I was watching the Q&A interview with Alex Jordan and finally figured out who the head writers for the game are - two women. I can't wait to see what they do next. I'd love to watch a Q&A with them to learn about their inspiration. Alex says that they wrote the game in English, not their native tongue, Polish. Quite a feat. They made this game what it is.

Check it out (timestamped): https://youtu.be/lOCbe5TSQtk?si=aYz5BJNXKT0HvNbQ&t=295

Major spoilers ahead.

I just finished the DLC. I was inspired to write this after seeing a thread pointing out that the overworld resembles a human brain:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAlters/s/CNEt5ahVbq

After seeing that image and reaching the ending, I’m convinced that Last Variable is fundamentally a psychological sci-fi horror story.

Read on at your own risk.

We ultimately never learn what the planet is, whether it possesses anything we would recognize as sentience, or whether there is conscious intent behind what it does. The writers masterfully leave it as a mystery and a deeply unsettling one at that.

In the final act, we discover that Jan S. has been trapped in the same loop for 319 cycles, spanning more than 19,000 years. But the game has been telling us the truth all along, beginning with its very first line of dialogue.

I spent most of the DLC assuming that we were playing as the immediate successor to the original Jan S. I never considered just how many Jans had already come before us.

The new Alters also feel less like explorations of different possible lives, as they were in the base game, and more like manifestations of Jan S.’s competing internal impulses.

The Physicist and Geologist embody ambition and forward momentum: press onward, consequences be damned, and transmit the ZPE generator findings to Earth ASAP.

The Biologist and Chemist embody caution and restraint. They urge Jan S. to stop and consider what his obsession is doing to him.

That brings me to the “lost journal” found near the waterfall.

The relevant passage:

>The conviction that I have reached is that the Oasis would not exist here, were it not for my presence. Were it, for example, the Miner who ventured into that part of the planet, or the Botanist, an entirely different event would... [illegible] ...that would mirror their deepest inner need, as the Oasis mirrors mine...

It strongly evokes Silent Hill 2, where the town reshapes itself around the guilt, trauma, and psychological wounds of each person who enters it. The horrors are not random. They reflect something within the observer.

The Siren Effect did not begin with the Field Lab Alters, either. It brought Jan S. to the Oasis in the first place. He was already under its influence long before he understood that influence existed.

We still have no idea why the planet behaves this way. Jan S. compares humanity to simple two-dimensional creatures living on part of a leaf, incapable of comprehending the larger organism to which that leaf belongs.

That is a genuinely terrifying, Lovecraftian idea: whatever Jan has encountered may be so vast and alien that the human mind is structurally incapable of understanding it.

The Final Choice

The ending presents a brutal choice. Jan S.'s choice is the last variable.

Continue the cycle without any assurance that the next attempt will be any different, only the accumulated evidence of hundreds of failures and thousands of years of obsession.

Or choose the finality of death.

That is what I love about 11 bit’s approach to storytelling. As in the base game with the Rapidium illness cure, neither choice is clearly “good” nor “bad.” There is no triumphant rescue, no definitive solution, and no ending in which the heroes win and everyone gets to go home.

Your friends are gone. The original Jan is gone. Earth may be effectively unreachable, and we have no idea what happened to humanity post-Rapidium.

All that remains is the choice between continuing the search and accepting that the answer may never come.

Sitrep and Endgame

I played on Hard and finished in eight cycles.

Because I already understood the economic systems from the base game, I never encountered many serious resource problems. Once I terraformed the landscape and established my outposts, production snowballed quickly. I expanded the base to its maximum size, built every room and repulsor, and never had meaningful morale problems.

My run was so optimized that I probably will not play through the DLC a second time. I played the base game twice because my first attempt was an absolute train wreck.

My final choice: I continued the cycle.

Knowledge and discovery at any cost.

Ending it felt like surrender. After everything Jan had endured, and after everything I had done to get him there, I didn’t want to stop.

I’ve gone this far. I’m just going to keep going.

The Gameplay

What I Liked

I’ve seen complaints about the pipeline and substance-mining mechanics, but I enjoyed them. They expanded on one of the most entertaining systems from the base game: building an industrial network and gradually optimizing it.

Finding the best routes and combining accelerators, phasers, and doublers became a satisfying logistical puzzle.

