Alterity Experience Review

I’m sure it’s considered a luxury by most fathers; the kids and wife are out for the night, leaving them home alone to do whatever they like. So, any distractions to this quiet night in are going to be most unwelcome. However, if that distraction is an alien invasion, it’s not like a cold caller that you can just ignore – action must be taken, mainly along the lines of survival.

How will a newly installed home security system work under these extreme conditions? Find out in Alterity Experience.

You are Anton, a husband and father of two who has just recently moved his family into his parents’ old farmhouse in California. Strange murmurs from nearby farmers mention oddities like their corn harvest turning purple. But if it isn’t happening to your crops then there is nothing to worry about, is there? That is, until you awaken to find your crops have indeed turned purple.

But without any answers, you must carry on as normal. As your wife decides to take the kids to the cinema for an evening, that gives you the chance to dig a little deeper into what has caused this strange colour change. Just as you begin investigating, the answer arrives. And suddenly starts forcing its way into your house.

Alterity Experience is part walking simulator, part puzzle, part survival horror game. Your main tool is a phone app that allows you to open and close the shutters on all the windows and doors to protect yourself from the external intruders. That’s the survival horror aspect covered, but the real question is why are these extra-terrestrials trying to break in when the crops are outside? That’s where the walking simulator and puzzle aspect comes into things.

You never leave the relative safety of your house in Alterity Experience, so it has to be said there is a lot going on here that this father doesn’t know about. After a brief tutorial in the office showing you how the home defence app works, your primary focus should be in retrieving certain keys. As you explore, it will become obvious which key you need to find at that particular moment to progress the story. 

Here’s the kicker though: the game will offer hints as to which room holds the specific key you need, but it will be in a random place each time you play. Whether this is to add an element of surprise or to encourage subsequent playthroughs I am unsure. However, I would lean towards the former, as you will be unlikely to want to replay Alterity Experience more than once.

Before you even begin the game, I would advise you turn down the film grain effect. At the default of 100 it makes a pretty substandard looking game come across as even worse. There is no option to increase the frame rate from 30FPS – even on an Xbox Series X – so unfortunately that is something you will have to put up with. Even running at a lower framerate can’t stop the pictures hung up around the walls popping in and out of existence as you walk towards them.

The actual tense moments where you are scrambling around trying to close windows and shutters before something more sinister enters the house actually only occur twice in the entire game. The rest of the time you are looking for keys and passcodes with no threats at all to worry about. And depending on where these keys are placed, you could be searching for a very, very long time. Speaking from experience when you get down into the bunker.

And then we get to the ending. There will be a sequence of five shapes appearing that will once again be randomised each time you play. You need to input these on another device you are carrying. However, the way these shapes are displayed is the real difficulty. Or rather, how brightly they are displayed. They are projected onto the windows you have spent so long keeping locked, but are practically invisible along with the bright light they are projected within unless you view them at a very specific angle. The brightness slider does nothing to improve things either.

The actual ‘cutscene’ at the conclusion of Alterity Experience also leaves you with more questions than answers. Cutscene is in apostrophes because it is really just a few stills with the same ropey voice acting over it. But as a conclusion it doesn’t resolve anything and much like the rest of the game, leaves you wanting something else, something more.

With the concept of being trapped in your own home by some otherworldly being, Alterity Experience comes with a bit of promise. What you get though is a game where you spend most of your time finding keys; the promised tension rarely ratcheting up. Thankfully it is short, although that just depends how obtusely hidden the keys are.

Alterity Experience is on the Xbox Store