Alter Ego

Choose Multiple LLC

About this game

What if you could live your life over again?

In this text-based interactive fiction, you choose what happens next. It's in the style of pick-a-path gamebooks, but with over a thousand multiple-choice questions, it's much longer and deeper than traditional gamebooks. Alter Ego starts at birth and ends at death, including two substantially different versions, depending on whether you choose to be male or female.

Will you grow up to be confident and happy? Will you fight with bullies, or befriend them? Will you find a date to the senior prom? Will you marry and have kids, or start your own business and become a millionaire? The choice is yours.

This game will change your life.

(Alter Ego was originally published in 1986 for the Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Apple II, and Macintosh. The current edition of the Alter Ego game is a production of Choose Multiple LLC. This edition includes an updated interface and fixes bugs in the original version of the game, but the content of the game hasn't changed from the original 1986 version of the game.)

Ratings and reviews

I love this game. It's so different from the usual multiple choice games in that it doesnt have any graphics but it's still so entertaining and interesting. My only problem with the game is that I dont like how fast each stage of life goes. Like as I was trying to meet someone to date in my adult life, I did it multiple times trying to find the right person and barely did any other life experiences and it just made me start the next stage of my life. I think you should allow more time to do different things during each stage instead of feeling like I can't do certain things or else itll force me to start the next stage of life. During one of my first attempts at this game, I actually made it into the old age stage without kids, a husband or a college degree because it just went way too fast for me to be able to do any of those things. Hopefully that all made sense but I feel like if they fixed that aspect of the game then it would be perfect (other than maybe adding graphics too, but it's fine either way!)

I don't think some of the reviews are being fair to this game. Before purchase it is made clear that aside from being adapted into ChoiceScript, the content remains unchanged from the original release in 1986. I'm not sure why they are asking for a more modern/progressive take. As for how the stats work, it should be noted that the quiz does have an effect, but prior to that, some stats are randomized from 20 to 80 to simulate random aptitudes. My only issue is that it needs a CS engine update.

The game is good for it's age, being originally made for the Atari the graphis are non existent, due to old tech limits. I miss when this was hosted on it's own website for free, but that isn't the games fault. I wouldn't recommend the other games this dev offers due to incessant microtransactions. Overall, it is limited by the software of the time, and so it struggles to live to modern standards for even indie games.

What's new

Updated to support the latest versions of Android. If you enjoy "Alter Ego," please leave us a written review. It really helps!