I Was A Teenage Exocolonist Review

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist
Platform: PC, Playstation, Nintendo Switch
Developer: Northway Games
Publisher: Finji

Dear. God.

Dys, feeling very much like I did when I finished my first playthrough of Exocolonist

So for some background, normally I try to be a bit more formal in my approach to reviews. That ends this second. Upon receiving I Was A Teenage Exocolonist on Saturday, I have lost roughly two days to the game. I have played three of its twenty-seven possible paths, including the one where, well…it’s probably for the best that you discover that one on your own. It’s weird, and takes a couple of playthroughs, but it is beyond worth it. Between its addictive game loop, methods of drawing in real bonds, some bizarre story choices, and some absolutely gorgeous art and music, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist is the kind of game you can get lost in, right up there with both coming of age games like Growing Up and Chinese Parents (and to a lesser extent, Monster Loves You!), weird narrative experiments like The Yawhg and the Monster Prom series, and vast time-sinks with loads to explore like Cultist Simulator. It’s ambitious, it’s audacious, and it’s incredibly heartfelt, and I can only hope it discovers its audience.

You begin on the colony ship Stratospheric, nicknamed “Stratos,” heading to the planet Virtumna to found the first-ever colony on an alien world through a recently discovered wormhole. As you approach, however, you have strange dreams, dreams of possible futures. And one specific dream of a burning house, a colony lit ablaze, and a creature with very sharp teeth closing in for the kill…

You have ten years. Ten years through your tween-age to teenage existence to unravel the mysteries of Virtumna, to discover the truth behind your dreams, and to save both your own life and that of the colony’s. Ten years to train, explore, build your friendships and relationships. Ten years to live on an alien world. Here’s hoping you can make them count.

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist plays out in a semi-open world. During each month of the cycle, you’re allowed to do one activity: explore the colony and the surrounding areas, talk to people, build friendships (helpfully noted by a heart system on one of the character menus), and do various activities to raise your stats. During activities, the game switches to a deckbuilding format, where you draw a hand of cards and have to put them into the highest possible build for points, either by creating runs of colors, numbers, or sometimes both. You gain new cards from participating in story events and interacting more with the other members of the colony, building your relationships and stats as you go. New stats open up new interactions and story activities as well as new abilities, everything from drawing extra cards, to stat boosts during the card battle sections, to even being able to ignore certain world-map events to save time. It also makes everything feel of a piece, from your desperate attempts to build enough perception and forage for enough food so the colony doesn’t starve, to your combat training going up so that you can save more colonists during the tense “Glow” season at the end of each year when the wildlife attacks en masse.

All of this is presented in a visual-novel style with a variety of gorgeous artwork and music. Glow looks suitably ominous, but there’s a strange beauty to the colony-wide fungus. Pollen season is awash in pink, there’s a lush but downbeat look to Wet season, and Dust season has a shimmer effect that works perfectly with the descriptions of punishing heat. But more than that, important story moments are illustrated in a soft watercolor style that still manages to keep the tone while looking incredibly pretty. It’s relaxing, a game where you’re meant to take your time and explore even as the clock keeps ticking ever upward over those 120 turns you have to do things.

It’s also really transparent with what everything does. Areas are color-coded based on what they do, mousing over a choice tells you what stats you need and who you need to be more involved with, and map markers show you the way to world events. When you know what you want to do on a playthrough, it’s very easy to beeline. But beyond just beelining towards certain things, the game has a gentle enough difficulty curve and is easy enough to understand with its interlocking systems that you don’t necessarily have to beeline. You’re free to explore on every playthrough, figuring out what build and events work for you, and ensuring that you can save as many people as possible.

And save them you will want to. This is a game where, if you’re not prepared for it, any number of people can die horribly, everything from your childhood best friend getting blown up to a creature eating you alive. It’s deeply effective emotionally, letting you know that these people have their fates in your hands, but also that bad things can happen, that the colony you become so familiar with and pour so much love and work into might get trashed, might get fed to fascist bounty hunters from Earth, or might just end up destroyed. But it also creates a sense of accomplishment when you do manage to save someone, when you manage to get things just right, and when the colony manages to coexist, both with their wildlife and their invaders. It’s a game that fine-tunes its emotional highs and lows, so that everything is unexpected but not inevitable. It also helps as you can remember things from previous lives and use them to correct things in the present.

It’s also just straight addictive. The ease of each month and of building your relationships, the satisfying way the numbers go up, the simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master card system (which IMO doesn’t need a hard setting, as it’s just difficult enough), and the way whole months can pass, as well as knowing there’s a specific end, combine to a game you can lose days to, setting up your colonist’s actions, managing your relationships, even exploring day after day until you find something interesting, all of it feels like a choice that matters, and all of it feels rather satisfying.

That isn’t to say the game isn’t without its flaws. After the first time, it can get a little frustrating to nudge at the various tasks, trying to save that one person and help a childhood friend, or figuring out how to keep family and friends from their fates. It could also use some quality of life upgrades, like a map during expeditions so you actually know where you’re going, some sort of quest log for the times when you have to grab specific items or do specific things at certain times, an idea of what perks do what after the first time, and perhaps a little less of a heavy load on the old GPU, as when the snow and pollen starts swirling, my graphics card temp suddenly jumped to 56C and everything slowed down immensely.

But those are nitpicks. If you like life sims, if you like games you can sink hours into satisfyingly, if you like visual novels or weird stories or branching plots, this is the game for you. Jump on board the Stratos when it finally launches, a new life awaits you in the offworld colonies.

The Good
- Addictive core gameplay loop
- Story it’s easy to get invested in
- Gorgeous artwork
- Tons of replay value
- Very easy to figure out the systems, difficult to master

The Bad
- Minor performance issues
- Can be difficult to figure out which things to do in what order to change events
- Could benefit from a map during exploration segments

Final Score: