very cool of this game to be the only thing I can even think about lately. i don't even know what to say for myself. I have autism maybe.
I wish you could have a happy life with every person. The game makes you think you have choices, which you do and the game really well written. But I played it as a gritty dating sim that it is and I wanted life to work out and it didn’t
Absolutely terrific game.
The gender/pronouns customization for your character is outstanding, and the game really lets you play and make choices according to how you wish to present your character (and even change certain things on the fly). Plus the optional content warnings are sure to be useful to those who need it.
The game itself is a narrative adventure game set in an extra-solar start up colony, where you make choices and develop your character and their relationships from childhood and through their teens. Throughout, there’s plenty of potential to affect change in the people around you, and the colony at large as you make choices and each year brings its own challenges and narrative wrinkles.
The whole thing (to me) feels very inclusive. The story is gripping, and the characters all have interesting personalities and motivations. Be prepared to experience both happy and crushingly sad moments for your character and the people around them over the course of the game.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one of those games that, once you finish it, you immediately want to start again to see what other choices you could’ve made. The game also encourages this, sprinkling in moments of deja-vu where your character “remembers” these past lives and allows you to make certain new choices in future playthroughs. I love how this was implemented, and the many possible endings means that I’ll likely play this at least once more.
There are some narrative hiccups, though. It’s possible to experience certain (in my case minor) events out of order. Like seeing a scene where two characters are in a relationship, and then seeing another scene later where it reads like the characters just met. Stuff like that. This happened maybe two or three times in my first playthrough, which was about 10 hours long, so it’s a minor flaw that’s easy to excuse.
I’m really glad I played this game. If any of the above things I mentioned interests you, it’s definitely worth playing!
The gender/pronouns customization for your character is outstanding, and the game really lets you play and make choices according to how you wish to present your character (and even change certain things on the fly). Plus the optional content warnings are sure to be useful to those who need it.
The game itself is a narrative adventure game set in an extra-solar start up colony, where you make choices and develop your character and their relationships from childhood and through their teens. Throughout, there’s plenty of potential to affect change in the people around you, and the colony at large as you make choices and each year brings its own challenges and narrative wrinkles.
The whole thing (to me) feels very inclusive. The story is gripping, and the characters all have interesting personalities and motivations. Be prepared to experience both happy and crushingly sad moments for your character and the people around them over the course of the game.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one of those games that, once you finish it, you immediately want to start again to see what other choices you could’ve made. The game also encourages this, sprinkling in moments of deja-vu where your character “remembers” these past lives and allows you to make certain new choices in future playthroughs. I love how this was implemented, and the many possible endings means that I’ll likely play this at least once more.
There are some narrative hiccups, though. It’s possible to experience certain (in my case minor) events out of order. Like seeing a scene where two characters are in a relationship, and then seeing another scene later where it reads like the characters just met. Stuff like that. This happened maybe two or three times in my first playthrough, which was about 10 hours long, so it’s a minor flaw that’s easy to excuse.
I’m really glad I played this game. If any of the above things I mentioned interests you, it’s definitely worth playing!
While I was expecting to enjoy the game before starting it, I was really suprised by I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. The characters, the issues discussed during the adventure, the soundtrack, the art style... Everything works very well and I was moved by the experience. There are some flaws (such as the gameplay loop that ends up being a little bit repetitive), but nothing serious.
La forma de tratar la ciencia ficción, política y relaciones ha sintonizado mucho conmigo. Su arte cuqui esconde una experiencia narrativa súper profunda. Combina en su justa medida cartas, gestión de tiempo y dating sim. I would exocolonize again 10/10. (Lo he jugado en switch, que no aparece como opción en la app, y va perfecto)
I only managed to complete one loop, for now at least. But the level of politics and detail and character development this game features are something I can still admire, together with the artstyle - which is absolutely beautiful!
This game was infinitely more queer and horny than I was expecting - 5 stars
French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir argues in her 1947 book The Ethics of Ambiguity that 'existence precedes essence;' that the personality and the core beliefs of each human individual is defined through their environment and their actions, and that the challenges that allow those personality-shaping events are the ones that truly test the scope of the limits between their limitations and potential, their past against their future, the comfort of familiarity against the fear of the unknown.
