The Alters Interview - Bringing Personal Connections to a Survival Game

While I was in Poland last week, I had a chance to speak with Game Director, Tomasz Kisilewicz, to discuss the changes that have been made in the past year. My appointment came up pretty early in my play session, but we got to talk about changes in character movement and updates to take the pressure off players so they can explore and interact with the story. Plus, we discuss designing a game like this that crosses the barriers to multiple audiences and get into some juicy details about how much impact players can expect to have on the story.

I've taken a little extra time to add a transcript of the interview in case it's easier for you to read through rather than listen to the audio for one reason or another. The text is lightly edited for clarity and readability.

And of course, if you haven't watched our hands-on preview yet, be sure to check that out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orGmEm-RbB4
-Bloodworth


Tomasz Kisilewicz, I'm the game director of The Alters.

Bloodworth: I didn't even remember scheduling an interview. If I did… It's like, “Hey!” “Oh, I have an interview in ten minutes?” I had no idea, and I didn't get further than I did last time yet, so…

Tomasz: We can have a nice, casual chat about the game. So yeah, I'm pretty sure you're early on, so you probably didn't see so many changes from the last year.

Bloodworth: Yeah, I think one thing that stuck out to me is, I think he's got a backpack now that he didn't have on before, maybe, and his running animation’s different.

Tomasz: He did have a backpack, but now there are physics for the backpack, but the locomotion, the whole movement, had big, big improvements. And even since that build, in the new build we’re also adding some nice little touches because we're doing the motion matching technology for the movement, which can give you very nice realistic results, but it's very tricky and requires iterating from us on the system, on the configuration a lot. So I'm really happy with the team and our one technical animator for doing amazing stuff to pull off those changes.

It's great, you know, that we can do animations like this and the TPP [third-person perspective] element of the game with such a small team today. It's a great thing. That's why we, like five years ago, moved to Unreal to be able to pull off things like that with smaller teams.

Bloodworth: So yeah, the animation and making getting around the world feel like a more natural part of it. Because you guys were supposed to launch in the fall, right, and you pushed back…

Tomasz: We didn't have a specific date, but we were aiming for late fall of ‘24. But you know, Frostpunk 2 released already in the fall. So it was a very tight schedule, and we felt like we wanted to polish the game. I think everyone (the board, the marketing, and our team) we felt like this game is so special for us, and so it requires a proper polishing and some time to not be rushed. So we decided, yeah, let's have this half a year to polish things out, to add what we wanted to add. But we were rushing before. Now I think it feels more polished and more complete. Complete is, I think, a good word. Nothing is missing from my perspective.

Bloodworth: So what were some of those things that (if they're spoilers, I understand) but what were there some changes gameplay system-wise?

Tomasz: We expanded a lot on the exploration mechanisms and the survival mechanisms, first and foremost, because we were always mixing those genres.

We were like, always, “Okay, is it too survival-ish to have strong narrative because you have to repeat big chunks of the game? Or maybe we should go more into a different direction?” So, we were doing a lot of testing on that, and we felt like we needed to have stronger survival elements. So we changed a bit of the approach on how you progress through the acts and the story.

We noticed from the playtests that because you have the sun that's burning you, and it's your counter, when we show it to the player from the beginning of the act, they feel very pushed all the time, and that's not nice.

So, we decided to split the act into different phases, and in the first phase… (You will see this in Act One. I don't know if you got there yet. Because the Prologue is already in the final phase of the sun.) But in Act One, the first phase is telling you that the sun is still far away, so you can focus on the story, on the relations with the alters, all of that. And then it's getting closer. And then when it's getting really close, we're showing you the counter again. And nothing changed when it comes to the amount of days. It's fixed. It's real. It's not like we're doing something.

Bloodworth: Right ok, it’s just that pressure.

Tomasz: Yeah, because we designed the flow of the game to really have some time early on in the act, and in the middle, to have some time to have fun with the systems, to have fun with the alters. But because there was always the counter, and you never know what kind of task is behind the corner, the player felt the need to rush stuff even though we didn't want them to. So we really changed that approach and also, we did it with expanding some systems. So, the closer the sun gets, you have a smaller amount of time to spend outside, the radiation is stronger, there are new anomalies, there are new things to be picked up outside. So, there is this risk-reward thing going on. Before, the acts were the same throughout the whole playthrough. Now, this is really ramping up each phase.

