be if I had done something else?”

And that question lingers long after the screen fades to black. It’s a raw introspection into identity and ego—something no other game has dared to explore with such emotional weight.

The RPG We Didn’t Know We Needed

“We didn’t want to make a game about perfection. We wanted to make a game about decisions—and the humanity behind them.”
—11 bit studios, Developer Statement

If Mass Effect was about saving the galaxy, and The Witcher about surviving it, The Alters is about surviving yourself.

For those burned out on RPGs where moral decisions are checkbox prompts with no real aftermath, The Alters is a brutal, beautiful breath of fresh air.

And maybe—just maybe—it’s the first game that finally lets you meet the version of yourself you’ve been trying to avoid.

So, if you’ve got a weekend to spare and a mind open to what-ifs, pull an all-nighter and go fork yourself.