Hi everyone,
We know that a lot of you are curious and would like to find out a little bit more about the game. Since the initial reveal, The Alters Game Director Tomasz Kisilewicz has given 2 interviews, one for The Guardian and one for the Czech Score magazine. Below you can read the summary of what has been revealed in those interviews. Enjoy the lecture!
Who is Jan Dolski?
The first Jan Dolski is an ordinary man who finds himself in unordinary circumstances. He’s desperate to survive and get back to Earth at any cost. And those circumstances, where he is put between certain interests of certains sides, as it is often in life, force him to fight for survival, a goal he could not achieve by himself. And that’s where multiple Jans came into the scene, as it can be seen in the trailer. But his whereabouts aren’t helping him a bit. That’s why he needs the alters as his basically one and only option
Who are the alters?
The alters are the alternative versions of the same person and every single one of them is tied to a different “what if” question and its answer. So the exact moment is a very important turn that shapes the personality of a given character and defines his relationship with the original Jan. Their lifepaths define who they are, how they behave, and what they are capable of. The dynamics between the alters are crucial. Because through those interactions we can clearly highlight our main point of interest - the differences resulting from the various courses of their lives. Those paths branch at different stages or certain ages, defining their personality and - most importantly - identity. A result is a different being that is annoyed by other things and driven by different motivations. Understanding them correctly is a key to success in the game
The game’s main theme.
The idea of life's crossroads that at a certain point you live an absolutely different life is a really resonating and constantly vivid topic, so we picked it up exactly because of that. Everyone asks themselves a timeless question - what would happen if? Who would I become if I had done things differently? If I would end up being a better person? Or maybe worse? I think that every decision we make turns us into a different person. And in The Alters we want to show what would happen if you could meet all those tweaked, different personalities of yours.
What’s the genre?
It’s too early to talk about genre, but as with the themes we tackle in our games, we don’t want to be restrained also in terms of their design. So that’s why our games are a mix of things taken from different genres and we believe they cannot be that easily framed into those genres. As it is with Frostpunk, which mixed a city-builder gameplay with elements of survival games and plenty of emergent narration.
The wheel base.
We aimed for a design that can catch an eye and be distinguishable from the other science-fiction games or movies. We also might be attached to circular design after Frostpunk and its circular city. Also, the sci-fi designs are full of monocycle shapes, but it’s hard to remember any single one of that size. So we acted accordingly to the nature of what the game is about. We asked ourselves “what if”, and elevated the monocycle to enormous size.
Inspirations.
You’ll find bits of many things in our game but they are assembled in a non-obvious way. Of course, “Moon” is the first thing that comes to mind because of the setting. In terms of theme, The Alters lays even closer to something like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or the Devs series by Alex Garland. Also, our previous games surely have an impact on what we do now, especially since part of The Alters team worked on both This War of Mine and Frostpunk. But for each game we create, it’s important how the audio and visuals support and help to convey the aforementioned main theme. The key for us is not the art or the design themselves, but the overall mood they create when bonded. Let us just state clearly that despite all those fantastic works we’re being inspired by, the story in The Alters is unlike anything you’ve seen.
The psychological elements of the story.
The process of creating the alters is a purely fictional sci-fi concept, but the real-world medical cases of multiple personalities such as dissociative identity disorder served as an important point of reference on how to portray different personalities that are coming out of the same person. It is important that alters not only share the same body but also a large part of their life paths, and thus their personality. So we look at real-world multiple personality cases to best portray both the similarities and differences between them.
A great documentary “Busy Inside'' was one of the things we went through. We also looked at some clips and recordings available on Youtube. But let’s make it clear that we were searching for a point of reference on how different personalities can manifest in the way people talk, behave but we do not focus on dissociative identity disorder itself in our game. So we also went through some acting performances in the work of fiction, with a great performance by James McAvoy in the movie “Split” or, maybe a little less known, but very interesting show ‘United States of Tara’ with the amazing role of Toni Collete.
Regarding some real life references, not necessarily connected with mental disorders, the documentary “Three Identical Strangers” was very influential to me as it perfectly displays the similarities and differences between genetically identical brothers split soon after they were born.
What is the music band playing in the trailer?
It’s a Polish band named Kombi with a track called Black And White. The song in our native language wasn’t the initial pick, as we were thinking about doing like pretty everyone else and going for the English one, but once we tried that out in one of the iterations, we knew it was the one and we must get the license to use it. It was a good call since it made the announcement a bit more distinguishable.
The tonality.
The very first trailer already gives you a hint about the tonality which we are aiming for. It will be grim at times and creepy, but spiced by the surrealistic elements, and even humor and more lighthearted moments.
When and what platforms?
If you count in the concept phase, then the really steady development process for The Alters already took three years, which can give you some clue about where we can be right now. We still need more time, and, honestly, for now, we haven’t set anything like a preferable launch window. There are some borders set, since as our CEO stated a few times, the games now in development at 11 bit studios are set to be released before the end of the company's motivational program, which is the end of 2025. But we still have the time we need and the comfort of work to make our vision fully blossom. So you have to be patient here, but we can guarantee you we’ll deliver the best game possible.
Thank you for reading! Until next time!
Take care,
11 bit studios
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