And one thing that we felt like we never had enough time to do before was the anomalies. We never wanted this game to be an action game and with no shooting, but we wanted to have some dangers outside. And we had them from the beginning, the sun, the night radiation, and the anomalies. But the anomalies was the element that I think was the weakest before. We felt like that's where we want to really...

Bloodworth: Yeah, I don't think that before we even got into that stuff.

Tomasz: It's because it's introduced in the middle of Act 1. We did it on purpose. We didn't want to throw everything on you at first. And also, we didn't want to give you this impression that this is an action game when you will be dealing with this all the time. So that's gradually coming in.

But we had only one type of anomalies, and they were like those invisible areas where you had some detectors to figure out where they are and just navigate between them, but now we’ve created different kinds of anomalies. It's like six types of them, and you're uncovering them throughout the game.

They're a bit more like STALKER anomalies when you have to figure out how this one works, and they're affecting the time and space, distorting things. So, you have to figure out how it works, how to avoid it, but also later on in the game, you can research stuff to destroy it.

So, on one hand, it's giving you more variety in the ways you want to play it, and there's this nice progression of the game, but also, it expands on this action element we have in the game. I think it's really nice to have this activity that's more, second-to-second fun gameplay.

And that's still ahead of you. So, tomorrow we can catch up, because especially after today's second part and tomorrow, we're showing parts from the second act never shown before, and anomaly-wise, that's the heavy part of the game. So we can chat after that to see how you found it.

Bloodworth: Nice, nice. Yeah, it's interesting to me, you guys blending these kinds of genres together, because in a way, it's the bridge, but it's also this risk of alienating both sides. Because I'm one of these people where, yeah, I'm much more attracted to exploring the environment, and this crazy interaction with the alters, and trying to handle the different moods, and the timelines, and things like that. And usually, I'm not so much of a survival, base-building kind of guy.

And it's not even necessarily that I don't like them. It's more that I'm not attracted to them. Because if I get into a Civ, or when I got into Frostpunk last year, when you guys brought me out, it was like, “Oh, I really like this,” as I'm playing it, but then it's not the thing that I go and grab, right? But then it's like, “Oh, somehow six hours went by,” because I'm juggling all of these things.

Tomasz: What you're saying is something that from the beginning, we knew this. We want a strong story. This is very narrative-driven, and we want a branching story, more RPG-like, where you have different choices and things. But then we really want to make it a survival because it fits. You need to survive the situation. So, gameplay-wise, mechanic-wise, it's good, and we have good experience with Frostpunk and This War of Mine before — our team is coming from This War of Mine.

So, we were like, okay, how do we handle it? And to be honest, five years in the process, we're still working with it. We're still tweaking it, and that's when we finally decided to make difficulty settings, and we're switching them. There's separate difficulty settings for economy and this sort of base building aspect of the game, and separate ones for the agility, more action elements. Because I'm pretty sure there will be people coming from action-adventure games interested in the story, and the economy might kill them. And it's a survival game, we want to kill them, but maybe not kill them so many times.

Or then the opposite, right? People coming from the hardcore Frostpunk side come to play our game. They might find this too easy, and then the action elements might be killing them, because they're more about optimizing stuff. So it's great that you can tweak it to your liking. For the hands on event, I think we just made it standard, just to simplify the experience for you, but in the final product, you have those different switches.

And, you know, the game is so iterative. We have so many focus tests where people are coming to our office. We're inviting gamers, fans of our games. “Hey, let's play The Alters.” Not big groups because we have this little room where we can test it out. Then we talk with them. “How did you like it?” And we're always trying to find different groups of people. Okay, this is the person that loves Frostpunk, but that's the person who loves Uncharted. Let's see how the survival element for that person is.

Bloodworth: Yeah.

Tomasz: You know, it's risky. There is fun in this risk, but yeah, that's why I'm never… because we don't have a benchmark.

Bloodworth: Right.

Tomasz: Many times when you're making a genre game, you know what you're competing with, and you can one-on-one compare the elements. We can't really compare. Of course, we can compare the movement with a different movement, but the game experience, all of it, and even the bigger chunks, like the survival elements. We can't really compare it with, I don't know, Subnautica, because it's so different in different areas. So we're testing it.