"I Was a Teenage Exocolonist" is a quiet meditation on this and other questions asked by de Beauvoir and her fellow existentialists, packaged stealthily in the wrappings of a Solarpunk-themed dating game. Beneath the cotton candy colored environment of Vertumna and the egregiously tumblr-era character designs lies one of the best narrative experiences I've had in years, one that manages to succeed at the challenge of remaining both replayable and emotionally impactful. IWATE introduces the concepts of string theory, mortality, identity, collectivism, and on and on and on as each character you meet lives, grows, dies, lives again, and becomes a different person entirely.
When asked about the passing of her lover, the famed philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir simply said "His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.” Vertumna asks you to spend ten years with it before it lets you go, and readily welcomes you back again for the next loop of a cycle that continues on into infinity. But each of those cycles of ten years creates a unique you, and the life you live with its people is truly splendid.
ps: rex is best boy, even with the dumb tattoo, fight me
"I Was a Teenage Exocolonist" is a quiet meditation on this and other questions asked by de Beauvoir and her fellow existentialists, packaged stealthily in the wrappings of a Solarpunk-themed dating game. Beneath the cotton candy colored environment of Vertumna and the egregiously tumblr-era character designs lies one of the best narrative experiences I've had in years, one that manages to succeed at the challenge of remaining both replayable and emotionally impactful. IWATE introduces the concepts of string theory, mortality, identity, collectivism, and on and on and on as each character you meet lives, grows, dies, lives again, and becomes a different person entirely.
When asked about the passing of her lover, the famed philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir simply said "His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.” Vertumna asks you to spend ten years with it before it lets you go, and readily welcomes you back again for the next loop of a cycle that continues on into infinity. But each of those cycles of ten years creates a unique you, and the life you live with its people is truly splendid.
ps: rex is best boy, even with the dumb tattoo, fight me
blasted through this in 2 days like some sort of deranged nolifer but i think that's mostly due to how fun this game is! the story is surprisingly easy to sink your teeth into, the characters are alright, and the card gameplay is great too. seems like there's a good amount of variation also, but for now i need to like lie down or something
game of give me autism
A game that could very easily have fallen into any number of pitfalls in the messages it tried to convey or they ways it tried to convey them, but deftly dodges every one. A game about numbers and systems and relationship values that is steadfastly against the idea of gamifying life and relationships, that asks us to value each other and the in-between moments of life.
On my good days, I’m here. On my bad days, I’m still here.
Losing parts of ourselves and our identities are as essential to the experience of living as growing them is. Individuals can only do so much but they can still be so much for each other, and that’s worth as much as anything else. In a world where there is no ultimate victory for ideology or faction, where there is no intrinsic value in any one outcome that is ultimately worth more than any other, we’re still gonna find ourselves in each other.
I’m still here.
On my good days, I’m here. On my bad days, I’m still here.
Losing parts of ourselves and our identities are as essential to the experience of living as growing them is. Individuals can only do so much but they can still be so much for each other, and that’s worth as much as anything else. In a world where there is no ultimate victory for ideology or faction, where there is no intrinsic value in any one outcome that is ultimately worth more than any other, we’re still gonna find ourselves in each other.
I’m still here.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a staggering work from developer Northway Games about a group of Earth runaways destined to colonize an alien planet. You create a character with custom attributes and then begin to build your life and future, as well as shaping the lives of others, from the ages of 10 to 20. Dealing with change, grief, life, destiny, capitalism, climate change, animal rights, and so much more, the game has A LOT to say. At times, it can be extremely heavy with no reprieve and at other times it can feel moderately repetitive and without a clear focus, but the desire to see your future may keep you invested to live amongst the stars.
