Translated by Hinh
Today—February 17th, at 22:10—I officially cleared this science‑fiction epic: The Alters. It took me 16 hours. I can’t really describe the shock I’m feeling right now—but I reached the ending I wanted. I think. I want to talk about the game’s impact on me from a few angles: the story, and what I personally took from it… It’s almost like whatever you end up playing is destined—fate always drags you toward the place you’re supposed to go. The following was written in a burst of emotion within dozens of minutes, so it may contain typos and awkward phrasing.
First: the spoiler‑free part. When we reach spoilers, I’ll put in a divider.
The Beginning of the Story
Jan—an ordinary name that sounds vaguely Eurasian—is just a builder. In a near future where advanced technology has made off‑world mining commonplace, he divorces his wife over trivialities and then loses his job in a financial crisis. Like every ordinary person who took a wrong turn, Jan panics and grabs at anything he can, finally joining Ally Company’s interstellar mining program. He’s headed to a strange planet to search for a substance that can almost conjure organic matter out of thin air: Rapidium. The pay is good, but survival isn’t guaranteed.
But I want to live.
That’s basically the game’s pitch. At the start, we crash‑land on a dead, radiation‑soaked, polluted purple‑black continent—like a shoreline of the underworld. Everyone else on the team is dead. Only Jan remains, alone, searching for a way out in a suffocating wasteland. The base is a wheel‑shaped, mobile cluster of modules; from the outside it looks like a bunch of shipping containers—pure cyberpunk aesthetics. But how could a lone Jan complete a whole team’s mission?
So he chooses to use the Rapidium he finds on the planet to create his own “splits”—in plain terms, clones. Their consciousness is computed by a quantum computer that simulates divergent life paths. Each one differs from Jan, but each one is still Jan—just someone who made a different choice at a branching point. Living alongside these other selves, you struggle to rescue yourself.
The Most Profound Realization: Soothing Yourself
The most interesting thing is this: in this game, you have to learn how to soothe yourself, and accept everything that comes from the self—unconditionally.
Jan—this isn’t really a spoiler—is not a happy man. His father is a violent miner; his mother is submissive and gravely ill. Do you run, or do you resist? The Jan who runs becomes an ordinary builder, timid in temperament. The Jan who resists becomes a technician, but also rough, irritable, highly sensitive. Can you say that someone who made a different choice is no longer Jan? No—they’re all Jan. And the “original” Jan—the first Jan—ends up re‑parenting himself, in a sealed doomsday base, untangling each self’s knot. In the process, he transforms; he gradually discovers that he is, in fact, mature and capable of leadership.
Around hour ten, I started to feel irritated by some of the other Jans’ behavior. Why won’t they work properly? This is a base‑building game. In daytime—when there’s less radiation—you go outside to gather resources. Why is this botanist Jan constantly talking about missing his wife? Why is this technician Jan so rude to me? Am I providing emotional labor to NPCs?
And then I realized—
They are all me. Aren’t these voices from myself? One part of “me” is a hopeless romantic, soft and deeply attached to family. One part of “me” rebelled against my father’s tyranny and became unable to trust others. One part of “me” carries regrets that won’t release their grip; one part clings to particular obsessions. These fragments make up who I am. The running base is like my body; different pieces of soul make me “me.” Sometimes my interior falls apart and cannot be reconciled—but as the core self, can I let them keep fighting like this? In real life, maybe I do let them fight. But in the game, the plot pushes you toward immediate extinction—shortages, collapse. The game is so meticulously made that everyone has to eat and sleep. Cooking requires combining organic matter and ingredients in the kitchen; sleeping requires building dorms. So I must reconcile the relationships between the selves.
In the game, that means I, as Jan, become the head of the household. I satisfy their hobbies and their physical and psychological needs; I feed them well and keep them comfortable. When they fight, I mediate—this one first, then that one—trying to restore peace as quickly as possible.
It felt like the game gave me a way out in real life.
⛔ Spoilers Begin ⛔
Alright. We’re in spoilers now. It’s time to analyze the personality of each Jan I met.
Over these fifteen hours, I cloned six versions of myself. Not a small number—and each one was written to the extreme.
Technician Jan
As I mentioned above, Jan’s family situation is bleak. The Technician is the Jan who stood up, resisted his violent father, and changed everything. He has been betrayed; he’s highly sensitive and rough around the edges. But he is also the first to face an existential crisis. The shell exists to hide the soft interior. He keeps thinking: if he’s only a clone, are the things he lived through real? His mother’s last words, a flower about to bloom in a park, the bench his dying mother once sat on—are they real?
