The Alters

After crash-landing on a dangerous planet, Jan Dolski must keep a mobile base moving ahead of a lethal sunrise. He uses the base’s quantum technology and local resources to create alternative versions of himself, then relies on their different expertise while balancing survival, research, and the needs of a complicated crew.

The Alters begins with Jan Dolski stranded on a hostile planet after a space expedition goes wrong. The environment is dominated by intense radiation and a sun that makes remaining in one place increasingly dangerous. Jan has a large mobile base, but it is too complex for one person to operate while also repairing systems, researching technology, and gathering what the crew needs. No rescue is expected to arrive in time. Survival therefore depends on turning the base into a working home and finding a way to keep it moving before the approaching daylight makes the surrounding terrain lethal.

Jan’s unusual answer is to use the base’s quantum computer and a rare planetary material called Rapidium to create Alters: alternate versions of himself whose lives followed different paths. They are not identical copies in outlook or ability. Each has a distinct skill set that can help with the expedition, along with memories, regrets, and a personality shaped by choices Jan did not make. Their expertise gives the small crew capabilities it otherwise lacks, but adding another person also adds needs and relationships to manage. The premise makes a question about paths not taken into a practical survival system: which versions of Jan can help the mission, and what does their presence ask of him?

The mobile base is both the centre of operations and the crew’s shelter. Jan can adapt and upgrade it as the group grows, using its rooms and equipment to support research, production, and life-support needs. The base must provide for the Alters as people, not just serve as a convenient menu between expeditions. Food, working systems, and the arrangement of the interior all connect to the broader problem of sustaining a crew under pressure. Research opens technologies that can improve what the base can do, while manufacturing turns collected materials into equipment and supplies. The different demands compete for time and resources, so base development is tied to decisions about what the group needs most urgently.

The planet cannot be handled entirely from inside the base. Jan has to leave its safety to explore, investigate anomalies, and mine materials needed for fuel and research. These trips expose him to radiation and other dangerous conditions, and each expedition takes place against the advancing sunrise. Gathering one more resource may help unlock a needed technology or keep the base functional, but staying outside too long increases the danger. The central movement between shelter and surface gives exploration a clear purpose: secure what the crew needs, then return before the environment closes the opportunity. The clock shapes how much Jan can attempt on each outing and makes preparation inside the base part of the same survival loop.

The Alters also treats the crew as a collection of people with conflicting needs rather than interchangeable specialists. Every Alter arrives with a different history and can see the mission through a perspective that Jan may not share. As the group expands, tensions can grow around how the expedition should be handled. Jan must keep the crew together and attend to their mental state while relying on their work. This brings the story’s alternate-life premise into the routine of survival: conversations and relationships affect the atmosphere aboard the base, while the crew’s skills affect its ability to function. Managing people becomes as important as assigning technical work, because the mission depends on cooperation among versions of Jan who are not simply extensions of his will.

Progress emerges from balancing those connected systems. The player must decide how to use time on the surface, which resources to bring back, what to research, how to improve the base, and which Alters can contribute to the crew. A stronger facility can support further exploration, while new expertise can make additional work possible; each step still depends on supplies and on keeping the crew functioning. The setting supplies pressure, but the premise supplies the human complication: Jan’s helpers share his origin while carrying different experiences. The game combines science-fiction survival, base management, exploration, and character relationships into one expedition, following a crew whose route forward depends on both the planet’s resources and the lives that Jan might have lived.

That structure gives the story two linked scales. On the surface, Jan faces a hostile landscape, hazardous anomalies, and the need to keep moving ahead of the sun. Inside the base, he has to build a sustainable operation and maintain a working relationship with the Alters who make it possible. Neither side can be ignored for long: collecting materials without developing the base limits what the crew can accomplish, while staying sheltered leaves essential resources beyond reach. The game’s central tension comes from making those demands coexist. The alternatives created to save Jan may help him solve immediate problems, yet their separate personalities ensure that the mission is also a confrontation with the consequences of different versions of his life.