IWATE is mainly a visual novel with strategy/deckbuilding elements. Most of the game is based on your core skills, separated into physical, mental, and social categories with 4 skills each. You can choose where to increase your stats, as performing any activity in your budding colony will raise your stats in some way. The game doesn't hide much about benefits from each action, so you can very easily plan what you want to spend your time on and craft a plan as to how to achieve your goals. There are many ways to advance your colony, from working with your parents in the gardening domes, taking classes, and working odd jobs to make some spending cash. These actions increase in volume and complexity as the years pass, but they are all relatively interesting and grow your arsenal naturally as you get older. In performing each activity, you are tasked with hitting certain skill checks. Simple dialogue options are a pass/fail (you need to simply have the skill number high enough), and others are a contested check. These "challenges" take the form of a card game, where you must assemble a row of up to 5 cards that can add up to the target number. You gain cards by just living, collecting memories, and using their special effects to increase your card score. I loved this system, and the memory cards made me really remember everything my character had been through in his journey. Cards gradually get better, and add crazier effects, so careful placement and strategy will be necessary to succeed. The game doesn't REQUIRE wins every time though, and the story adapts to mark when you fail. The game is very generous about its idea that life keeps moving on, and there is no fail state for the game at all.
The characters in your colony are an interesting bunch. The core cast are the kids who grow up with you, who you'll see mature and evolve as the decade passes. You get 13 months for 10 years to develop relationships with them, from totally distancing yourself from one to falling in love with another. I liked the freedom in choices here, and I was able to completely cut out some vile figures. Unfortunately, towards the back half of the game, I started to feel like there was little I could actually do to sway my relationships with the cast because actions I had made earlier or DIDN'T make had adverse affects and/or I didn't like who these people were growing up to become. I really value how human these people are written to be. There is no single "good" person, and everyone has their flaws and hostile moments, but they also give you genuine moments of heart, with grounded human conversations that dig to the core of humanity, love, and war. There are many fascinating scenes told here, and the sheer amount of text on display is worth the price of admission.
IWATE really hits its stride when it walks the careful balance between letting you choose what you want, but guiding you along with its story beats. Over the 10 years, the kids experience a lot of events, and the game pulls no punches. Unfortunately, much of the tension basically died by the last year of my playthrough, resulting in an ending that felt like the game didn't know what to do with my character or the future I had chosen. The game strongly recommends (and is essentially built for) many playthroughs to change outcomes and see what happens, but the game is just a little too long with no way to speed up progress for me to try the whole thing over immediately. I can see how little I actually was able to touch in one playthrough, but I can't help but be disappointed that I couldn't reach a "true" ending or find some closure for all characters in a clean way. I only hope a second or third playthrough could iron that out once you know more.
For fans of Persona and FE:3H, this game will be right up your alley. There is a lot of game here, and the learning barrier is not as high as other text-based RPGs like Disco Elysium or Citizen Sleeper. But while all of those games find a way to give you an ending worth the investment, I Was a Teenage Excolonist may leave you needing a reset to explore more of its secrets. However, ihe art and music are gorgeous and the script effortlessly floats between dozens of engaging themes and sci-fi concepts that really coalesces into a fleshed out, beautiful world to live in for a while.
IWATE is mainly a visual novel with strategy/deckbuilding elements. Most of the game is based on your core skills, separated into physical, mental, and social categories with 4 skills each. You can choose where to increase your stats, as performing any activity in your budding colony will raise your stats in some way. The game doesn't hide much about benefits from each action, so you can very easily plan what you want to spend your time on and craft a plan as to how to achieve your goals. There are many ways to advance your colony, from working with your parents in the gardening domes, taking classes, and working odd jobs to make some spending cash. These actions increase in volume and complexity as the years pass, but they are all relatively interesting and grow your arsenal naturally as you get older. In performing each activity, you are tasked with hitting certain skill checks. Simple dialogue options are a pass/fail (you need to simply have the skill number high enough), and others are a contested check. These "challenges" take the form of a card game, where you must assemble a row of up to 5 cards that can add up to the target number. You gain cards by just living, collecting memories, and using their special effects to increase your card score. I loved this system, and the memory cards made me really remember everything my character had been through in his journey. Cards gradually get better, and add crazier effects, so careful placement and strategy will be necessary to succeed. The game doesn't REQUIRE wins every time though, and the story adapts to mark when you fail. The game is very generous about its idea that life keeps moving on, and there is no fail state for the game at all.
