A Mindbending Survival Game From the Team Behind This War of Mine - The Alters 

8:11 That's the scary part: there's no sensation of radiation, only the consequences

I'm calling it now the person on the other end of the emergency line is actually an alter that had no choice but to strand himself on the planet so that he could fulfill the loop that brings about his own creation.

Death coming in 8 days. Splat: "8-5 seems like a good work day." Ah, unionized hours even in the face of imminent death.

When Neil Armstrong was on the moon he said when he closed his eyes he could see streaking and blinking lights. They were solar and galactic particles firing his eye nerves as they ripped through his body. Fun to think about.

I just started watching but I would like to add... they made Frostpunk too. Not just This War Of Mine. I watch these guys like a hawk. One of the best game makers.

I see Splattercat decided to build his womb high up on his base. I guess he likes to have a womb with a view! .... I'll see myself out.... ;)

The first ever cloned sheep was named Dolly! Naming this one Molly is definitely a reference. Also, if you sense radiation it has already killed you. Most of the victims of Chernobyl did not know they had received lethal doses of radiation till a week afterward when their insides turned to goop.

New splattercat lore: he has geology powers but is weak to wooden weapons

WOW - that timeline thing is REALLY well done! Like WTF seriously this is better than 9/10 AAA titles! Insane!

Clone: "What is my purpose?" Splat: "You fix the lever."

That's not a clone, that's the you that never was, created here out of necessity. Neither of you is any less real than the other. Wow, great concept.

Lol, "19 year old me was a terrible person..." Right there with you.

OMG you had me rolling once the Highlander clone paranoia kicked in, “There can be only one” 😂😂😂

“Let’s break one off in the quantum computer” I laughed way too much at that 😂

My dude, I have seen all I need from the name and thumbnail...... Yes, I will buy this game, please take my money! Oh by the way Splatt, if you see tadpoles in your vision or white streaks like in the game, then you're in trouble. That's literally the radiation particles hitting your optical cones within the eye.

There is no direct sensation to being irradiated, no. However many people(not all) report a metallic taste when in an irradiated environment. you cna see this hinted at in the chernobyl miniseries where both the control room operators, and the firefighters talk about a metallic taste.

Game is gorgeous, and from the bit of dialogue, it looks like it's set in the Gliese system, which is a Red Dwarf Star, Gliese 12b is an earthlike exoplanet (which I am presuming was/is the aim of the mission). Pretty nifty take on the sci-fi survival genre.

"Oh nonononono don't you go all fuzzy on me" as the video also starts artifacting because of the static

I've been playin the demo for this, and honestly my only real gripe is that you can't walk/jump over small rocks/debris forcing you to walk all the way around sometimes; otherwise it's pretty solid

This is a fascinating take on these survival games in a sci-fi setting. The idea that computers advance so far that we are able to not just simulate entire alternative paths in life, but reliably create a body for you flash-imprint that simulation into a viable living body. What a trip! It really asks questions about identity, how personalities form, etc. Then we get to see these "mind records" interact with one another? That is so freaking cool! Definitely going onto my wishlist. This plot would make an excellent film or novel.

11 bit studios always makes fun and interesting games, and this one definitely looks the part too

A very cool idea, although I would certainly end up murdering my clones at some point. One of me is enough to deal with.

This deserves a full walkthrough series!!

Dude this is what death stranding wish it could be, def on my wishlist now.

man, this is nearly an hour. I know the algorithms bone you unless you cater to them so this is a treat :D I do miss the longer running content and the lets plays from the good old days :) Game looks dope too. I kinda get Death Strandring vibes from the art work in a way, like the suits on the wall inside the base. Very nicely done and looks pretty intriguing. Looking forward to see what happens with this one. Thanks for doing what you do Splatty.

This was possibly the most impressive demo I have ever tried. Definitely buying the game. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn and Enotria: The Last Song were pretty good too. And Goblin Cleanup was a sort of cute DnD themed Viscera Cleanup Detail.

23:14 "A sheep! I'm not alone anymore! I'm gonna name her.. Eve."

8:30 from my understanding theres no sensation until the radiation sickness sets in and by then its far too late. Though UV radiation will give you a bad sunburn (arc flash from a welder)

wauw they put in a real life easter egg in the game. the sheep called Molly is the first ever cloned animal and it was a sheep.

I was hooked ever since that first, cryptic trailer with 'Black and White' blasting. Gameplay is not exactly what I expected, but if there's actual management and stuff, then it's a welcome surprise, because I thought it would be a fancy walking simulator. Definitely jumping on that one when it releases.

This is kinda amazing cause you would get the idea that you should know how each of the different Jans would react based off of your main Jan character... except they probably all lived drastically different lives so they would react completely differently from how you may think they would react.

