The Alters
I have a huge soft spot for 11bit Studios games. This Polish developer can keep me glued to the screen for half the night like no other. Deep stories in an unconventional form, like in This War of Mine; an utterly engrossing gameplay loop, like in Frostpunk. Even as a publisher, they never disappoint: Moonlighter or The Invincible? These are truly exceptional games. And The Alters is just as exceptional and brilliant. I don’t recommend it. 2/10.
…or rather, I don’t recommend it to n00bs and casuals. Because the game itself is excellent—it’s great fun, the story elements are alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking, the strategic elements pull you into a state of flow, exploration is thrilling, and managing the economy is satisfying. Everything is in its right place. The thing is, this game is really hard, and you’re on izzymode.com, a site that rates games solely on their accessibility.
The Alters is like a hodgepodge of several minigames, each of a completely different type. The main view—inside the base on an alien planet—is a 2D base builder in the style of Fallout Shelter or, partly, Spiritfarer. Both the base expansion and the economic aspects, which force automation and a focus on efficiency, remind of the Daft Punk track: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. This is characteristic of many survival and economic games. It reminded me of Factorio and Frostpunk. We run around the extraterrestrial environment in a third-person view like in a proper shooter, which brings No Man’s Sky to mind, except here we add time pressure. Our charges are as helpless and demanding as Sims, except these space Sims constantly threaten us with rebellion and, well—implicitly—death.
This moving story about maturing, missed opportunities, guilt, and friendship unfortunately turns into a corporate sprint due to the constant pressure. Even overtime (a way to increase efficiency in our base) is called the infamous “crunch.” Hello, 11bit Studios developers? Do you need help? Is this a signal? Blink twice if we should call the authorities!
And I understand this choice, I really do. This wasn’t meant to be a game from the “visual novel” category; it wasn’t supposed to be boring, and it isn’t. The thrill, the constant sense of impending doom from overwhelming natural forces, yet another deadline that has “dead” in its name for a reason… This will certainly appeal to full-time gamers who know all the mechanics of all these component genres like the back of their hand-held console. But I guarantee it will overwhelm any newcomer. And a casual player who returns to the game after a break won’t remember what stage of supply chain rationalization they were at! What were they collecting those materials and minerals for? For repair kits because an electromagnetic storm is coming, or to automate the mine? But the automation technology isn’t possible until the Scientist develops the plans… So why is he working on some implants right now?! What was I thinking? What was my plan? What? Half an hour has already passed and I have to go shopping, repair the car, and then pick up the kids and walk the dog? Oh well. See you in another two weeks, Alters—I’m sure we’ll do great then.
No, this game doesn’t care about casuals, it doesn’t care about n00bs. In the name of adrenaline, it is steeped in a culture of hustle, and I don’t believe that novices or Sunday-gamers will finish it. If the game itself displays a prompt telling you that you’ll have to reload from a save often and therefore—for your convenience (ha, ha!)—it shows which dialogue options were chosen last time, you know it’s not going to be easy.
And there’s no option to bypass the difficulty with grinding. YouTube walkthroughs might suggest where mineral deposits are, but firstly: a casual player has to have time to watch such tutorials; secondly: a n00b has to be familiar enough with the virtual labyrinth of corridors for YouTube to help; and thirdly—the deposits are sometimes in a different place than the video shows! I know because I used them!—and let that be another warning. Yes, there are random elements here—sometimes you’ll hit a vein of metal right away or the in-game tools will be enough to find it, but other times you’ll spend too much time on it, consequently neglecting another matter, which will crash the base’s efficiency and lead to disaster a few hours later. This will force you to load the game from a save at the moment… you were looking for metal deposits! So, the most efficient way will be to forget the random aspect and check online where the deposits are. This, of course, breaks immersion, but doesn’t loading the game from a save also break immersion? Can loading a game from a save even be considered a game mechanic? In my opinion, only roguelikes like Hades, where starting over is part of the story, get a pass on this. In The Alters, it’s not an element of the story—just a message that it’s game over and you should load from one of the saves—from a point where you feel you messed up in the first place. Was it 10 hours ago? Oh, no. Anyway…
The saves themselves are also troublesome because they only happen automatically at the end of the in-game day. This glues you to the screen because it starts the “potato chip effect,” which can be summarized as “just one more…,” and it can be a strong gameplay element—it is, for example, in Stardew Valley. But it certainly loses a point from a casual’s perspective, who plays on pins and needles because at any moment the milk could boil over, the boss could call, or a bedridden, flu-stricken spouse could call for help.
The Alters is a great game, one of the best of 2025. If you’re a veteran of survival, economic, and strategy games and you easily recognize their characteristic features, your adrenal medulla responds to adrenaline production with a simultaneous overproduction of dopamine, and on top of that, you’re a sentimental Upper Silesian millennial (though Germany’s Ruhr Valley or the American Rust Belt would also fit), then sure—this game is for you, and it’s really worth it! But a n00b and a casual will not have a good time. It will be a frustrating, chaotic chase, ending in a series of failures and the abandonment of this story…ies.
Final Izzy Mode Score for The Alters
Casual score: how suitable the game is for casual players – casual players who like a challenge from time to time, but generally just wanna’ have fu-u-n🎵 a few hours a week without stress and just for the fun of playing. The higher the score the more casual-friendly the game.
n00b-o-meter: how suitable the game is for n00b players – new players whose gaming career started and ended with Candy Crush, Tetris or browser games or even never played a game and would like to start. The higher the score the more n00b-friendly the game.
General Izzyness Level: between Izzy Mode, Normal, Hard and Nightmare – how would the title score in the difficulty scale known from games?
