The Alters is a weird sci-fi survival strategy game

11 Bit Studios, the makers of games like This War of Mine and Frostpunk has a new IP coming called The Alters.

It’s a deep dive into a sort of odd science fiction concept. The protagonist, Jan Dolski, is a regular worker whose ship crashes on a distant planet. He’s both stranded and alone. Starvation and death are right around the corner. He has too much to fix alone and nobody left to help him.

So Jan Dolski does what any of us would do: He brings alternate versions of himself into existence to lend a hand in fixing things.

“These are not clones. They are the alters. Alternative versions of the same person,” said 11 Bit Studios’ Tomasz Kisilewicz, in a statement to GamesBeat. “Each alter has a different skill set necessary to achieve success, but players have to take care of every one of them. And each one of them has a unique personality resulting from their unique life path. How those life paths go and how those relationships are built — it’s entirely up to you as a player.”

It’s a clever way to make things work. Clones wouldn’t make sense since clones wouldn’t bring new skills to the table. But what about a version of yourself who went to trade school instead of becoming a writer? That could be useful.

The Alters’ development team is mostly staffed by the team who made This War of Mine. So even if the pitch is a little out there, you know it’s gonna do something interesting.

Another fun fact: The big rotating wheel that contains the ship is an actual concept for generating artificial gravity called a von Braun wheel.

It might not be relevant to the game at all, but I think it’s cool.