Alter Ego

Alter Ego is a game that wasn't originally even in my line of sight. I have a lot of games waiting to be played, so a DOS game about living a whole new life didn't even cross my mind. However, I was browsing through the Internet Archive's collection of saved DOS games and I thought this one might be worth a go. I anticipated it to be a short little choose-your-own-adventure style game, and in a way I was right. However, this game isn't short, and the choices I made mattered more than I thought they would.

Alter Ego is a hard-hitting life simulator that pits you with nearly everything life has to offer, even the bits you would have never thought about. You are tasked with balancing your health, reputation, relationships, finances, education, and more while being given very little direction. Every choice and decision impacts your personal "stats," which in turn alter what choices you can make in the future and the consequences of those choices. What I really appreciated about the game was that I felt invested in "myself." I wanted every choice to be for the best and I often thought hard about how to live the best life that I could in-game. I learned early on that, like reality, Alter Ego doesn't pull any punches. If you make a stupid decision in a relationship or do something that could negatively affect your health, you'll feel it a thousand times over.

In the adult phase of life, I made the mistake of not monitoring my diet too closely while I focused heavily on my career and my family. The negative impacts of my dieting choices led me to have a condition that could either degenerate my quality of life greatly or be fixed with surgery. I was still in charge of bringing in the finances to support my family, so I decided to try the surgery with the hope that I could continue working, but it failed and I died in my sleep. That's where the game ended, no follow up, no telling whether or not my family would be okay, nothing. When my time on the in-game Earth was over, the game was over.

Beneath its cover as an innocent life simulation, Alter Ego is a hard-hitting game that actually made me consider the importance of the decisions that I make in my real life. Although I don't think I will be playing it again for a while, it is definitely an experience that I recommend to everybody with the opportunity. It's even easier to play now that it has a "remastered" release on mobile devices and on Steam, so, at the very least, keep it in the back of your mind.
This game is available to play in its original form on the Internet Archive (as of 1/5/19): https://archive.org/details/msdos_Alter_Ego_1986
The remaster is available on Steam at this link (as of 1/5/19): https://store.steampowered.com/app/664780/Alter_Ego/
The remaster is available on Android at this link (as of 1/5/19): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playalterego.android&hl=en_US
The remaster is available on iOS at this link (as of 1/5/19): https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alter-ego/id329703516?mt=8

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