Polish developer 11 bit studios is mostly known to gamers for This War of Mine and Frostpunk, but with The Alters, they are doing something very different. It’s a sci-fi survival game where you play as miner Jan Dolski, who is stranded on an alien planet and must find a way to repair his mobile base and get the hell out of the planet before the local sun’s lethal radiation kills him.
This is not a one-person job, to say the least. Thankfully, Jan has technology at his disposal that allows him to create the titular Alters, alternate copies of himself who made different decisions at key points in Jan’s life. It’s an intriguing premise, and we dig into it throughout the hands-on preview that just went live.
We also got the chance to interview Lead Designer Rafał Włosek to learn more about the making of The Alters and its feature set. Keep scrolling after the embedded video to read the full transcript
The game is slated to launch on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X sometime this year.
I think the first question, just from playing it, is, what was the inspiration behind creating The Alters? It’s quite unique, at least in the actual thematic nature of just creating multiple versions of yourself to get yourself out of that jam.
Well, the process is always very complicated, not only creating the prototype but also trying to figure out what game we’re going to make. At 11 bit, it always starts more from the idea of the topic we would like to talk about. Not from the idea of the gameplay. It was the same this time as well.
There was a lot of brainstorming in general, but we always had this idea about creating a game about how our lives could go if we made different decisions. This was slowly getting more and more concrete when we were talking about it and finally figured out that we wanted to have a game where the player could actually experience meeting a different version of himself who made this different decision.
Then we thought it would work great in a sci-fi environment, where you could use many different sci-fi technologies to achieve effects that are not so easily achieved in real life, for example. And then, well, there was also this idea about making copies of your own self and interacting with them.
It’s very hard to say that it was like a single idea. It was more like an iterative process to get there.
I noticed you use many links to cloning in real life. The first thing you create is Molly, a reference to the first cloned sheep. I’m guessing you’ve got a few amusing Easter eggs in the game.
Yeah, we do. Definitely, it’s not by accident that we put the sheep there. But I guess this is more like, you know, a bit of humor. Actually, we want to put a lot of small humorous things here and there because our previous games were very heavy, let’s say. I was also a lead designer of This War of Mine and we didn’t want to repeat that. So, this is where it comes from. However, this is not a game about cloning.
Indeed. I’ve created the technician in the demo, and it links into This War of Mine in the sense of the emotions, like immediately, every single conversation piece you’re doing has a big effect on their mood. So, yeah, the technician really doesn’t like me so far.
In the beginning, there is this obvious situation where you create a new person just to move forward and he’s very disoriented and probably feels used by you. But there’s also this other layer of it, more symbolic, where you are trying to actually cope with your own self, your own different version when you are trying to figure out which decision was good. Do I like this decision or not?
Which version of myself would I like the most? But of course, we don’t want to answer this question. We just ask them.
You want the player to explore those questions themselves.
Exactly. It would be very unfortunate if we tried to give an answer.
Obviously, you create the technician because that’s what the story demands at that point. As you go forward, do you get to make more choices in which path you create? Is it linear progression, or do you get that flexibility to create what you want?
We definitely wanted to create something that we could work on in much detail because the story in this game is the most important part, and in order to do it real good, we preferred to create some solid branching points in which we can have much more control. All of them have their different stories. They are very well connected to each other, not to mention very well connected with different problems that the player has. So yeah, this is more prepared.
With survival games, by the nature of gameplay, you tend to get a lot of replay value from that. As you said, there’s key branching points in The Alters. Are you going to have different ways of the characters reacting to what you say to them? Will there also be replay elements, like where you travel to? Is it directed as to where you go Essentially, how long can you survive?
This is kind of a tricky question because there’s many layers the game operates on. It’s not just a survival game where you have a huge amount of replayability, but it’s also not closed like a story-driven game. In order to answer your question well, I would have to put some background in it.
We created the game in the form of layers. The top layer would be the main storyline. It’s the story of Jan, who is trying to survive on this planet. He’s also looking into his past life and trying to deal with his own past decisions, problems, and insecurities.
