The Alters, the 2025 survival game we reviewed last year, is getting a substantial paid expansion called Last Variable on July 13 from 11 bit studios. In our review, the bigger draw was less the moment-to-moment gameplay than the story and the rotating cast of Jans you build and live with, plus the plate-spinning balance of competing tasks and choices that actually shape how things play out. Last Variable leans into that, adding roughly 20 hours centered on a new story for Jan Scientist, who stays behind when everyone else leaves the hostile planet to chase a phenomenon called the Oasis.
Investigating the Oasis means leaning on specialized versions of Jan, including Geologists, Biologists, Chemists, and Physicists, each an Alter who shares his face and rough history but not always his beliefs. That difference matters in how they’re used, since Jan enters long stretches of cryosleep to ride out the planet’s extreme conditions while his Alters get assigned to Field Labs to keep working on the surface. Because time hits them differently, years can pass for those Alters, and their perspectives, priorities, and relationships drift in ways Jan doesn’t expect by the time he wakes.
The new loop runs on terraforming, turning barren, hostile regions into lush biomes, with each success reshaping the world, unlocking resources, and provoking stronger planetary responses like earthquakes and radiation waves. Players build an underground base across different soil types, unlock new structures, and research upgrades like the Cryosleep Chamber to survive longer and see the long-term fallout of their choices. Each planetary cooldown then opens a window to explore the transformed surface and push research further through the Field Labs.
Last Variable arrives July 13 for PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC, the same platforms the base game launched on. 11 bit studios hasn’t settled on a standalone price yet, saying those details will come closer to release. For now, the expansion is bundled into the game’s Deluxe Edition, which is running at a discount ahead of the July launch.
