In 2014 we released This War of Mine, a game that reshaped how we experience storytelling in video games. It offered a haunting perspective on the horrors of war, forcing players to make impossible choices to survive.
Now, with The Alters, we’re taking you on a new, deeply personal survival journey – one that shares familiar themes but unfolds in an entirely different setting.
How do these two games compare?
In This War of Mine, you guided a group of civilians struggling to stay alive in a besieged city. Their survival depended on resource management, tough moral decisions, and the ability to hold together in a world that had fallen apart.
In The Alters, you begin your journey alone stranded as the sole survivor of a space expedition gone wrong. To stay alive, you must create a new crew, but not in the way you might expect. Your only option is to create alternate versions of yourself – alters – each shaped by different life choices and each bringing unique skills to aid your mission.
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Yet, survival isn’t just about skill sets. In This War of Mine, managing your shelter is critical. This time, your home is a mobile base traversing a hostile alien planet, shielding you from its unforgiving environment. Expanding and optimizing this base will be essential, but doing so with multiple versions of yourself, all carrying their own perspectives and baggage, is bound to create tensions you never saw coming.
Venturing outside is just as crucial. In This War of Mine, scavenging for resources under the cover of darkness was a necessity. In The Alters, you must leave the safety of your base to extract vital resources. Yet this time, the threats do not come from enemy soldiers. The planet itself is a relentless adversary, with a scorching, radioactive sun creeping ever closer. Time is constantly working against you and every moment matters.
Both games demand that you make tough choices. Choices that weigh survival against the needs of those around you. In The Alters, however, those people are all different versions of you. What happens when your greatest challenge isn’t just the world outside but the variations of yourself cramped in one base?
Survival has never been more personal.
Take care,
11 bit studios.