#63 - The Alters

I overheard someone talking about this weird sci-fi cloning space game with survival/crafting/base building elements a few days ago. It sounded so unique, preposterous, and yet intriguing. I had to track it down and check it out.

The Alters is a game about being the sole survivor of a space mission. You are stranded on a dangerous planet and are forced to create clones of yourself - with an altered past - to assist with various specialized roles around your base.

It reminded me a bit of The Invincible, another game about being stranded on an alien planet and trying to escape. Except that game is more of a story-rich walking simulator, while this one actually has you collecting resources and building as you go to ensure your survival.

Also, I want to point out that this game looks incredible in 4K with maxed out graphics settings. So much detail was put into this world! I wish I had 4K video to show the rainfall and the ocean crashing against the beach. Screenshots don't do it justice.

The Alters opens with your character, Jan Dolski, crawling out of an escape pod on a dark planet. It's perpetually raining on this planet. He notices the emergency flare near his pod and sets out to find other crew members by searching for their flares.

He finds the captain's pod intact, but she's dead in her pod. Several other pods can be located nearby, but despite all being intact, they all hold deceased crew members. Jan discovers he's all alone and sets out for the nearby mobile base. It looks like a massive tire with shipping containers arranged inside of it.

All of a sudden, a radioactive wave hits! Jan has limited time to get to the shelter of the mobile base!

Once inside, your view changes to a sort of 3D side-scroller. You can walk around the various interconnected rooms of the base, or you can switch to a base overview mode, which is a cutaway view of all the rooms.

You need to get to the Communication Room to call for help, but you can't currently use the elevator for... reasons. The game teaches you how to rearrange the rooms from the Command Center. I brought the Communications Room down to my floor so I could just walk across to it.

Once there, Jan answers a call, only to get a garbled message from the distant end. They seem able to hear him, but Jan is only getting partial transmissions. The words "imminent danger" catch his ears, and he surmises from the jumbled communication that he has until sunrise in 9 days before he's burnt to a crisp by a nearby star. So now we're on a time limit!

He retreats to the captain's cabin to read the logs for his next steps, then goes to sleep for the night.

I should mention that there is a limited time to be active each day, as you can see in the bottom left of the screen. I definitely wasted a few days wandering around, trying to get familiar with the local area and the mechanics of the game. I'll probably be more streamlined on my next playthrough.

The next day, Jan sets out to find shallow deposits, as there is a shortage of metals on the mobile base. You can track them down by their red glowing light.

When you get enough metals, you can create a Workshop room, where you can craft items.

The first thing you need to craft are scanners. You're looking for organic deposits, which present themselves as blue smoke coming out of the rocky surface. When you find an area like this, you place down several scanners in a square to help scan underground for the best place to drop a mining outpost.

You want to identify the darkest red area underground. I had to make 3 separate scans of the area to find it. Fortunately, you can individually pick up and move your scanners and it will leave the previously scanned area visible.

Once you've dropped a mining outpost, you then need to run pylons all the way back to your mobile base to transfer the organic deposits to your fuel reserves.

I had flashbacks of running transmitter nodes in Deep Rock Galactic while placing all these pylons.

While exploring, I also stumbled across a strange glowing area that made the region fuzzy and streaked. You can see, even on the ground near me, it looks like it's been smeared upward with a giant paintbrush.

This is Rapidium, a plot-centric mineral you need to harvest. Extract a sample and get it back to your base!

You receive a new call from your mysterious garbled connection. You mention the Rapidium, which gets them very excited. They insist you test it to verify it's real. You're sent blueprints to create a new room called "The Womb," along with a DNA sample to test the Rapidium on. You set it up and out pops...

Rapidium, it turns out, was the resource you were sent to find on this expedition. It's an incredibly rare resource that, in theory, can rapidly age an organic item. By combining it with sheep DNA, out pops a cloned adult sheep! Jan names her Molly.

Incidentally, the name of this expedition is "Project Dolly." In real-life history, Dolly was the name of the first cloned sheep. So, a very apropos name for this game's expedition.

By now, the waterfront valley you're located in has (ideally) been picked clean of resources and your mobile base is fully fueled. It's time to get it moving! You go to the Command Center and attempt to start up the engines, but they fail to start. You reset the machinery and try again, which causes a catastrophic failure!

Not knowing what to do, you turn to your garbled friend for help. They mention something about Rapidium being able to save you, and they direct you to check out the data in the base's Quantum Computer. They give you the captain's access and you log in... to find "mind records" of all the crew.

It maps out memories of the major life events of Jan, from his childhood, leading up to his joining of the Project Dolly expedition in his 30s. You can click on each life event and read up about his past.

In the Communications Room, the distant contact suggests using this life data on Jan to create an "alter" with a branching past. The Quantum Computer pinpoints a branching life path in his childhood that would lead Jan to join Project Dolly as a technician, then simulates a fake memory path leading to that end result.

The Womb starts churning, and before you know it, out pops a clone of Jan! Except he's a bit more rough around the edges.

I noticed he has a "03" on his clothing. Jan has a "01" on his suit. What happened to "02?"

"Jan Technician," as he's known in the subtitles, is not happy to discover that he's a clone with fake memories of a life that never happened. He begrudgingly helps you get the base's engine working, but he doesn't want anything else to do with you.

You get a new menu to track your alters. It's important to be aware of their emotional status and keep them happy, as they'll perform poorly if they're in a bad mood. While you're talking with them, you'll occasionally get emotional state clouds pop up behind them. If they're red, they're negative. If they're green, they're positive.

