Forged in the spirit of meaningful entertainment, The Alters is a base-building survival game driven by life-defining choices and exploring the diverse paths one could take. The inhospitable planet where Jan crash-landed is turning toward a massive sun, causing radiation levels to soar; in this desperate race against time, Jan must harness local Rapidium crystals to create his many versions: the “Alters”.
Have you ever considered how your life could have been altered if you had made different decisions? How might your personality or way of thinking be adjusted if you’d chosen a particular education or one professional path over another? The Alters is a game focused on those tiny, binary decisions that often happen in nanoseconds but have the potential to influence an entire lifespan.
Set within an ever-moving mobile base, both teamwork and building a wide range of expertise are indispensable for survival. By selecting diverging paths for the other Jans during the alteration process, they acquire distinct skill sets. They become invaluable, not only for maintaining the base, but also for tasks like cooking, crafting tools for surface exploration, and gathering essential resources.
However, the Alters are more than mere resources. They are sentient beings with their own emotions, problems, goals, and sometimes, existential doubts about their purpose. Despite their differences, their collective goal is to escape, echoing Jan's determination to survive: I'll just do it all by myselves.
The Alters begs a simple question surrounding life-changing moments and the decisions people make: What if…?
Revealed as part of the 2025 Triple-I Initiative, 11 bit studios announced that The Alters will launch on June 13, 2025, arriving on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and day one on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass.
Stranded on a hostile planet and racing against a deadly sunrise, Jan Dolski’s only chance of survival is to create “alters”—alternate versions of himself shaped by roads not taken. Each Jan comes with unique skills, personalities, and memories tied to a different life choice. But they also come with conflict, doubt, and emotional baggage.
Managing the mission means managing yourself—literally. Players must maintain a mobile base, make time-critical decisions, build relationships with their Alters, and confront the consequences of their own past lives.
And as a new element the trailer leans into, The Alters reveals the hardships of exploring the planet’s unique biomes, where deadly anomalies stand in your way. Levitating rocks and eerie distortions of reality catch your attention immediately, while other singularities remain invisible to the naked eye and require special tools to uncover. In every case, without a careful approach, you risk instant death, radiation-induced injuries, or even the disintegration of time and space itself. And you may want to avoid exploring at night, as the heightened radioactivity can eat right through your suit. These dangers add yet another layer to the survival experience, turning every expedition into a high-stakes puzzle.
Just like a classic piece of science fiction, The Alters allows players to investigate a compelling—and at times relatable—topic through the lens of its uniquely futuristic setting. Including the concept phase, the game, made by one of the three in-house development teams at 11 bit studios mostly assembled from the creators of This War of Mine, has been in development for almost four years and it’s powered by Unreal Engine.
The Alters is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC (Steam) on June 13, 2025.
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