Alter Ego

This game is fun enough for the price (I believe I bought it on sale). It is definitely outdated and some of the results of the choices you make don't make sense to me. It's a lot of black and white scenarios. It's interesting, but I'm not sure how exciting it will be to play and click through several times in a row.

A fun little game. The content is quite dated covering mostly the time and feel up to the late 80s.But there are worse things than reliving once own youth if you are old enough to remember these times.

I played this over a decade ago, and kept failing. Got abducted by a child predator, died by eating rat poison, etc.

First time playing it again got the ultimate ending, became master businessman, two children, loving marriage.
Not really that much reason to play the game after that though.

Very interesting game but too black and white and unrealistic in a lot ways that seem unfair. Some of the outcomes don't really seem to make sense. Other than that, I like the premise a lot, but only liked the game a little.

Preface:

This is one of the best life simulation games I've every played, right up there with The Sims 3 and The Sims 2. It's probably one of my favorite games. As an adolescent who grew up under turbulent conditions, playing this game sorta helped model for me how to go about handling myself in certain situations.

I recommend this game - just not the paid version.

Cons:

Here's the thing, this game used to be free and you could play it online on the author's site with a donation model. The author now charges for the game but offers no new features or fixes to the game. The inclusion of achievements alone could warrant the price tag. I bought the game because I never donated when I played this as a kid because I didn't have a way to.

Just about every screen of the game has the author's name at the top.

There can be some buggy spots with stats and relationships in the mid to later parts of the game. It's not clear in certain scenarios if the game is aware you're in a relationship. Then there are modules that seem harmless, but can instantly end your relationship with someone that you've worked on for some time.

The game is set in the 80s which is when it was originally made. It is nowhere as easy today for people to save money, afford college, a house, or a family. In a way the game frankly feels somewhat removed from being like a life simulation game.

Pros:

The game has that "one more turn" feel to it.

There is replay-ability here as you can't do all the modules in one play through.

The game handles adult situations, which you can opt out of, pretty well for the most part. The game was made by a psychologist, so it can be insightful at times.

I don't think Peter J. Favaro understands the true complexity of the human mind. Many choices I made straight up wouldn't work or, worse still, resulted in a screen that essentially told me I was wrong. This is a very bare-bones life simulator and extremely dated. Pass it up unless you have nostalgia for the 80's.

I played this on an old 8 bit system and had a lot of fun. This is a great creation for the PC/Steam, just like the original. There was a male and female version, not sure if this has the female version.

As interesting as Alter Ego can be, several limitations and absent features of the game end up dragging it down, and combined with its length and price, I don’t really think I can recommend it at the time.

To elaborate, for a text game made in the 80s, it really is extensive for its time, covering a lot of the basics of what one expects to do in “life,” like start a relationship, go to college, or get an education. At times, the text can even genuinely be humorous, heartwarming or tragic (or a combination of these), and some unexpected events can throw the player for a loop.

Sadly, there are still a few big limitations in playing the game that add up. The fact that each life stage has a limited amount of turns before automatically continuing can mess up one’s plans for how to go through the game, leading to sudden interruptions and maybe even things going too fast. Certain choices feel like they only have a right and wrong choice, and the inability to return to earlier stages or to even redo choices make the game more annoying rather than feel like one is making important choices (sure, maybe not being able to redo choices is meant to imitate real life, but it’s still annoying).

Alter Ego is indeed pretty ambitious and remarkable enough for a game made in 1986. However, it’s limitations and annoyances add up and interfere with its “life-sim” aspects, meaning at the end of the day, it’s just not interesting enough to replay. While I wouldn’t recommend Alter Ego due to these factors and what I feel is a relatively high price, I still think, at the very least, it serves as a functional prototype for what could be a unique and fun experience, if one can make some small but crucial quality-of-life improvements.

It's an old game, and it holds up in some ways, and does not in others. Overall, the actual writing and general "gameplay" are solid, the frustration comes from it having an excess of random instant-death choices sprinkled in a game that is otherwise a calm, fairly serious, even intellectual life simulator. There is no save feature, and the game is both quite long and not very randomized, so you can easily be reading for an hour or so and having a good time, then suddenly plot from something wholly unrealistic and have to start over from the beginning and try to replicate your choices going over the exact same things in order to get back where you were.

