Alter Ego

Live an entire human life from birth to old age, making the choices that shape who you become. Alter Ego online runs on this page for free — the 1986 release is emulated in the tab, with nothing to install and no account to create. This thought-provoking life-simulation classic loads in seconds and invites you to navigate the dilemmas, relationships, and milestones of a complete lifetime. A phone will display it, but the game is a wall of text and a grid of small icons, and both are kinder to a mouse.

How to Play Alter Ego Online

Getting started takes seconds:

1. Press Play; the game is built from text and menus, so it comes up almost at once.
2. Give it a second to draw the first life-stage screen, where the icons for each situation appear.
3. Click inside the frame so your clicks land on those icons rather than the page behind them.
4. Choose your character (male or female life) and begin at birth.
5. Move through life stages, selecting from the choices each situation presents.

Alter Ego is about decisions, not reflexes — read each situation and pick the response that reflects how you'd live.

Controls

Alter Ego is played almost entirely with the mouse, choosing from menus:

There are no twitch controls here — the whole game is about reading each situation and clicking the choice that shapes your character's life.

What Is Alter Ego?

Alter Ego is a life-simulation game designed by psychologist Peter J. Favaro and released in 1986 for MS-DOS and other home computers. Rather than action or puzzles, it offers something unusual: a chance to live a complete simulated human life, from infancy through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. At each stage you encounter dozens of situations — emotional, social, family, romantic, and practical — and choose how to respond, with your decisions shaping your character's personality, relationships, and fate.

Alter Ego is remembered as a remarkably ambitious and introspective game for its era. Drawing on real psychological research, it presents life's dilemmas with surprising depth and nuance, tracking traits like confidence, intelligence, and happiness as you go. It comes in separate male and female versions, each with its own life experiences. Part game, part interactive story, part personality experiment, it remains a fascinating and unique piece of gaming history.

How the Game Works / Gameplay Basics

The game is structured around the stages of life, presented as a branching path of events you move through from birth onward. At each point you're offered a series of situations — represented by icons or prompts — and within each you read the scenario and choose from several possible responses. Your choices produce outcomes, influence your character's statistics and personality traits, and open or close future possibilities.

There's no winning or losing in a traditional sense; instead, the "game" is the life you create through your decisions. Will your character be confident or timid, kind or selfish, successful or struggling? How will they handle friendships, romance, career, marriage, and family? The simulation tracks all of it, offering reflective feedback on how your choices play out. It's a slow, contemplative experience best enjoyed by reading carefully and considering each decision, making it as much an interactive story as a game.

Beginner Tips

• Read carefully. The depth is in the writing — take time with each situation.
• Play honestly or experiment. Decide whether to respond as yourself or explore different paths.
• Watch your traits. Choices shift stats like confidence and happiness over time.
• Explore each life stage. Engage with the various situations offered at each age.
• Try both versions. The male and female lives offer different experiences.
• There's no wrong answer. The point is the life you build, so follow your instincts.

Why Play Alter Ego Online?

Alter Ego is closer to a book you can argue with than to a 1986 floppy release: a psychologist's writing, wrapped in just enough software to let you answer back. That makes it an odd thing to go hunting a disk image for, and an easy thing to open on a whim. Nothing here needs configuring, and nothing lands on your machine.

The low stakes suit it. A full lifetime takes more than one sitting, and starting a second one — deliberately braver, or meaner, or more cautious — costs nothing but a click back to infancy.

Troubleshooting

• Game won't start? Reload and hold off until the life-stage map has finished drawing — clicking where an icon is about to appear does nothing.
• Mouse or keyboard not responding? Click on the game area once, since nearly every input here is a click on a small on-screen target.
• Text hard to read? Go fullscreen — Alter Ego is almost all reading, so a larger window makes a real difference over a long session.
• Running slowly? Close other tabs and background apps, though a menu-driven game like this asks very little of your machine.
• No sound? Check the tab isn't muted, but bear in mind Alter Ego is a quiet game that leans on its writing rather than audio.
• Not sure what to do? Just read the situation and pick the response that feels right.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Alter Ego free to play online? Yes. A life runs from infancy to old age at no charge, and none of the later stages is held back — you can start over and live a completely different one as often as you like.

Do I need to download Alter Ego or install anything first? No. Everything the game needs is fetched by the page when you press Play — no disk image to find, no emulator to configure, and no sign-up before your character is born.

Can I play Alter Ego on mobile? You can, but nearly every screen is a block of text plus a row of small icons to pick from, and on a narrow phone display both become uncomfortable quickly. A mouse and a full-size window suit the reading far better.

What kind of game is Alter Ego? It's a life-simulation game where you live a complete simulated life through a series of choices.

Is there a way to win Alter Ego? Not in the traditional sense — the experience is the life you create through your decisions.

Can I save my progress? Yes. A whole lifetime is more than most people get through in one sitting, so Alter Ego can set a life aside and return you to the stage where you stopped. Saving is handled inside the game's own interface, not by anything on this page.

A whole simulated lifetime of choices awaits. Load it up and see what life you create.