Piotr Musiał crushed the soundtrack once again. Alex Jordan is a king. The sound design is a big reason why this game was so good.

What I Didn’t Like

Hire an English copy editor, 11 bit. I’ll volunteer next time because you guys are so effing cool.

I noticed a surprising number of typos and misspellings in the English subtitles.

I had also originally hoped the DLC would function as a “B scenario,” with the Botanist’s Lena traveling to the planet instead of Jan. During the Physicist’s storyline, I quietly hoped that Cathy might somehow be materialized after her consciousness was created in the quantum computer. It would have been fascinating to finally introduce a female Alter or at least an Alter-adjacent character who could permanently join the crew.

The new Alters also felt far too disposable. Once one was assigned to a Field Lab, you could immediately clone him again.

In the base game, losing an Alter carried real finality. Here, repeatedly recreating them undermined some of the emotional weight of sending them away.

What Comes Next?

Probably nothing involving Jan’s story.

The Alters is an extraordinary journey and a triumph of science-fiction storytelling. 11 bit had the courage to develop a genuinely unusual IP while building on the survival systems it has refined since This War of Mine.

It is one of the most memorable narrative-driven games I’ve played in years. I’d even say it is probably the most memorable since I played Outer Wilds.

But I suspect Last Variable is the end of the Dolski saga, and possibly the end of the central Alters gameplay loop. Jan’s story has reached a fitting conclusion. Trying to explain the planet or definitively resolve the cycle would probably diminish what makes the ending so disturbing.

It may be time for something new.

I hope 11 bit takes everything it learned from the game’s design and player feedback and eventually returns with another original IP, stronger survival mechanics, and another story willing to leave players with impossible decisions.

Thanks, 11 bit, for the ride.

P.S. I may be slightly biased. I now own two Alters desk pads, a hoodie, a Displate poster, a backpack, and a T-shirt.

The official merchandise is genuinely well made, so if you’re wondering how to support 11 bit's work beyond purchasing the game, check it out:

https://tiltloot.com/collections/the-alters

Sharing Cait Conley’s campaign statement on ICE this morning because I think this is the kind of response the moment calls for.

There is no contradiction between demanding accountability for horrific abuses and recognizing that governing requires more than a slogan. When federal agents kill people, the answer cannot be reflexive defense of the agency, indifference, or simply accepting that nothing can be done. It requires investigation, consequences for those responsible, and serious reform of the institution and the leadership that allowed it to happen.

We should be able to have a serious conversation about how immigration laws are enforced, what powers federal agencies should have, and what fundamental standards of conduct and accountability we expect from the people carrying a badge.

This is the work that actually has to be done.

For those of you following the NY-17 race and receiving campaign mailers, you’ve probably seen the recent negative attacks from the Davidson campaign accusing Cait Conley of having ties to what Trump’s ICE is doing.

But when you actually look at what’s being alleged, the connection is extremely tenuous.

From what’s publicly been described, Cait did freelance work related to counter-drone and public safety systems for New York-based companies: the kind of technology used to prevent attacks at stadiums, public events, and crowded civilian spaces.

There’s no evidence she was personally involved in immigration enforcement policy or ICE operations, and a lot of people online seem to be making sweeping assumptions about technical work they don’t actually understand.

What makes the attacks especially hard to take seriously is that Davidson herself has disclosed investments in companies with much more direct ties to the same surveillance, AI, and federal contracting ecosystem she’s criticizing.

According to Davidson’s own disclosures (public as of yesterday):

• She held Oracle stock, despite Oracle’s well-documented work supporting DHS/ICE infrastructure
• She invested in Vertiv, which profits heavily from AI and data-center expansion
• She owned large positions in healthcare and pharmaceutical giants deeply tied to federal contracting and lobbying

For example: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mythics-inc-awarded-dhs-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-cloud-bpa-301706868.html

(Source disclosure filing: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2026/10076946.pdf | Her 2025 filing showing big health insurance investments: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-pdfs/2025/10063522.pdf)

You can absolutely have a broader debate about AI surveillance, government contracting, or the national security industry. Those are legitimate issues. But it’s difficult to view these attacks as principled when Davidson’s own household investments are far more financially connected to that ecosystem than the freelance work she’s attacking Cait over.