The characters in your colony are an interesting bunch. The core cast are the kids who grow up with you, who you'll see mature and evolve as the decade passes. You get 13 months for 10 years to develop relationships with them, from totally distancing yourself from one to falling in love with another. I liked the freedom in choices here, and I was able to completely cut out some vile figures. Unfortunately, towards the back half of the game, I started to feel like there was little I could actually do to sway my relationships with the cast because actions I had made earlier or DIDN'T make had adverse affects and/or I didn't like who these people were growing up to become. I really value how human these people are written to be. There is no single "good" person, and everyone has their flaws and hostile moments, but they also give you genuine moments of heart, with grounded human conversations that dig to the core of humanity, love, and war. There are many fascinating scenes told here, and the sheer amount of text on display is worth the price of admission.
IWATE really hits its stride when it walks the careful balance between letting you choose what you want, but guiding you along with its story beats. Over the 10 years, the kids experience a lot of events, and the game pulls no punches. Unfortunately, much of the tension basically died by the last year of my playthrough, resulting in an ending that felt like the game didn't know what to do with my character or the future I had chosen. The game strongly recommends (and is essentially built for) many playthroughs to change outcomes and see what happens, but the game is just a little too long with no way to speed up progress for me to try the whole thing over immediately. I can see how little I actually was able to touch in one playthrough, but I can't help but be disappointed that I couldn't reach a "true" ending or find some closure for all characters in a clean way. I only hope a second or third playthrough could iron that out once you know more.
For fans of Persona and FE:3H, this game will be right up your alley. There is a lot of game here, and the learning barrier is not as high as other text-based RPGs like Disco Elysium or Citizen Sleeper. But while all of those games find a way to give you an ending worth the investment, I Was a Teenage Excolonist may leave you needing a reset to explore more of its secrets. However, ihe art and music are gorgeous and the script effortlessly floats between dozens of engaging themes and sci-fi concepts that really coalesces into a fleshed out, beautiful world to live in for a while.
not sure when/if i'm gonna come back to this one (i've done two endings and i know there's a ton of the game i haven't seen) but what a good solarpunky time.
this level of pronoun customization should be the gold standard
this level of pronoun customization should be the gold standard
I would call this game a surprisingly cool smaller rpg. Even without knowing what you're doing, a run(or route if you prefer) only eats up about 8 hours of your time. Getting through what's basically a quick visual novel route can just be a cozy little thing you do for a day or weekend. One thing I was actually surprised I liked was that the card games were skill checks. It made every check feel like you could pass it with what you had on hand. You aren't blaming rng for shitty dice rolls or getting pissed off you didn't upgrade your speed to 50. It's a wonderful system that I hope the devs or possibly someone else will use again. Dys is best boy, Tang best girl, I hate Rex and Vace.
Relatively interesting. I gave this a go due to being in a mood for detailed, narrative RPGs and this being fairly well received. It's an interesting idea - playing through your teenage years in a colony trying to build a new life on an exoplanet. Your actions build your character's future skills, make and break friendships, or have an impact on the colony's structure and strength which can be the difference between life and death on this alien planet.
The idea is neat, and the overall story is genuinely interesting if you're into sci-fi - how could an exocolony not be? - and I was always interested in seeing what would happen at the end of each season through my action or inaction.
Mechanically the execution felt a little lacking with gameplay that often felt repetitive, consisting mostly of selecting rooms to work in each turn to gain some skill points in relevant attributes.
Similarly the card play felt like it could have been great, but instead peaked at good with a general level of okay/decent. Cards are acquired as "memories" based on your life in the colony which you then use in a minigame puzzle to complete challenge - and in terms of blending the story with the more "gamey" mechanics this felt like a great idea. Building a deck through the storytelling that reflected your character.. but largely you just acquire so many cards that the puzzle feels fairly similar no matter what decisions you've made.
Teenage Exocolonist is not a bad game, and I enjoyed playing it for a few hours for the sci-fi, exoplanet elements - but I don't think I'll be replaying to experience different events and endings.
The idea is neat, and the overall story is genuinely interesting if you're into sci-fi - how could an exocolony not be? - and I was always interested in seeing what would happen at the end of each season through my action or inaction.
Mechanically the execution felt a little lacking with gameplay that often felt repetitive, consisting mostly of selecting rooms to work in each turn to gain some skill points in relevant attributes.
Similarly the card play felt like it could have been great, but instead peaked at good with a general level of okay/decent. Cards are acquired as "memories" based on your life in the colony which you then use in a minigame puzzle to complete challenge - and in terms of blending the story with the more "gamey" mechanics this felt like a great idea. Building a deck through the storytelling that reflected your character.. but largely you just acquire so many cards that the puzzle feels fairly similar no matter what decisions you've made.