With the engine working, you start up a journey. The mobile base goes on autopilot, heading toward a better pick-up location for your eventual rescue. Meanwhile, you repair the communications (because Jan Technician refuses to help) and you're finally able to speak clearly with someone! Your distant contact is named Lucas Peña and he's fascinated with the results of the Rapidium branching.

When you mention that your clone isn't talking to you, Lucas suggests bonding over a shared memory. I went and convinced him to make pierogi with me, just like Mom used to make!

In a much better mood, Jan Technician informs you that this mobile base is a beast to operate, and the only way the two of you are going to survive is if you make more versions of you. You'll make branching memories to create alters who end up as scientists, botanists, refiners, miners, and doctors, to name a few.

It will quickly get crowded in the mobile base and you'll have to upgrade the size of the base and create more rooms to house all the resources and people that you bring into the world.

I played for 3 hours and only barely finished the prologue! Granted, I took my time and explored everything. By the time Act 1 was starting, I was already on Day 7 of my 10 days until sunrise. So I bet I'm likely to die soon and will have to be more efficient with my next playthrough.

Or who knows where the plot will go; maybe I'll be able to survive the sunrise somehow and get more time to build and expand my army of clones. It seems like too short of a timeline for how story-rich the gameplay is. If you've played this game, let me know how much you enjoy it! I'm excited to play more and find out where the plot leads.

#62 - PEAK

Hey, it's been a minute! I took a break from gaming for a bit; partly voluntary, partly because some jerk destroyed the Internet cable in my yard and it took forever to get someone to come fix it. But I'm back! And just in time to play a really fun co-op game that just dropped last month.

PEAK is a climbing game where you can either solo the various mountain regions, or climb with up to four players. I highly recommend playing with others, as you can help each other out on your journey. As you can see from the first screenshot above, my good friend Victor McKnight is offering a hand to help lift me up a ledge.

The game starts in an airport, where your team of scouts is preparing for a flight. You can pull out a passport and customize your character's appearance at this point. More outfits and facial features will unlock as you gain achievements in the game.

Notice that your achievements in the game will appear as badges on the scout sash you wear across your chest. They'll fill out both the front and back of the sash.

When your team is ready to depart, someone will select the game mode from the terminal gate. You can play "Peak," which is the game's standard difficulty, or "Tenderfoot," which makes climbing a little easier, requires less food to stave off hunger, and grants unlimited time to explore each area.

After departure, you find yourself waking up on a beach near the ruins of a plane. Your flight has crashed and you and your scout team need to climb to the highest peak to signal for help.

There is one backpack nearby and a couple luggage cases on the ground. You can hold 3 items in your inventory, one in your hands, and up to four items in the backpack. One of your team members can equip the backpack and everyone else just packs as many supplies as they can in their inventory. You will find more luggage scattered all over each region, so there are plenty more supplies to pick up along the way. Keep your hands free for climbing!

You have five regions to climb before you get to the highest peak (and thus, the end of the game):

1.) SHORE: Rocky, sandy bluffs

2.) TROPICS: Lush vine-covered jungle cliffs with slippery rainfall

3.) ALPINE: Frozen snowy alps with piercing cold wind storms

4.) CALDERA: A lava pit with hot rocks and fire tornadoes

5.) KILN: The inside of the volcano.

The regions are always the same, but their layout is procedurally generated daily, so you never have the same climb from day to day. That forces you to be creative and learn good skills instead of just memorizing a certain path up the mountains.

You can rest at a campfire at the top of each region, which will recover all your ailments. You'll also find marshmallows to roast over the fire. I recommend cooking them twice for the best stats boost. Perfectly golden brown. You'll also get a new backpack at each campfire, which lets another scout carry additional supplies.

You'll notice that your green stamina bar is quickly filled up by weight. So don't carry too many heavy items or else you won't have enough stamina to climb!

Also, as your hunger grows, it will fill part of your stamina bar. Remember to eat to give yourself more stamina. Everything takes up space in your stamina bar. Poison, cold, heat, injuries... if you run out of space for stamina, you will pass out.

If you pass out, you have a very limited time where a fellow scout can revive you. Or if they don't have anything to revive you with, they can carry you on their back in place of a backpack. So don't leave your scouts behind!

If you're passed out too long without aid or being carried, you will die and turn into a ghost. Ghosts are tied to another teammate and can switch between living teammates to watch and call out assistance. As you can see below, I was the last hope for my team and I passed out. Oops.

At the end of each climb, you can revive your fallen scouts at a statue. If everyone is still alive, the statue will instead give a random beneficial item. Like this Bugle of Friendship, which will give unlimited stamina to nearby teammates while it's being played. If everyone dies, the game is over and you have to start over at the very beginning.

If you're playing with "Peak" difficulty, you will have fog that slowly encroaches on you from behind. If the fog envelopes you, you will quickly freeze to death. Make sure you out-climb that fog! Here's my buddy Victor confidently giving himself to the fog as the rest of our dead team watches on.

Just a heads up, this game is about teamwork so don't leave your teammates behind. I found out the hard way that if you climb on your own and get too far ahead of your teammates, the Scoutmaster will come for you. If he catches you, he'll attempt to throw you off the mountain. And he's absolutely terrifying to encounter, running at you on all fours like a nightmare skeleton creature or something. (Although you get an achievement and a costume item if you summon him)

Little tip: If you carry the bugle from the airplane, you can serenade some capybaras in a hot spring in the Alpine region. This is also an achievement. Don't forget to eat the apples on their head. They'll fill you up and give you a stat boost.

Victor and I got real close to beating the game. We were so close to making it out of the volcano!

Then his game froze and his character fell to his death. I tried to finish solo, but without his help, I ran out of stamina and fell too. It's practically impossible to finish that final climb without some climbing gear to help you! Oh well, we'll clear the summit one day.