The Alter is the new game from the This War Of Mine and Frostpunk devs

The Alter wants you to think about how small choices can change the type of person you are, like a big science fiction Sliding Doors. Only, since it’s the new game from the developers of Frostpunk and This War Of Mine, I’m guessing the stakes are higher than whether Gywneth Paltrow gets it together with John Hannah. For one, you’re creating alternative versions of yourself in order to survive on a rickety base rolling across an alien world.

“These are not clones. They are the alters. Alternative versions of the same person,” says Tomasz Kisilewicz, The Alter’s game director. “Each alter has a different skill set necessary to achieve success, but players have to take care of every one of them. And each one of them has a unique personality resulting from their unique life path. How those life paths go and how those relationships are built – it’s entirely up to you as a player.”

So, they’re clones, but they’re each slightly different. I assume this will lead to lots of arguments as one of the yous onboard the station never washes the teaspoons up.

There’s not a lot of insight about how The Alter plays moment to moment, but I’m willing to give 11bit Studios the benefit of the doubt. Both of their previous games are great, and Frostpunk – a game about making decisions for a colony attempting to survive on a frozen, post-climate collapse Earth – would seem like a good template for the fiction of The Alter. I’m particularly fond of that big, constantly moving wheel seen in the trailer. It immediately made me think of The Inverted World.

The Alter has no release date right now, and onSteam all you’ll find are images taken from the trailer.

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