Frostpunk dev's quietly very cool survival game where you manage relationships with your alt-universe selves gets delayed to next year

When I played The Alters at the same preview event where I also tried to establish turbo-communism in Frostpunk 2 earlier this year (it could have worked), I came away very much surprised. Games that pitch themselves as survival-anything don't tend to do much for me; I struggle enough to survive in real life.

But The Alters—kind of Subnautica plus Midnight Suns except instead of Wolverine and Blade you’re juggling your relationships with several clones of a working class Polish guy—actually hooked me. It's based around cloning what are, essentially, alternative-universe versions of yourself: The one where you became a scientist to help you research tech, the one where you became a miner to help you gather resources, and they all have their own weird stories. In this lifetime you stayed with your wife, in this one you went to university, in this one you stood up to your abusive dad, and so on.

A cool idea that I want to see more of. Alas, I'll have to wait longer than I thought. Despite having an initial release date of this year, the game's been pushed back into "Q1 2025." In an in-character post shared on X, "The Everything App", the devs at 11 bit studios said they were "using this extended time to optimize all mission-critical systems and ensure that every aspect of your journey is as seamless as possible."

In a less charming but more straightforward statement shared with Polish outlet Bankier.pl, 11 bit president Przemysław Marszał said that a tight production schedule meant (the following is machine-translated) "There was uncertainty as to whether the developers would have enough time to complete all the work in the quality we all expect," and that taking that kind of risk was "unnecessary" given how long the game had already spent cooking.

As ever with delays, I'm disappointed and glad all at once. Disappointed because, hey, I liked what I saw of The Alters and would like to get my hands on it sooner, but glad because I'd rather the devs have all the time they need to get things ship-shape before they push it out the door.