Scientist Jan
Scientist Jan was my second choice. Because the Scientist is too important: without research, how do we ever leave this oppressive planet? Scientist Jan is stubborn in a very specific way. There was a time when Jan didn’t get a scholarship at university—Scientist Jan tried again for another year, and got it. He also stayed at the university, kept researching, and became a star. He is extremely rational and pragmatic; he accepts the fact of being cloned with calm clarity. But he is obsessed with achievement—always waiting for “value realization,” always wanting to publish, like so many researchers.
Botanist Jan
The Botanist is more like someone floating in midair, dreaming of a soft and beautiful romance. In his memories, he didn’t separate from his ex‑wife—he became a househusband instead. Of course… back on the Earth we’re trying to return to, the relationship between Jan and the ex‑wife has long since broken. He fiddles with plants in the greenhouse and cooks delicious food. He is submissive by nature, always turning over sentimental questions. Like a lamb.
Refiner Jan
I chose him because I urgently needed a refiner at the time. As a character, he feels flatter than the others—but practical. He’s gay, and he loves working out. As long as you build a gym in the base, he seems content. After his mother died, he moved abroad, found the love of his life—and then lost him. His lover died in an explosion on an oil rig. But that’s only his memory… On the Earth of the present, could his lover still be alive?
Miner Jan
He’s like the father—an irritable miner. But he lost an arm in an accident. The Miner Jan you clone has a complete body, so he starts to suffer phantom pain—breakdown, anxiety, overdose on painkillers…
You see: each person has the issue of “wholeness,” doesn’t he? Each Jan is different, yet converges on the same path: they are all miserable. They all ask whether, if they had done something different back then, everything would have changed. If they made a different choice at a critical event, would life branch and sprout new limbs? Would it… be different? I ask myself the same thing. What if my mental health were good? What if I could be a little braver at certain points? Everyone asks themselves this. But… it seems useless.
Four Ideas: Why Do People Exist?
One theme the game tries to explore is: why do people exist?
In the game I played like it was a job. The in‑game day starts at 7:00 AM: wake up, cook for the other Jans in the kitchen. Then assign them to work. During the day I go outside to explore, place mining outposts, search for resources. Back inside I mediate relationships, help them coexist. Scientist Jan and Technician Jan keep fighting—like the proud, sensitive part of me can never get along with the rational part. Work continues until around 8:00 PM. Then I organize “team building”—usually watching some film together.
In one short film, I heard a line like this:
What is the human self? A new civilization thousands of years later says: ah, it’s a degenerate organ in the upper chamber of the subconscious called the ego. If it activates abnormally, just remove it. After surgery, we will return to nature as a whole, ignoring the self. Humans should stop thinking they’re important! In the vast history of the universe, humans are not important at all.
That’s idea #1—and it’s also my view: human self‑consciousness is an accident, a mistake.
Of course, the game also presents idea #2. Since the clones’ memories are simulated by a quantum computer, we ask: if quantum computation can simulate a human life, what is consciousness? Consciousness is not the same as memory. Does consciousness really exist? Can you say a cloned Jan is not Jan?
I think the game offers an answer.
Halfway through, we hit a severe problem. Because the clones develop too quickly, their brains produce abnormal tumor‑like material in areas that control thinking and memory. In other words: if we don’t solve it in time, all clones will die.
There are two methods: accept a neural implant from the medical company where the ex‑wife works, or create a new Jan with no consciousness and no memories, cut out his brain tissue, and use it for ourselves.
The second option is cannibalism.
But the first option means living under corporate control—possibly forever.
What would you choose? I almost chose cannibalism. I agreed with Scientist Jan: if it’s “eating” a blank body, isn’t it like choosing to use your own stored umbilical cord blood? What’s unethical about that? I just want to live. Is that so important? I also didn’t want to trouble my ex‑wife. She’s an ex for a reason—old feelings should be finished.
But the game’s creators don’t see it that way. Look—“the company” again. The game acknowledges it’s a dilemma, but on the moral scale, cannibalism is unacceptable. I asked each clone Jan what they thought; most would rather die than accept it.
Still, I created the empty-shell Jan. We call him Blank. Blank Jan has no memories, no consciousness, no intelligence—like a baby learning to speak. The moment I created him, I suddenly decided: no, we can’t use him as a tool. He can smile. He can look out the porthole and admire the terrifying yet vast landscape, even if he can’t speak much yet. Great wisdom looks like simplicity: existence is existence. I must acknowledge the legitimacy of existence. I must believe that Sisyphus is happy. That is the answer to idea #2.