Then there is another layer of all the Alters and as the first layer is always more or less, well, one story. It has a lot of endings, but it’s one story. Then you have the Alters and you cannot have them all in one playthrough. Each Alter has his own story and shows you different parts, different Jan versions. So, you can’t know Jan entirely playing the game just once. Finally, we have a third part, which includes mechanics that come from the emotions of the Alters, the interaction between each other, the interaction between you and them, and the way you treat them.
You can push them in many different directions. Maybe you can try to use them more or try to be the best for them, but then you cannot fulfill the mission as well. Depending on your choices, the gameplay will differ, of course.
So it will branch quite a little bit in that. As an example, could you alienate one of your relatives, really piss them off so they don’t want to help you at all, and you’ve got to find other ways of doing things?
Yes, for example. In general, this comes with many different gameplay flairs. Of course, there’s the strategy version then because it’s also a strategic and survival game, depending on what technology you achieve and research and so on.
Finally, to round it all up, I think you could have a couple of playthroughs that lead you to different stories, allow you to explore different aspects of Jan, and maybe have different endings because they might differ a lot. But it’s not as replayable as the typical open-world survival game.
Which is good because you can’t really have a good directed narrative in that.
Yeah, exactly.
As you mentioned, you chose the sci-fi setting because it allows you to use the sci-fi technology for that. One of the first things I just noticed is that the setting is you’ve crash-landed on this planet in a three-star system. I couldn’t help but think whether any particular media inspired you in creating this.
No. Well, you’re talking about planets, right?
The setting that popped into my head is probably just because I’ve recently seen the new Netflix TV series The Three Body Problem.
Ok.
Because you’ve got three stars, and you’ve got the sun just going to come and burn.
As always, there’s a couple of layers. First of all, there’s art, and I’m not much in this art process because I’m a designer. So, I didn’t want to mess up anything that they were up to.
But I know that the general idea for the look for the planet was to create a desolate and empty but beautiful alien world that creates a special environment for Jan to think about his life. He’s outside of the normal world. That would be probably the most important part. I don’t think it came from some specific book or film. As to the three-body system, I was the one who designed the star system, and I’m very much a space and astronomy amateur. I have my telescope watching the stars and so on, and I was just trying to figure out the best possible star system that would allow the strange situation in which you have to run away from one side. Only much later I watched the series and saw the book.
From what I’ve played so far, it’s genuinely a very great looking game. With the Rapidium crystals, I genuinely asked somebody, is this effect a bug? But no, it’s not a bug. At first I wondered if it was gravity from the stars, but it’s not that either.
Yes. I know that our art director wanted this Rapidium thing to look very much like it’s some kind of a glitch, something outside of our universe, let’s say of our reality, so unreal it doesn’t actually fit exactly. But at the same time, it fits very well.
Oh, they’ve done a great job because, like I said, the first time I saw it, I was like, is that a bug? Anyway, The Alters looks genuinely great. It does seem like, as with your previous games, emotion is a key part of this. As well as Jannis looking inward, trying to figure out everything that’s happened to him in his past and creating the Alters, it is about the what if and how he deals with that.
Yes. So, every Alter comes from a different decision in your life. The origin of the difference is very obvious, so you always have some kind of reference. This one specific thing that made me this person or that. Of course, in real life, it’s not that easy. But, on the other hand, there’s a lot of situations when we are trying to figure out what would have happened if I changed this one single decision that made me a different man, different friends, different goals in life and values, and so on. This is what happens in Jan’s head.
The only other question is how many Alters are there?
This must be the question that didn’t get the answer. *laughs* We are trying to set the number so that there is not too much chaos and that the story would be complete and all the answers would be given. I guess it’s well-balanced, I would say.
Is there anything that you’d like to say about The Alters that I haven’t asked?
I like one particular thing about this game, but it’s not easily spotted right away when playing it. I’m really proud of how our team managed to combine the story, the narrating stories of all the Alters, with the game mechanics and survival mechanics. They all fit together and were built from scratch.
Thank you very much for your time.
