I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

In this game, you are an excolonist, starting from the young age of ten and going all the way through your teenage years. Your group, the Vertumna group, has left the problems of Earth behind for a strange new alien planet. Of course, the landing wasn’t smooth, and there are problems in the new colony. It is up to you to help protect and grow the colony over the next ten years. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be pretty, but like it or not, you are at your new home on an alien planet.

Find it on Steam.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a simple life sim type game. You spend your time either building friendships (or more) with your friends, increasing your skills, or exploring the planet. But things don’t move on your time. You must keep on top of things because the planet will be acting in response to your invasion, and the problems with setting up a new colony pile up. Yes, it is all up to you, even though you’re a teenager.

There may be death, there will be hardships, you can affect some of them. The game comes with a heft list of trigger warnings if you are interested in having spoilers. While it never gets super graphic or detailed, bad stuff does happen.

There you are. You, default name, Solana, can go in a wide variety of paths. Not all of them will be equally useful to the survival of the colony, but they will all unlock interesting scenes. Don’t expect to see all of this game in one playthrough, or two, or even three. There are 29 endings in all. While most of them are simply what job you get based on your stats, there are a few special endings that require special actions.

This is a game meant to be played multiple times. While each subsequent playthrough will be slightly easier, it can still drag on, especially if you are experimenting yourself. If there was some way to make further playthroughs faster, that would be better.

So what about the other characters you meet? The major characters are your fellow kids, those around your age. They are all interesting people with different interests in how to help the colony. Also, in the future, everyone has awesome names that are shortened into more normal nicknames. For instance, there is your friend, Cal, full name Recalcitrance. Your teacher is Hal, full name Halitosis.

It’ll be tough to befriend all of them at once, and certain events may mean you can’t befriend some of them, but they are fun characters to hang around with. You can romance people, too, though not everyone is looking for serious hookups or casual flings.

Whenever you do a challenge, you start up a card game. The cards are all of your major memories that you acquire, so you get stronger cards by experiencing different parts of the game. The rules are basically like poker. Match colors to give more points. Match values to give more points. Consecutive values also give more points. More advanced cards will also have different effects.

The goal is to get your total points higher than the goal. If you can’t quite reach that, you can always push through by adding stress.

Also, whenever you relax in the game, you have the option to forget a memory, which you should do otherwise you’ll have a lot of lower value cards around.

Of course, you can’t just stay in the colony the entire time. You have to go out and explore the planet eventually. There are lots of strangeness and mysteries abound, and figuring out what to do is part of the game. The game will only give some vague instructions, and it is up to you to accomplish it. Some are easier than others, of course. I still haven’t found the truth yet.

Being the first settlers on a planet isn’t going to be easy. People can die. And most of the time, you can do something about it if you perform the right actions. But if you don’t like the results of this life, you can always try again with a new life.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a life sim about a harsh alien planet. What will you make of it? That’s up to you. Find it on Steam.

Also, this is just my extra musings not related to the review. For my first playthrough, I decided I wanted to romance Marz a.k.a. Marzipan. She is the rich, haughty, bossy type. I notice that in other games of this kind with light dating elements, I gravitate towards that kind of character. I guess I have a type.

Alright. TMI time over.