So I chose the medical company’s implant.
Then the Technician betrayed me. His last words were “I’m sorry,” and he knocked me out hard, then left. He couldn’t accept any of this. “Becoming your clone—you never asked whether I agreed. I wish I had never been born!”
That line—“I wish I had never been born”—I’ve said it countless times.
But I couldn’t understand him. We had been brothers—drinking, laughing. I saved your life. How could you betray me, take my supplies, and disappear?
Then I realized idea #3. Later you can find the Technician’s camp: he is nearly out of everything, but still refuses to come back—like my own inner self in exile. I even imagined there would be an option to beat him up. You stole my supplies, repaid kindness with hatred…
But the game offers no options to treat him badly. When you finally find him, there is only quiet concern: “Let me take you back to base,” “Do you need supplies?”
In that moment, the “original” Jan became a good-enough mother. In radiation and apocalypse, that pure, clean emotional writing shocked me. To be honest, when the Technician betrayed me, I was genuinely angry—I kept imagining what dialogue options I’d get when we met again.
These thoughts surfaced in my mind:
I created you—you should be grateful for your existence.
Why are you doubting yourself? Existential crisis? I feed you and house you, and you’re the most troublesome one—endless demands.
If you’re useless to me, I even want to erase you.
In that moment, I sounded exactly like an abuser, didn’t I?
But the game refused to let me become an oppressor. It only allowed me to treat the Technician with warmth and gentleness, trying to persuade him home.
Something hit me. I have always treated myself like this: ignoring the needs of some part of myself, and because I can’t fully understand it, choosing conflict rather than seeking coexistence… The end of self‑oppression is self‑exile. It’s as if there’s also a Technician inside me who walked into the wilderness—vast and endless, camping outside, already on the edge of life and death.
What was the Technician trying to prove? Existence? Freedom? He was asking for his rights. He wasn’t asking for much.
In the end, I successfully persuaded Technician Jan to return.
By this point it’s also time to think about the clones’ fate. If I make it back to Earth, what happens to them? Most likely, they’ll be erased. I read some strategy posts: many arrogant people said the game is boring because you have to “baby” NPC emotions, so abandoning them is fine. But I felt differently. From the moment I met each one, I sincerely treated him as a part of myself—not just a shared face, but shared regret and missed chances, real as strings resonating against each other. I treated each of them as a missing shard of myself.
My ideal is the free development of the self, and personal happiness.
But I can no longer obtain that for myself.
Yet the clones still have endless possibility—so I must send them home: back to Earth, back to their own lives. This isn’t heroism. It’s a decision I made that felt utterly real. That’s what I believed.
Then idea #4 was born. After the Technician’s exile, the base lost a key helper; everything became constrained. I began to think: can I modify my own mind and consciousness—turn myself into someone with leadership?
It sounded reasonable. The equipment was there, right?
So I tried.
That sequence left me speechless. I ran through a desert of dusty memories, and around me there were voices accusing me—teammates who died suddenly during the mission.
Then the game tries to point out one thing: those accusing voices also come from myself.
I saw the parts where I was wrong. I kept retracing my own imperfections. My bullying and betrayal were my own. The shrieks in my inner world—how could they come from outside?
Plato discusses this in dialogues like Meno and Phaedo: before the soul falls into the body, it exists in the world of Forms, already knowing all truths. What we call “learning” is not acquiring new knowledge, but awakening memories that were already there.
So that plotline didn’t simply grant the protagonist “leadership” out of nowhere. It guided him toward discovering the self.
At this point we have collected four ideas—like four elements, four orthogonal directions, four sacred words.
Now we can walk toward the end.
Ending and Nothingness
My approach to the ending was: do everything for the other clones; keep things as clean as possible with the ex‑wife; don’t interfere. Use the precious resource to bargain with the company: I have Rapidium, the most valuable thing. I only want you to preserve my existence. I don’t want to speak the full truth, don’t want to fix world corruption or the anti‑utopia.
I want “me” to exist as a whole.
In the end, I did it. I brought back to Earth the clones who wanted to return, found ways to give them freedom. I accepted legal judgment, accepted the company’s narrative…
During probation, my desk held postcards mailed from other Jan clones—different scenery, the same handwriting.
I rub my sore eyes and realize my ex‑wife lost her job because of me, and society has erupted into turmoil over the discovery of a scarce resource. So what have I become again?
Earlier the game gave us four ideas to answer the emptiness of this moment.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.