A geologist? Splat, my large igneous province’s ignimbrites are thoroughly rustled

For those who don't know, you can have acute radiation burns which during exposure actually feels like burning, and you can generally feel 'heat' or 'tingling' coming off of radiation sources of all wavelengths. Generally though, the danger is hard to evaluate as sustained exposure from most sources, particularly gamma radiation causes the most problems being far less overt (you'll slowly get sick without an obvious indicator), whereas a sufficiently high immediate dose can immediately cause a highly unpleasant sensation that results in sickness but then a slight recovery before it goes downhill... much like the Demon Core experiment where all involved were hit with a massive burst of radiation which they could physically feel and see, but belied the inevitable danger and suffering they'd experience later on. Generally speaking you can sustain many hours of lower doses of radiation and even become sick from it, but have a full recovery given proper medical care and removal of the radiation source.

The Jan we start as definitely isn't even the original! What a story :)

I live near the Columbia plateau, lots of basalt flows. So there are spots where you get plenty of columnar jointing. Cool stuff.

I've bought so many games and wish-listed so many more based on the excellent coverage you provide; you really do a fantastic job. Let's face it; Indie's where it's at for ideas, creativity and value - this one looks really promising: a big step up from TWoM in fidelity terms.

Played the demo. Instantly became one of my favorite gaming experiences this year. It looks, plays and sound amazing and the creativity is crazy.

@23:37 Good name, Dolly was the first cloned mammal

38:10 That was excruciatingly funny, now my entire body hurts from laughing

4:45 they aren’t actually painted, if you look closely, they’re just rock of a different color.

"...I'm a force of entropy that somehow accidentally stumbled his way into a "stable" life..." I feel ya bro...

Thank you for adding "columnar jointing" to my lexicon.

This game demo blew my mind. I'm not very sure about the survival part, even though survival is my most favorite genre, but the story plot of this game is amazing. I wouldn't be surprised, if this also comes out as a TV series, in which each episode introduces a new Alter, and end up having tons of clones at the end for an ultimate plot twist. Glad this will come out on Xbox Game pass, but otherwise it would have been an instant buy for me.

Bruh this is like a quantum version of death stranding, and I'm totally here for it

I heard this from a guy who worked at Chernobyl "Uranium radiation tastes like metal. Plutonium is sweet"

I absolutely love the innovation in this - totally immersive sci fi survival. Excellent! Thanks for introducing it to us with your signature lol comments Splattercat!

I would take DNA samples of the dead crewmates and bring them back.

@42:00 good thing they had already anticipated your overwhelming desire to kill your clone. 😆

8:12 The sensation and giveaway of being in a highly radiated area is puking your guts out and coughing blood ☢🤢🤮🩸

Nope, there is no sensation of being irradiated just like there is no sensation of inhaling carbon monoxide.

This looks like a really creative reimagining of Mr. Prepper.

Having done some pretty extensive NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) training in the military there's no physical or tactile signs of radiation, just the beeping of the geiger counter.

i am pretty sure that by the time you feel the sensations that mean you've been hanging out in too much ionizing radiation, you have been ionized too much and are soon to be very ill, if not dead (especially if hanging out near things like the Elephant's Foot). this is why Geiger developed his Counter.

Should have named it "This Mind of Mine"

Almost an Hour Long Splatt-Video :O This is amazing, the game is amazing! Thank you so much!

At least with this scenario, you have a bit of an advantage over your clone in 2 ways: 1) You're the one who gets a sneak peak at the other guy's life before waking them up, so you know a little more about them than they know about you. 2) They're pretty sedated (and possibly helpless?) when they first wake up.

I keep seeing Pedro Pascal every time this guy takes his helmet off :)

This one looks super interesting. Appearance is good, movement good, level of mystery super high, which is good. Have to keep an eye out in the future.

this concept is insane .... much to keep in mind and many ways for story to go...

This was probably my favorite game from the nextfest demo

This game is really mind blowing. The inter personal reactions are going to be insane.

You know it's good if Splatty has nearly an hour of it 😁

Filing this under "good studios have bad days, too"

You ask about being able to tell if you're being irradiated while the game is showing you what you would experience. All those little dashes of white light that were cluttering the screen? That's the Cherenkov radiation that happens inside your eyes if you're exposed to ionizing radiation. So the game was being pretty realistic while you're wondering if you could smell it instead. Note that not all forms of harmful radiation are actually going to produce the Little white flashes in your vision.

That mechanic of the station zooming in and out is freaking crazy cool.

This is a cool concept. And looks really impressive so far.

Don't know why this reminds me of an old indie game called The Swapper. Because both have similarities in space/alien planets, and both can clone each other. I know they are incredibly different from each other, one being 2D while this one is full 3D and certainly different mechanics and objectives.

The beginning of this game reminds me The Solus Project a lot!

holy shit. what a great idea to mix with base/colony building. I'll need to wishlist this game.

8:13 The scariest part about radiation is that there is no sensation telling you that it's there. Even extremely high amounts. You don't know until you start to fall apart.

How could you have missed this one, its Demo is indeed phenomenal. Can't wait.

Yay! Glad you're reviewing this. I have been looking forward to this game for a year.

