The Alters

Introduction

The Alters strands a scientist named Jan on a hostile alien world, forcing him to clone alternate versions of himself — built from different life choices he might have made — to keep a mobile base running and survive long enough to be rescued. It's the work of 11 bit studios, the Polish studio behind This War of Mine and Frostpunk, released 13 June 2025. It holds a Very Positive rating — 89.0% across 7,250 English-language reviews, 90.4% across its wider 19,222-review all-language corpus. This review reads the 100 most-relevant English negative reviews, and unlike most of this outlet's coverage, one finding here required verification well beyond the review corpus itself: a real, confirmed, publisher-acknowledged controversy over undisclosed generative-AI content, which this review independently checked against multiple press sources rather than repeating as an unverified allegation.

A genuinely inventive, well-written premise

Before addressing the controversy, it's worth being clear about what The Alters gets right, because this review's sample is emphatic about it. The core idea — managing the friction, jealousy and occasional camaraderie between multiple clones of the same man, each diverged from a different life decision — draws detailed, specific praise across nearly the entire sample. "The characterization of Jan, Jan, and Jan really sold this game for me," reads a 590-vote review, capturing the dark comedy and genuine pathos reviewers repeatedly credit the writing with achieving. Voice performance and narrative pacing earn consistent respect even from reviewers who go on to criticise other systems, and the base-building loop draws real praise in isolation, several reviewers specifically noting the crafting and expansion systems work well on their own mechanical terms.

What this review independently verified

Here is the finding that separates this review from a straightforward "some players complained about X" report. Eighteen of the 100 negative reviews raise generative AI content directly, and rather than treat that as an unverified cluster of accusations, this review checked the claim against independent press coverage. Multiple outlets — Game Informer, Engadget, Windows Central and Game Developer among them — confirm the following as established fact rather than allegation: The Alters launched on 13 June 2025 without the AI-content disclosure Steam has required of developers since January 2024. Within days, players discovered leftover generative-AI prompt text embedded in shipped subtitle translations, confirmed in at least Korean and Brazilian Portuguese, and in at least one graphic asset that 11 bit studios said was intended only as a placeholder during development. The studio's own public response, reported across those outlets, called the inclusion "an oversight" and "not intentional," and confirmed the team had used AI-powered translation tools. That is not this review adjudicating a dispute between players and a developer — it is 11 bit studios' own acknowledged account of what happened.

This review went a step further and checked the current state of the storefront directly: as of 12 August 2026, more than a year after the controversy broke, the Steam page for The Alters contains no AI Generated Content Disclosure section at all. Whatever was fixed in the shipped translations themselves, the formal disclosure Steam's policy requires still isn't present on the page a prospective buyer sees today.

What the reviews raising it actually say

Reading the 18 relevant negative reviews in full, the tone is often one of real disappointment rather than reflexive outrage — several reviewers explicitly separate their feelings about the writing from their feelings about the disclosure failure. "A truly fantastic game ruined by 11bit studio not only using LLM slop in their art, but failing to disclose the use of LLMs," reads the highest-voted review in this review's entire negative sample, at 512 votes. "I would have never bought this game having known LLMs were used at ANY stage. PAY PEOPLE." Another, more measured: "I adore what I played of The Alters... but I cannot recommend it in good conscience as things currently stand." Dating the complaints matters here: 14 of the 18 are concentrated in the first month after launch, consistent with a genuine controversy moment rather than an issue that kept generating fresh complaints — but that doesn't mean the underlying facts stopped being true, only that fewer new reviewers have chosen to write about it since.

Real complaints beyond the controversy

Separate from the AI issue, this review's sample raises genuine gameplay friction worth reporting on its own terms. Fourteen of the 100 negatives describe rigid, high-pressure pacing — missable story beats tied to precise timing windows the game doesn't clearly signal, and long stretches spent under a stressful in-game clock that several reviewers argue works against the story's own themes about self-compassion and not punishing yourself. A further cluster raises practical friction: an unreliable or insufficiently manual save system, hard-coded keybinds some reviewers say limit accessibility, and a resource-gathering loop several describe as tedious relative to the strength of the narrative wrapped around it.

Final Verdict

The Alters is, on the strength of its writing and central premise, a genuinely excellent piece of narrative game design — this review's sample agrees on that specific point with real consistency, even among reviewers who can't recommend the finished product. What keeps this review from scoring it as highly as its creative merit alone might suggest is a fact this review verified independently rather than passed along secondhand: 11 bit studios shipped the game without Steam's required AI disclosure, generative-AI content reached players in translated subtitles and at least one graphic asset, the studio publicly apologised and called it an oversight, and more than a year later the formal disclosure still isn't present on the storefront. That's a real, confirmed breach of platform policy and buyer trust, not a matter of taste, and it deserves to weigh on a reader's decision alongside — not instead of — the game's genuine storytelling achievement.