Just over a year ago, The Alters came out and gave players a fun new colony sim exploration experience. Now, a new DLC expands on that original gameplay with a continuation of Jan Scientist's story. In our The Alters: Last Variable review, we'll explore this intriguing DLC built on the foundation of the original.

The Alters: Last Variable is a DLC for The Alters that continues the story of the base game on the same planet, albeit with some changes. Jan Dolski's scientifically-minded "Alter" clone — appropriately named "Jan Scientist" — has stayed behind on the planet to investigate a mysterious new phenomenon.

Terraforming a zone causes "Samples" to appear at the start of the next Cycle. These can be used to unlock permanent passive buffs at the SAM. A Mysterious Oasis

The story of The Alters: Last Variable takes place after Jan Dolski has left the planet. Toward the end of the previous game, a static base is constructed in an underground area, but it is ultimately abandoned in some endings. This makeshift structure serves as your new home.

Jan Scientist — an Alter who you have in every playthrough of the base game — is the new protagonist, choosing to stay behind to investigate something strange: an oasis that is impervious to the fiery destruction wrought on the planet on a periodic basis. His mission (and your mission) is to investigate it.

While The Alters had you moving from zone to zone in segmented chapters, The Alters: Last Variable takes place entirely in the final area of the first game.

Players of this new DLC will be spared some of the early grinding. You'll have an Illuminator and some basic upgrades that you wouldn't necessarily get until quite a few hours into the original game. That's not to say there isn't work to be done, mind; you simply get a bit of a head start.

While The Alters had you moving from zone to zone in segmented chapters, The Alters: Last Variable takes place entirely in the final area of the first game, albeit after seismic activity has drastically altered the landscape.

There's also somewhat less time pressure. Instead of trying to outrun the sun, you must go into cryostasis after a week or two to ride out the "hot period," awakening years later after the planet has cooled back down. Still, you'll often want to rush to get things done before the next cycle starts.

Your new home is a bit small at first, but you can eventually expand it to occupy more space underground. Bearing Fruit

The map isn't the only thing that's changed in The Alters: Last Variable. Jan needs Alters of his own, making each of the four potential candidates an Alter of an Alter. Since they're based on Jan Scientist (and not on Jan Dolski directly), each of the four potential Alters is a different kind of scientist.

There are no hard choices to make in this respect. Each of Jan Scientist's Alters has two specialities instead of just one, somewhat compensating for the lower headcount. As with the base game, each Alter has their own special tasks that you can (and should) help them complete, often to your benefit.

While many of the core mechanics remain the same, others have changed. Advancing your Qubit level requires terraforming sections of the map, building Field Labs, and permanently assigning one of your Alters to it. After that, you can make another copy of that same Alter right away.

Terraforming, in fact, is the main objective. Field Labs must be placed in terraformed areas so one of your Alters can observe the planet during the deadly hot phase while the rest of the team is in cryosleep. Each placed Field Lab brings you slightly closer to solving the mystery of the Oasis.

These little pockets of paradise also bring another advantage — they are protected from destruction between cycles, saving you the trouble of having to rebuild all of your machinery. That certainly matters — you'll have a lot of fun new toys to play with.

New "Substances" must be routed on the map from resource zones, through geysers, and back to your base. Altered Rapidium

In The Alters, you had to find mining nodes, place a mining machine on them, and then route a network of pylons back to your base to actually collect items. The Alters: Last Variable works much in the same way, but there are some new additions, too.

New "Extractors" allow you to draw liquid versions of materials from the ground, called "Substances." You can then place secondary transforming machines on geysers and run pipelines to transform these materials by doubling them, "phasing" them into a new form, or mixing them together.

This new form of resource generation adds some new challenges for planning out your machinery layout, but it felt a little underutilized; despite many potential combinations, you only end up with a handful of these new Substance resources by the end of the game.

Terraforming areas of the planet also generates "Samples" which can be analyzed. This analysis gives you passive bonuses of varying types, although none of them are major game-changers.

A whiteboard in the Research Lab is used to organize your discoveries and frame the overall progression of unlocking the mystery of the oasis. The Alters: Last Variable Review | Final Thoughts

All in all, The Alters: Last Variable nicely expands on the gameplay of The Alters and adds some new twists to make it interesting; it's "more of the same" in a good way, and the little changes here and there make it a worthwhile experience, especially with an estimated 20 hours of gameplay.

I did have some issues with the pre-release version of the game as I played; the game would occasionally crash on exit, and I often had huge, inexplicable framerate drops every few hours for a few minutes at a time.

Overall, though, I found the 80 or so hours I spent playing The Alters: Last Variable an enjoyable experience. It's worth a buy if you played and enjoyed the base game. If you haven't yet played The Alters, I can heartily recommend it, too.

---

The Alters: Last Variable was previewed on PC via Steam with a code provided by the publisher over approximately 80 hours of gameplay. All images were taken during the preview process.