Teenage Exocolonist is not a bad game, and I enjoyed playing it for a few hours for the sci-fi, exoplanet elements - but I don't think I'll be replaying to experience different events and endings.
thoroughly entertaining while i was sick from the vaccine
start writing a review
I was a teenage exocolonist (which I will call “exocolonist” from now on because that name is too long) is a beautifully queer game.
Just how queer it is becomes obvious immediately during character creation. The game not only lets you choose your pronouns, it lets you customize them. You can have neopronouns. You can have he/him pronouns but use feminine terms like girl and mother. You can have she/they pronouns and use a mix of feminine, masculine, and neutral terms. Literally every single instance of this game using gendered language to refer to the mc is customizable. And your appearance and physical sex are customizable separately from all of this.
The relationships you can have with the other characters (and that they can have with each other) are also beautifully multifaceted. No romance option is gender locked. Some characters will start (queer) relationships on their own, no one is throwing themselves at your feet. There are multiple trans and nonbinary characters. One character is aroace. Not every romance starts at a high friendship level. Not every “romance” is a romance, some characters are happy to be your friends with benefits. Multiple characters are polyamorous. And some relationships in this game are queerplatonic, which is what queer people call relationships we can’t describe properly but they’re really beautiful.
Exocolonist has the best portrayal of gender, love, and sexuality out of any game I’ve ever played, except for maybe Heaven Will Be Mine.
is that what I want my review to be about? Isn’t this game so much more than just a dating sim?
start writing a review again
Exocolonist is a beautiful game about growing up.
Your experiences shape you. The memories you make become the cards you end up using to win the challenges later in your life. I wish the game wasn’t as committed to being a game in some parts because removing some treasured memory because I need to optimize my deck kinda sucks.
This alone already tells a beautiful growing up story, but what makes the game really special is how your relationships to the world, and especially the other children around you change. You start out doing either simple tasks or learning in school and end the game doing things that require highly specialized skills. Most of the adults go from treating you like, well, a child to treating you like an equal.
Your childhood friends will all develop in vastly different directions. Friends thought to be inseparable become bitter rivals. Some go down dark paths and you desperately try to stop them, not always succeeding. But some also grow to lead happy lives and you’re happy for them.
Exocolonist portrays the journey from child to young adult, both the good and the bad.
did I just write this entire review without mentioning that this is a cool science fiction story?
start writing a review again
Exocolonist is a beautiful political science fiction story.
You live in a Utopia that is unlike anything possible with our current technology. There are some interesting political thoughts in this game like how to encourage art in a (mostly) moneyless society, but it unfortunately doesn’t ever dive too deeply into any of them.
The game is also kinda weird about violence. It presents the positions of “violence is good when justified”, “violence is always bad”, and “violence is always bad but sometimes it is still necessary and justified” but there are multiple instances where you are forced to choose between the first two.
As a sci-fi story it has everything you could want. You’re one of the first children born in space, you and everyone else has cool genetic enhancements, you are part of a small group who are trying to be the first humans to life on an alien planet, there are cool aliens and the story explores the theme of living in harmony with nature or bending nature to your will and there’s a cool AI you can befriend and a wormhole and…
A wormhole
Yes, a wormhole. What was so special about this wormhole? Come on, tell the people
Yes, I know how to review this game now, but I’ll have to spoil a game mechanic that you might discover as early as reloading an old safe or as late as starting your second run. I had it spoiled for me before I started playing the game and didn’t mind at all but if you want an unspoiled experience I recommend you stop reading and start playing now
start writing a review again
Whenever a game has multiple routes/endings, people will replay it over and over. Some games use this to pad their playtime, some use it to tell the same story from different perspectives, and exocolonist deconstructs it to a degree.
In exocolonist, the mc retains some knowledge from previous playthroughs when you start a new game. This allows you to save people you couldn’t save the first time, take shortcuts to things that took a long time to solve previously and just generally makes your life easier.
This recontextualizes replays from being something you the player are doing to see all the content in this game to something the mc is doing to improve their life. No ending is perfect (though some are much closer to perfect than others) so there is always a reason to come back and try something differently.
