Alter Ego is a unique game. A rarity in the Commodore 64 catalog, released back in 1986. An irreplaceable gem with a super original premise: simulating your entire life, from the moment of conception to the day of death, through a text-based interface.
Yes, a life simulator that's 99% text, in the best "Choose Your Own Adventure" style, where every decision has a consequence. A long game for the brave, full of possibilities, with multiple endings and hundreds of questions to answer. But more than anything, it's a massive, immense, colossal personality test that, both during its development and in its inevitable end, will leave you with several very interesting personal conclusions.
Completely in English, Alter Ego begins by defining a user profile. If you want to "simulate" your own life, be sure to select the first option and answer the personality test questions. This is important if you want the player character to resemble you as much as possible (within the limits of the system, of course). The game features 12 different characteristics (physical endurance, intelligence, happiness, confidence, among others), all very important during your life's development, to which an initial score is assigned based on your answers in the test.
Then, straight to your birth. Or rather, the decisions before your birth. Do you want to stay a little longer in there? Do you want to come out calm or rather fighting? Thus begins your odyssey through your virtual alter ego's life, from the very prologue. Everything in Alter Ego follows the same logic. Situation after situation, the game lets you choose not only what you would do, but also with what attitude. Depending on your answers and characteristics, the game will then resolve what happens in each case. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
The stages of life, according to Alter Ego, are seven. From infancy to old age. The game ends, as expected, when you die. So, as in life itself, don't think your participation means seeing all the levels. You can also leave early...
Each stage in your virtual clone's life is divided into cards on a board. You can discover them in any order. Each card is specific to one of your characteristics (depending on the little drawing). The system will use that characteristic when resolving the situation in question. The questions are not always linear and have several resolutions: everything will depend on the characteristic at play and the chosen actions.
At first, many of your answers won't generate much change in anything, because children and adolescents are tolerated more easily. Once you reach adulthood, people won't have much sympathy for you if you behave like an idiot, and the consequences of your actions will be much more serious.
As you progress in the game, you can save money, go into debt, study, start and finish careers, accumulate possessions, fall in love, get married, have children, and all that stuff you're supposed to do when you're alive. Or not. As you come of age, cards with specific circumstances related to these topics will become available (on the sides of the board). Depending on your choices and characteristics, results will vary to a greater or lesser extent.
How to Play Alter Ego
The best part is that if this article has piqued your curiosity about Alter Ego, you don't have to wait a second to start your new virtual life. There are several options to play this gem.
- The simplest is to go to Play Alter Ego, choose the "Play Now For Free" option, and play it in your browser. The content is the same, just the interface is 100% web. However, each time you finish a chapter, you'll have to wait a while to continue playing. That's the limitation of the free version.
- If you want to spend a little money, you can buy the version for Steam or on mobile for iOS and Android. All of these are complete and have no waiting time between chapters.
- Finally, if you want that vintage flavor that can only be rescued by playing the original, and thanks to the power of online emulation, you just have to go to ClassicReload (a site that my friend Matías recommended a few days ago) and choose this version if you're a boy or this version if you're a girl. The C64 emulation is very good and the controls are not complex. You move the cursor with the arrows and select with CTRL. Pressing ESCAPE enables the options menu to, among other things, save and load games (though you can do that more easily from the page by clicking SAVE and RESTORE).
If you've never been in front of a C64, you might have the biggest difficulty when the game asks you to change the floppy disk. This is quite simple in ClassicReload. If you look, below the game screen there is a dropdown menu called Disk Box. All the files there (.d64) belong to one side of each disk. Alter Ego uses three disks, that is, six sides (up and down) and therefore six .d64 files. The file Altegom0.d64 is side up of disk 1 and Altegom1.d64 is side down. And so on, in order. When the game asks you to change the disk, just select the disk in question with the mouse. Then click on the screen and select CONTINUE with the CONTROL key. That simple.
That's it. A primitive version of "Roy: A Life Well Lived", long before Rick and Morty. If you have time and patience, Alter Ego is a fairly unique experience. I hope you enjoy it and have a long and prosperous life!