This looks super cool! Definitely one I’ll be interested in checking out when it releases.

The game looks fascinating, the only thing that bothered me was how & when they introduced the sleeping mechanic. If someone had just told me, "You're in immense danger and if you don't complete these tasks in 8 days, you will die", I sure as hell wouldn't be wasting time sleeping. It would be more believable if Jan stayed awake for 3 days, working nonstop, and then crashed and at that point the game told you "you need to sleep each day to maintain health and efficiency".

Damn this game has so much potential. If they lean a little on rpg elements in a way with the whole stranded/alternate realities, which seems they are going to. Also dealing with the Alters personalities, they could raise/lower the difficulty of pacifying/recruiting them depending on how much you know about them or how much they differ from you. So, say to need a captain or scientist version, but this is the complete opposite from the original you, you'd need to improve respective stat prior to branching or study the alternate life, which could add other dialog/action options. If they tap into personal improvement with the MC experimenting with all the other alternative lifes he could've had, or just outright learn from them it would also be awesome. That or they revolt and kill the MC, which is probably what is going to revolt around to. Btw, the quantum computer seems to also have life info on the rest of the crew, MC could probably fetch DNA from the escape pods. Why not branch/revive them? I know this is more work with voice actors and models, but it makes sense MC would eventually resort to help from the crew, instead of just himself. Unless they mention the radiation has cracked the crew DNA enought that it is useless, although the corporation could easily have this on the computer, like, much easier than to store lifetimes of memories.

You sold me with the Mushmeal jingle dude

That static at 9:40 absolutely decimated the bitrate and video quality haha

Felt immersive from the start surprisingly well for me, wow! Looks amazing!!

Tried the demo, and while it's not really up my alley, I've got nothing but admiration for the devs and their willingness to try some off the wall stuff.

Don't worry about having enough Rage to be the IT guy. The Rage builds as part of working with Carbon, day in, day out... for 30 years :P

this looks so good! I only watched a few minutes - I might buy so don't want to spoil it!

Molly is a ref to the first sheep (Dolly) that was successfully cloned :) Wee easter egg hahah

New words of the day “columnar joining”.

Dead Space remake was amazing I loved my time with that game.

This is like Moon. The movie with Sam Rockwell. Good flick.

Love how splat plays a game for once with gorgeous graphics and doesn’t make a comment on it, if it was 8 bit ugly graphics we’d have to hear about 1/3rd of the video about how great the pixelart is.

I appreciate how you noticed the geology, I saw it and immeditely thought "Lazy game designers" Cliche "cool rock formation"

I see this becoming a "We are Bob" situation sooner or later

Man, just look at what indie video games look like in 2024. Not only can they look unusual and different, these days (and with the right studio) they can show more production value than most AAA releases. Pretty incredible.

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical all have similar countermeasures. There are two types of radioactive exposures... emitters and energetic particles. The particles do dmg to your cells similar to how bullets out of a gun will hurt you. So a blast can kill you with just the energetic particles... however, the far more insideous killer is external or internal exposure to a radiation emitter. Emitters are the source of the energetic particles and they will wreak havoc over time. That's why you get the guys in the rubber suits... you don't want bugs or toxic chemicals inside or in contact with you as much as you don't want to swallow a machine gun that will keep shooting you until it decays into another element. TLDR - gas mask and rubber suit is to keep out the emitters, it won't do anything about the energetic particles, but those you can heal... the emitters just keep on killing you.

It's funny how people are all like, "I'm killing my clones" Me and my clones will be like, "okay, are we... gonna try it or what? We might all die soon anyway."

"There's got to be some kind of sensation that lets you know you're in an irradiated area right?" Nope. That's the problem with radiation by the time you experience physical symptoms most likely it's too late.

50:59 No, you live in a series of interconnected lunches boxes in a wheel.

8:38 No, there is not a sensation or anything to be seen, heard, or smelled, except you may first notice dehydration from which you cannot seem to recover because of the early death of cells in your mucuous membranes and intestine. By then, you could be in very serious trouble. If you suspected dangerous radition and if you had no dosimeter or Geiger-Müller counter, you could scavenge things and build a very simple and portable Kearney fallout meter (KFM), which does not need electricity. However, you must be careful not to mess up building it, and you must know how to interpret the KFM, and both tasks take some careful attention. A KFM is usually fragile, and you must also keep it very dry, prefferably with some kind of dessicant such as gypsum or sillica gel. Otherwise, if there is radiation, you will likely get false negative results.

Mash the mush meal. On theme. Love you Splatt.

Next person you need to pull from the timeline and clone is a therapist Jan :P

Daaamn, this is MOON: THE GAME

8:40 AFAIK, nope. Human body cannot feel the radiation. But the electronics totally can. The get statiky instantly.

Some astronauts have mentioned they could see flashes of light while their eyes are closed at night. They speculate it could be from high energy particles.

What I learned from this video: Splat is a stocking enjoyer!