I Was Late to The Alters’ Jan Miner Party

The Alters feels like a natural evolution of 11 Bit Studios’ distinct approach to the resource management genre. This War of Mine is a harrowing experience that lays bare the horrors of everyday people caught up in a greater conflict, while Frostpunk demands tough sacrifices to keep an isolated city alive in a harsh post-apocalyptic world. But The Alters takes these titles’ emotional and mechanical cores and puts an existential sci-fi spin on them while adding more free-form exploration and an even deeper choice-based narrative. And while everyone’s playthroughs are driven by personal inclination, my own tale involving one of the first Jans most will likely wake went down a much different route.

Major spoilers below for The Alters.

The Alters Made Me Break a Years-Old Habit

I am a creature of habit, but 11 bit studio’s The Alters has managed to make me break from that habit, which speaks to its sheer quality.

I Didn’t Have Jan Miner Until Act 3 of The Alters, and it Was a Wild Ride

Everything Was Going Fine for Me in The Alters Without Jan Miner, Until…

After acclimating to the core loops, building a few key areas of my base, and waking up Jan Technician and Scientist as the story demanded in Act 1, I felt I had a good handle on the situation. Act 2 of The Alters then started off decently for me. I was well-prepared going into it, or so I thought at the time. With Jan Scientist and Jan Technician holding down my base and researching upgrades, I decided the next best Jans were the Worker and Refiner to speed up production. As Jan Dolski Prime, I did the mining myself, setting up a solid circuit and collecting as many resources as possible each day, focusing more on one or the other depending on needs.

Once the issue of the brain mutation arose, I thought to myself, “Well, obviously I’ll need Jan Doctor.” So there was my next Jan, costing precious Rapidium and time, but surely of all the professions, he could fix this. I next chose to create Tabula Rasa, intending to save him and started constructing implants. But by then, I realized I had to get going. The sun was nearing its zenith, and I only had a few days left to solve the greater problem and escape the zone.

Compounding that, I was running low on organics for fuel and food and thought that I really couldn’t afford another Alter mouth to feed. It quickly became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to make all the implants, and I was forced to experiment on Tabula Rasa to save everyone else before the sun burned us all. I gathered just enough fuel to move the base out of danger on the very last possible day, but my decision to follow Maxwell’s plan didn’t go over well, leading to my conundrum in Act 3.

The Alters: Original Jan’s Original Job in the Original Mission is More Original Than You Think

The Alters goes out of its way to dismiss the original Jan Dolski’s job on the mission, but its importance to the narrative should not be understated.

My Jan Miner’s Story in The Alters Was Short and Bittersweet

I managed to scrape by Act 2, but Act 3 was where things really started to get dicey. My choice with Tabula caused the rift between the Jans, and I lost the expertise of the Technician, Refiner, and Doctor. My first goal was to find and reunite them. I discovered their outpost and was dead set on bringing us all back together. The rebels needed me to make them a costly care package, but my supplies were already dwindling, having barely enough stock to sustain the Jans who stayed. In a moment of weakness and a callous case of min-max metagaming, I looked up the outcomes, heartbroken to discover that the Tabula Rasa path was the worst of the two, creating a greater divide that would never fully heal.

I soon found myself in a dire position. The base was being battered by a magnetic storm, everything was breaking, and I was scrambling to keep it from falling apart entirely. We weathered the storm, but I was now well and truly stuck. I desperately needed an extra hand to recover, and since I happened to have saved some Rapidium, it was finally time to form the Miner. Here, I must mention that my own profession covering games regularly exposes me to spoilers. I try to avoid them when possible, but, pardon the pun, it’s an occupational hazard. Thus, I knew much of the Miner’s story ahead of time, and would use this foreknowledge to my benefit.

Once he was part of my crew, I let him use the painkillers twice before putting my foot down. As I knew would happen, Jan Miner then amputated his arm, taking him out of commission and risking our survival yet again. But by that point, the final days were closing in. So I had the Scientist research the prosthetic arm and when the Miner recovered, I immediately (and guiltily) put him on overtime duty each day. Luckily, I also found the item that boosted his mood, which eased his burden and kept him going. Combined with my own frantic efforts, it was just enough to achieve the “It Ends in Flames” ending. Jan Miner stayed with me until the bitter end, and I was able to safely smuggle him along with the Scientist and Worker off the planet, albeit with a less than optimistic outcome for Jan Prime.

I do feel bad about leaving the dissenting group of Alters to their fate, as it makes my version of Jan incredibly selfish and perhaps reflects a part of my own psyche. My only defense is that I saved who I could with the time and resources I had, but it still stings. Yet I’m happy that Jan Miner made it home, even if my time with him was briefer than most, and I wasn’t able to fully connect with him. The thought that he’s somewhere out there, though, making the most of his new life is at least some measure of comfort.