This game reminds me heavily of Frostpunk, which was an fantastic survival city building game. Like Frostpunk, Alters feels streamlined - stripping away some complexity without feeling as if its compromising depth. And just like Frostpunk, the scenario or narrative provides a great context for the gameplay to hang from. The actual mechanical game loop is fairly addictive, but the sci-fi narrative adds a great flavoured layer - you always want to just have one more go. The game mechanics also seem pitched just right, so frustration never kicks in. Perhaps I'm still in the perfect goldilocks period with the game, but I really should stop typing here and get back to the game. A few hours in and my only criticism would be the very slow dialogue - this may just be limited to the english language version. The voice acting is adequate, but not compelling. But perhaps I'm being impatient because I just want to get back to the core loop...
This is an extremely polished title that is filled with adventure around every corner. The game can be approached in so many different ways narratively, and the same applies to missions and combat. Frankly, it boggles the mind how the developers managed to wrestle so much into such a perfect package. There is a lot of playtime in this game - and even before completing it, I'm already wondering how I might approach things differently on a second playthrough. Surprisingly, it also works extremely well if you use a controller (with the UI changing to a more console-friendly size).