The UI also leaves something to be desired. It is actually a downgrade from when this game was hosted on its own website, it now uses a modified Choice of Games format that makes the statistics far less intuitive to reference and which cannot even go full-screen, which seems like the bare minimum that would be expected.

It still is an interesting work and enjoyable, but the frustrations of random stupid instant-deaths that require a full restart are more than enough to make it (for me, at least) more trouble than it is worth. This is not Dark Souls, you're not supposed to 'git gud', and that they did not even bother to add a 're-do' option or save feature when porting this casual life simulator really cripples an otherwise good work.

First and foremost: The price of this game is obscene. It was published in 1986. I know how little work it took to slap this together with copy/paste and some simple illustrations. It was released before I was born, by all rights it should be total abandonware. I don't begrudge anyone a bit of grift, but 9 CAD for something that was developed by people who might be dead by now?

That said, this is a pretty interesting slice of "gaming" history. You'll find there are some very dated social mores demonstrated by both your character and others, though the narrator is generally quite passive and neutral about such things. Call it an caricature of middle-class life in the 1970s and 80s, with frequent winks and nudges at human frailty.

Basically, you get a whole bunch of tiles to choose from in each stage of life. You pick tiles, events happen, choices are made; consequences are suffered. There's a primary tree of one-use tiles, plus two flanks of persistent tiles that will grow in number and complexity as you age; these secondary event tiles attempt to store some information about a particular facet of your character's life, and provide opportunities to explore new activities and decisions. It has a fairly impressive degree of flexibility for what it is.

Having said the best about it, here's the worst: some of the persistent tiles, such as marriage, vocation, finance, education, etc. are not well cross-integrated; that is, events which can occur (sometimes very unexpectedly) from selecting those tiles often do not account for the status of other tiles. You might "help a friend paint their house" as an activity, and suddenly find yourself cheating on your spouse, only to have their existence functionally overwritten with your new love interest. Sometimes this is presented as a decision, while other times a player is blindsided by a sudden loss of character control.

The time investment involved in getting through a run of this game is not insignificant, and so I can't say just how common this sort of problem is. I can say, however, that you should expect to run into it.

I like this game, however it is rather unfortunate and annoying how it forces you to be heterosexual. it doesn't let you explore your sexuality at all. That's not realistic.

I have two gripes with this game that made me uninstall

A) More than once, I ran into the issue of making a choice and having the actions from that choice be entirely different from the way I believe it was worded. I can understand why you aren't allowed to go back on your choices, but the lack of that feature makes incidents like this really sting.

B) Not having any idea of how long you have left in a given period of life (or even the fact that there's a choice limit at all) is a huge problem. Just doing college will completely ruin your chance at anything else in young adulthood, and that is both unenjoyable as a player and unrealistic.

It's a very cool premise and a well written game, but a few parts made me go from loving the game to not even finishing

For a long time I've wanted to play a game that simulates a whole life. I'm not sure why, I suppose to play out the fantasy of being someone else, or making different choices. Alter Ego is the closest game I've found that does what I had in mind.

This game was originally made in 1986 for the Commodore 64. It's almost as old as I am! And it was written by a doctor of psychology. In the game you play through the various stages of life from baby to old age to death. The gameplay consists of addressing you with a problem, asking you how you feel about it, and then what you want to do about it. Then the game will tell you the results of your actions.

The game often doesn't give you many choices, however. Either in how you feel, or in what you do. So, despite there being a large volume of life experiences, you might not feel like you're really forming the kind of person you had in mind. Also, as far as I can tell, the choices you make don't actually affect the life experiences that you have, so at age 50 you're going to have trouble with your boss no matter how you play the game.

Also, this game is really played through the lens of the writer's own biases on how to live your life. He will literally tell you when you've made the 'right' or 'wrong' choice. And sometimes you get chided for the stupidest stuff, like choosing not to steal, or for doing what you're told, when developmentally you're at the age that you should be rebelling.

