[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Act 2 of The Alters.]

Just when I got my Jans into the clear and avoided death by irradiating sunrise in The Alters’ very stressful first act, we were hit with yet another obstacle. And I’m not talking about the gravity distortions obstructing the Jans’ giant-wheel space base from advancing any further. Instead, they were staring down the barrel of doom via cloning-induced brain damage, and neither solution to the gray matter medical issue felt morally right — which made the quest all the more engaging.

In The Alters, most of your time is spent assigning Jan Dolski’s alters — clones he produces with alternate timeline consciousnesses — to tasks like base maintenance, resource mining, and making sure there’s food on the table to quell any brewing rebellions. Sometimes you get objectives that are simply to not let any alters die. Tension is high when you’re marooned on a lifeless planet with only six alternate versions of yourself for company.

But before Jan creates any of his alters, he clones a sheep to test the altering process. That sheep is Molly, the good girl who just chills in the Womb, the part of the base responsible for the biological aspect of the cloning procedure. Thankfully, you never have to worry about keeping her........

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