In part, The Alters is a base-building survival experience of the kind that developer 11 Bit Studios received plaudits for with the Frostpunk series. There is Jan Botanist, Jan Miner, Jan Doctor, and more. Each represents a fork in the space-time continuum of the original Jan’s life. The result is a kind of maddeningly claustrophobic nightmare — and perhaps not wholly in the way 11 Bit necessarily intended. Original Jan, and all the other Jans, feel the supercharged, life-and-death stakes of their precarious predicament.