Bloodworth: Yeah. And then, (obviously you don't want to get too much into spoilers) but in terms of the narrative itself, how much branching is there? Is it like a Life is Strange or a Detroit: Become Human or something like that, or is it more of — the story goes where the story goes, but it changes based on who you have with you?

Tomasz: Yeah. So it's realized on different levels. I can say the main story has one big branching point in the middle where the rest of the story is strongly affected by the choice you make in the middle act. Then based on the final choices, we have like six different endings.

Bloodworth: Okay.

Tomasz: But also those endings are a little changed because of — How good were you with the corporate mission you were doing? How much Rapidium did you gather? We're doing those little things that are affecting the endings, but basically like six main situations you can end up in at the end.

But, that being said, way more choices are within the alters’ storylines. So, first of all, you decide which alters you're creating and which alters are going to be with you at the end and what you're going to do with them at the end because that's a big thing for the late part of the game. “How do we handle this situation once we get back, if we get back?” This is not normal stuff, right? Coming back, it's not like Ryanair landing, and you're like, “Hello, guys!”

Bloodworth: Or does the corporation want you to come back? That's a big question.

Tomasz: Exactly, the whole politics of the corporation and the plot that's happening later on in the game. But you decide which alters you make and then you decide what you do within their storylines. It's like side quests. We call them alters storylines. There is the main plot and then each alter has his own story, his own needs, narrative-wise, and there are choices you will do. And this will affect his outcome and his ending.

So, similar to this War of Mine and Frostpunk, we also have this part at the end of the game called End Log, which is showing you the decisions and the choices, apart from the more gameplay and cinematic part of the ending.

Bloodworth: Yeah, I like that.

Tomasz: But then underneath, there is this whole layer of smaller decisions and emergent situations that are coming from the systems, from the economy, etc. So, depending on what alters and what combinations you have in the room, they might have a fight over the quality of the food, or maybe one is afraid about the radiation coming from the outside, or maybe one dislikes the fact that you've wasted resources on building a gym, but the other one loves it.

And this is the whole system that it's not making big story changes, but it's making different outcomes, very different experience for different players. I think, especially tomorrow, if you talk after playing the later part of the game, talking to other people, you'll see, “Oh, it's so different than what I had.” Why is that so? Because you got different alters, right?

Because the beginning is very linear, of course, it's a tutorial, the prologue. You're learning stuff, learning the systems. You're taught to create a certain alter at the beginning, and then it opens up, and then you make your choices.

So, the more choices you make, the later part can be very different between players, and of course, managing this is hard. Because you can have an idea, and you can have plenty of alters or one, and we want players to have good gameplay, if they have one alter or seven, you know? So balancing that is tough, but I think when it works, it really works, and it's really nice.

And it has this “one more day” syndrome. That's what I'm saying, because even on Steam, I have like 1000 hours right now logged in from playing the game, and I don't know how much on stand-alone builds, way more probably, and in editor. But still, even though I'm playing it for the 100th time, I'm like, “One more day! I'll see what I'll do with the economy and with the plan and with the alters tomorrow.” So that's what we were aiming for.

Bloodworth: Nice. So, say you're in a Frostpunk 2 type of situation and you totally blow it, what is the rollback? Because again, with the narrative, you don't want to go through the whole tutorial and everything again.

Tomasz: Yes, exactly. So, you have a save system that basically saves the game every day. You can decide how many days you want to go back, too. Sometimes you did something wrong and it's easy to go back just one day. But sometimes, there is the snowball of problems, so you want to go back a few days, but it doesn't happen that often. I think the repetition circle in The Alters is shorter than in, for example, Frostpunk. The snowballing effect is shorter. You have different failure states in the game. You can die of radiation or from anomalies. You can be overthrown by the rebelled alters if you don't treat them well. The sun can burn you. The base may blow up, and other story-related events that can happen, but you usually don't roll way back.

But if you have to roll and make different economical decisions from like five days ago, you also have this, I think, very helpful system. Because there could be a lot of dialogues that you went through, and you made some decisions, and you want to make sure you make them, or change them, but you want to be aware. So we are underlining the dialogue choices that you made before...

Bloodworth: Oh, that's great.

Tomasz: So you can go quickly through what you want, or you can stop somewhere and say, “Ah, I actually want a different choice. Let’s see how this turns out.”

Great chat, we can continue at the party or tomorrow.