"Despite being a new IP, The Alters feels like a high-quality remake of a 1990s PC adventure game in all the right, and a few of the wrong ways."
Singleplayer.
The Alters very much reminds me of the type of life sim- adventure games hybrids that were popular in the 1990s on PC and to a much lesser extent the original PlayStation.
While I appreciate The Alters‘ unique narrative, engaging mechanics, stunning visuals, and the overall concept of the game, some aspects of gameplay feel dated, with certain aspects such as scanning for ore being far more convoluted than they need to be.
While there is an in-game guide that does a passable job of explaining new mechanics, I did not feel it did an adequate job of explaining how scanning works, and while I figured it out after a quick Google search and a bit of trial and error, I feel that core mechanics such as scanning should be presented in a much more user-friendly manner, with players being forced to deploy, collect and redeploy probes multiple times before any real progress is made.
I would be fine with this system if the UI for placing and retrieving probes was more user friendly, as while I like the concept of players having greater interaction with the scanning mechanics, the current system feels cumbersome, and far too dependent on a UI that does not feel fit for purpose.
While our exploring I was stopped from stepping down off the side of a ramp by an invisible wall and was instead forced to walk down the ramp almost all the way to the end before being able to continue my journey, while this is not a deal breaker It did make the world feel artificial and far more like a map in a game, than a potently hostile and unexplored world.
I experienced a similar feeling of disappointment while out exploring, when my only option to scale the small ledge was a very specific location with visibly a different to the texture to all the rock around it.
This feeling of disappointment was compounded only moments later when I discovered that every climbable area looked exactly the same, which was very noticeable in areas where I was forced to climb repeatedly to reach my destination.
Despite its flaws The Alters is still one of the best AA titles to release so far in 2025.
However my appreciation for the game, its developers, and their willingness to try something unique, does not blind me to the fact, that it does suffer from the occasional lack of polish and has more than a few rough edges, such as:
At just $34.99 for the base edition, The Alters is excellent value for money, and is part of a growing trend of “mid priced AA game” that the wider gaming industry needs to embrace wholeheartedly.
It was not so long ago that the AA game was a mainstay of the gaming industry, but somewhere between 2010 and 2020 things started to change, with AA titles becoming a rarity while the new release chart was almost exclusively populated by full priced AAA and budget friendly indie titles.
With the time and costs required to make AAA games growing generation after generation, I would love to see publishers of all sizes invest in creating more AA titles, especially now that subscription models such as Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus make the AA bracket more viable and potentially profitable than ever.
I am not one of the people who claim that the game industry is dying, or that the AAA market is doomed, while there have been some high profile failures of late, there have been an even greater number of successes, it is the volume of new releases (both good and bad) that create this false perception.
That said, The AAA industry rarely is able to take the same risks that an indie studio such as 11 bit studios is able to take, and as a result the AA and indie market is often a major driving force behind the discovery and creation of new and interesting genres and subgenres, with titles such as Vampire Survivors, and Arma II having given birth to entire subgenres, and in the case of Arma II multiple subgenres including Zombie Survival, Battle Royale and to a lesser degree extraction shooter.
While Arma II, and in particular its DayZ mod were not the only catalyst behind the creation of these genres, it was critical to the formation of the genres as we know them today, in much the same way that AAA titles such as Call of Duty and Destiny have played a huge role in shaping the FPS genre into what it is today (for better or worse).
The gaming industry is not and should never become a monolith, and there is a place in the industry for titles such as Call of Duty that continue to iterate and innovate on a proven formula year after year, and also for AA games like The Alters created by studios like 11 bit studios, who are able to take risks that AAA publishers cannot afford to.
The Alters is a survival video game developed and published by 11 bit studios, it was released on 13 June 2025 and retails for $34.99.
The Alters is available on the following platforms: PC, Playstation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
The Alters supports the following peripherals:
The Alters is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
The Alters is a fantastic game that somehow manages to feel both familiar and unique at the same time, while it is a little rough around the edges in places, and certain mechanics are not very user-friendly, its unique narrative, engaging mechanics, low retail price, abundance of content, above average performance and stunning visuals make it very easy to recommend all the same.
I would love to see the developer return to the franchise in future, either in the form of a sequel or a director’s cut, which addresses the few minor issues I have with what is otherwise one of the most interesting and unique indie games to release in 2025.
We found The Alters to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
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