I Was A Teenage Exocolonist

The first game I've beaten this year, a great game with very interesting gameplay and a story where every decision matters

This is the first game I’ve managed to beat in 2025! Not that it was challenging or anything, but I did not expect it to be this one.

Quite an interesting game I must say. You live the life of an exocolonist, you create your character, and you live a life in a new planet, as part of the first human civilization out of the Solar System!

You start out as a kid, you have friends and you can choose various activities, like going to school and learning various subjects, playing sports, helping out in the farming or the administration side of things. You can focus on certain skills that can make you better at certain things, and you can develop your relationships with all the kids and characters of the game.

Every time you choose a task to focus on, a month passes, the game has seasons and events that will change accordingly, and over time you grow up, and can do more things.

However, there is a bit of a mystery to this planet, it houses a variety of flora and fauna, there are some dangers to be faced, and losses to be experienced. There are going to be some difficult choices and you can’t make everyone happy.

Every time you choose something to do throughout the month, how well or bad it goes depends on your performance on a deck-building game. You get cards by living through different experiences and they have different values, colors and properties. You can play straights, flushes, pairs and such hands until you reach a certain score—or you don’t, sometimes you just lose—and then the result will affect that particular playthrough.

Honestly, I wasn’t that much into the mechanics at first, but it won me over time, and what I liked the most were the more cosmic and alien aspects of the whole thing. Later in the game you get to explore outside the colony, and some of the story bits that can happen out there are maybe my favorite moments of my playthrough, it had a mind-blowing experience.

This is a game that definitely suggests you to try out different things and play it multiple times, it is a really interesting take on a genre I haven’t really explored much yet. You can of course never go outside if you don’t want to, focus on studying sciences, or helping to administrate the colony itself, or defend it, it is honestly quite varied.

Citizen Sleeper comes to mind as a very similar game to this one. I have to say I liked it a little more when it comes to the artstyle, the design and concepts of it, but that’s because I like to read about dystopian and cyberpunk stuff a little too much, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist is not far behind. I think Citizen depends more on luck in many of the choices, you genuinely can’t do everything you wish to do, where Exocolonist gives more control and if you play your cards well, you can win almost every challenge.

Honestly, give it a go! I truly think that I will like it even more on a replay with the things I know now and how it ends, very cool science fiction gaming.

This is day 12 of #100DaysToOffload

https://fosstodon.org/@joel/113909522812139172

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