I don’t remember the last time I actually anticipated DLC, but The Alters: Last Variable is a content drop I’ve been impatient to play for over a year. The Alters, a game about clones marooned on a tumultuous alien world, ends on a cliffhanger. One of the clones, Scientist Jan, forgoes rescue to continue studying the planet’s time-bending physics and the nature of a tiny oasis in the middle of a barren landscape.
The Alters: Last Variable picks up in an unexpected spot: the end of that scientist’s life. In his final moments, the elderly Jan uses the cloning machine to produce a younger version of himself to continue his work. We’re reintroduced to the world as a clone of a clone, piecing together our intended project from fragments of research left behind by our dearly departed self.
We learn from his whiteboard that most of his work was based on assumptions that proved to be wrong. Our freshly minted Jan is left to start from scratch. From here, the gameplay follows the same core loop as The Alters. We research, build infrastructure, collect resources, manage our base, and create new clones to help out.
“The Alters: Last Variable picks up in an unexpected spot: the end of that scientist’s life.”
There is a major structural change, though. Instead of having to fuel up our mobile base to outrun the rising sun, we inhabit an underground research facility where we ride out the incinerating daylight. Like before, we’re in a race against time to stock up on supplies, explore, and do science. After a few days, the sun will come up for 13 years and destroy everything that isn’t inside the base. If the Jans aren’t safely in cryosleep by the end of the cycle, they’ll grow old and die. This leads to one of the most rewarding game over screens I’ve seen in some time.
When the cycle starts anew, the Jans emerge from the ground like egg-headed cicadas. The twist is the Oasis: it’s never affected by the sun, and anything we leave inside it survives. Our mission becomes studying why and terraforming the map to leverage its power. Every new area we terraform opens the map in new ways, allowing us to change the flow of our resources, collect new specimens, and move more efficiently. But to explore every corner and reach new terraforming locations, we’ll need to upgrade our suit and research new abilities.
This kind of purposeful backtracking changes the tone of the gameplay, shifting it from simple adventure and survival into a kind of hard-sci-fi Metroidvania. The slow build toward this change over the first few hours is phenomenal. You can feel the gameplay becoming unfamiliar even while repeating the same tasks you’ve been doing since the original game. Every new cycle starts with purpose and pressure, but is driven by the genuine thrill of exploration. Not to mention the growing evidence that something is deeply wrong with our situation.
“This kind of purposeful backtracking changes the tone of the gameplay, shifting it from simple adventure and survival into a kind of hard-sci-fi Metroidvania.”
But then, quietly around hour 10 (roughly the midpoint), the story starts to run out of steam. Some of the narrative threads unravel into limp noodles. The interpersonal drama between the alters has yet to materialize, and none of your decisions seem to matter at all.
A good example of all of these problems combined is the research stations. There are a total of three spots on the map where you can build a sun-proof science hut. To run it, you need to assign an alter who will remain alone on the surface world for 13 years while you slumber. Sentencing someone to over a decade of risky work, solitude, and growing old should be a contentious decision—but it’s not. None of the alters care enough about being sealed away in the research tomb to even talk about it. They just quietly tuck themselves away and start working.
When you visit them during the next cycle, they have little to say and don’t seem to have done much science. Each alter you’ve damned comes up with one insight before making it clear that they’re quiet-quitting science to just enjoy life alone on the surface.
But if you find yourself missing the clones you’ve turned into hermits, don’t worry: you can just make them again. This copy of a copy of a copy of a copy will wake up, read his orientation manual, and get right back to work. Will they ask about or visit their aging self? No. Of course not.
The most interesting thing about the original game was watching the different Jans deal with discovering they’re clones. At the heart of the story was helping these versions of Jan find purpose in life after being created for tasks they never chose, all while living in a world that was constantly trying to kill them.
Last Variable gives us a cast of Jans who, in their own worlds, are the smartest guy in every room, yet are now forced to play a supporting role to another clone. The problem is that this creates almost no tension. They don’t even seem to care that they’re clones. From a character perspective, it makes sense that the science Jans would be more interested in getting to work than hashing out their emotions, but in a story, a colony of emotionally detached geniuses is totally flat.
“Last Variable has occupied my thoughts constantly in the week since I finished it.”
As the story progresses, the dial tone becomes more prominent, eventually building toward a boilerplate sci-fi twist that’s as unearned as it is uninteresting. None of the decisions matter, none of the work amounts to anything, and we’re left with no new insights into the bigger picture. The twist sets the story up perfectly for a New Game+ runthrough, but decides to just end.
Did I have a bad time with The Alters: Last Variable? No, not at all. I ended up playing it twice. At its core, it’s a game that takes a unique set of mechanics and subtly warps them into something entirely new. It’s an ambitious DLC that gives players plenty of time to struggle and thrive in its sandbox. The story takes a winding path that never quite arrives at a satisfying destination, but the journey itself is perilous and fun. My disappointment comes from all the interesting things that almost happened and the potential left on the table.
With all that said, one mark of a good game is how well it sticks in your mind. Like The Alters itself, Last Variable has occupied my thoughts constantly in the week since I finished it. It’s a DLC that The Alters fans should absolutely play, though it’s easier to appreciate when approached as its own story rather than an extension of the base game. That’s an oddly qualified recommendation, but if there’s ever room for cognitive dissonance in a review, it’s for a game about a reality-altering planet.