Anyway, so it's not so much a life simulator as it is life according to some doctor from the eighties.
Overall, I really didn't enjoy this game. I give it 1.5/5 stars. The guy's smarmy tone really bugs me.

I first found this yesterday as a free to play web browser game. I had a lot of fun, except for the fact that after every chapter, I had to wait a set amount of time before the game would let play again. The game linked me to its Steam page where I could buy it and not have that problem, so here I am.

There is no audio, which is fine with me. This is also mostly a text game, so you'll have to do a lot of reading. From what I can tell, this game was originally released in the time of the C-64, so it's also a classic.

This is a fun game, but I'm disappointed by the rigidity of your lifestyle. You HAVE to be straight, there's nothing about being rich or poor or other certain varying life circumstances that would have made the game more in-depth. I'm not sure if it's worth $8, but it's definitely fun to play.

Having played this a bit, I can say that this game really needs a continue mode. Some choices are a bit too rigid and final, and it is not fun to replay just because you didn't realize how draconian the game can be.

There needs to be more games like this of course, and the execution can be better. Ultimately this is a game about the psychology of "what is normal," with a little "awareness of how life is tough" thrown in. However, it could go further in allowing greater variation in life stories. Some choices seem to lead to the same result every time, where they would serve better as likelihoods. This limits playthrough value.

Without giving spoilers, there are some options that will always lead to get-rich-now situations if taken. Life isn't like that, and this damages repeat playthrough value. Most choices are therefore not really different for different protagonists. The game becomes routine and mundane very quickly.

Alter Ego. Live your entire life over in endless ways. Want to drink bleach as a baby and die? Go ahead. Feel suicidal enough to end your life? Not the best way to go, but it's an option. Attempt to run away from a child kidnapper? Too bad, he catches up with you and you're killed. Play with a gun? Your friend shoots you. Or instead of dying before middle age, try getting married.

Get stood up at a date? Sure! Want to try to get married or engaged? Be prepared to be stood up multiple times and even left at the altar!

If you're lucky, you'll end the game a married man/woman, have kids, a house, whatever.

Or die of cancer. Or at a baseball game for senior citizens.

This game is complex, deep, and what most modern games lack for "choice and consequence". It's a proper life sim that lives up to its 1986 original.

1986/1986: Would have an affair with the landromat girl again.

Really enjoyable game for its age, I can see it has large replayability as long as you are willing to experiment different choices. I dont know if i read slow but it took 1 and a half hour to complete a session till 'Old Age', so its a decent price game for a text-based game. However, playing the game can be a bit confusing at first but after a few minutes in it should be a smooth and enjoyable experience.

NOTE: This is a text-based game, little graphics and no audio are in this game, for those who dislike reading large amount of text i do not recomend this game. If you are an avid reader, i recommend getting this game, really worth your reading time.

It's a little bit dated, a little bit hetero normative, a little sexist and quite american centred-but its a pretty interesting game with multiple endings to take which i always enjoy. I'm glad i didn't buy it for full price because i do think it's a little over priced, but on sale this game poses an inventive, interesting and unique RPG that sets it apart and still makes it enjoyable to play in spite of it's faults. Overall? 7/10

I was not able to play it in 1986 and after a 3 decade wait, I finally get to play it.

I think the setting it good for an 80's era but dated for the current decade. Things like the internet, social media and mobile phones are not part of the picture. Also that some of the questions are very American centric. Oh wait but I have google for that now.

While it was a pleasent surprise being able to finally play Alter Ego and find out what it was all about, I do wish they had updated some of the content to reflect the current times. Perhaps because of this time shift, I was finding it difficult at times to connect with my alter ego.

Get it while on sale and when you have time to spare. Not a must have but an enjoyable experience overall.

It's impossible to fully judge this game just yet, but the options so far are really quite awesome! It feels like there are endless possibilities throughout, so even if you have one bad playthrough, you can always try again and get something totally different. I had a great time choosing options I would normally choose, and now I want to see what kinds of responses I can get when I change things up! Really cool game!!