Unfortunately for this game I played it after I played Everhood, so now a story about constantly relieving your life to chase after some unobtainable perfection feels slightly wrong to me. There is a way to break this loop, but the game portrays this as a bad ending and offers you to restore the loop with basically no consequences.
I’ll just pretend that after I got the ending that is as close to perfection to me as possible, the mc decided to stop this loop. I won’t replay the game again anytime soon. Solana’s happy.
That’s a pretty decent review but I still feel like it doesn’t do the game justice
start writing a review again
No review can do this game justice. It is far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a queer dating sim, it’s about growing up, it’s a political sci-fi story and it’s a cool meta game, but it’s so much more than this.
This game is really special. Go and check it out.
I was a teenage exocolonist (which I will call “exocolonist” from now on because that name is too long) is a beautifully queer game.
Just how queer it is becomes obvious immediately during character creation. The game not only lets you choose your pronouns, it lets you customize them. You can have neopronouns. You can have he/him pronouns but use feminine terms like girl and mother. You can have she/they pronouns and use a mix of feminine, masculine, and neutral terms. Literally every single instance of this game using gendered language to refer to the mc is customizable. And your appearance and physical sex are customizable separately from all of this.
The relationships you can have with the other characters (and that they can have with each other) are also beautifully multifaceted. No romance option is gender locked. Some characters will start (queer) relationships on their own, no one is throwing themselves at your feet. There are multiple trans and nonbinary characters. One character is aroace. Not every romance starts at a high friendship level. Not every “romance” is a romance, some characters are happy to be your friends with benefits. Multiple characters are polyamorous. And some relationships in this game are queerplatonic, which is what queer people call relationships we can’t describe properly but they’re really beautiful.
Exocolonist has the best portrayal of gender, love, and sexuality out of any game I’ve ever played, except for maybe Heaven Will Be Mine.
is that what I want my review to be about? Isn’t this game so much more than just a dating sim?
start writing a review again
Exocolonist is a beautiful game about growing up.
Your experiences shape you. The memories you make become the cards you end up using to win the challenges later in your life. I wish the game wasn’t as committed to being a game in some parts because removing some treasured memory because I need to optimize my deck kinda sucks.
This alone already tells a beautiful growing up story, but what makes the game really special is how your relationships to the world, and especially the other children around you change. You start out doing either simple tasks or learning in school and end the game doing things that require highly specialized skills. Most of the adults go from treating you like, well, a child to treating you like an equal.
Your childhood friends will all develop in vastly different directions. Friends thought to be inseparable become bitter rivals. Some go down dark paths and you desperately try to stop them, not always succeeding. But some also grow to lead happy lives and you’re happy for them.
Exocolonist portrays the journey from child to young adult, both the good and the bad.
did I just write this entire review without mentioning that this is a cool science fiction story?
start writing a review again
Exocolonist is a beautiful political science fiction story.
You live in a Utopia that is unlike anything possible with our current technology. There are some interesting political thoughts in this game like how to encourage art in a (mostly) moneyless society, but it unfortunately doesn’t ever dive too deeply into any of them.
The game is also kinda weird about violence. It presents the positions of “violence is good when justified”, “violence is always bad”, and “violence is always bad but sometimes it is still necessary and justified” but there are multiple instances where you are forced to choose between the first two.
As a sci-fi story it has everything you could want. You’re one of the first children born in space, you and everyone else has cool genetic enhancements, you are part of a small group who are trying to be the first humans to life on an alien planet, there are cool aliens and the story explores the theme of living in harmony with nature or bending nature to your will and there’s a cool AI you can befriend and a wormhole and…
A wormhole
Yes, a wormhole. What was so special about this wormhole? Come on, tell the people
Yes, I know how to review this game now, but I’ll have to spoil a game mechanic that you might discover as early as reloading an old safe or as late as starting your second run. I had it spoiled for me before I started playing the game and didn’t mind at all but if you want an unspoiled experience I recommend you stop reading and start playing now
start writing a review again
Whenever a game has multiple routes/endings, people will replay it over and over. Some games use this to pad their playtime, some use it to tell the same story from different perspectives, and exocolonist deconstructs it to a degree.
In exocolonist, the mc retains some knowledge from previous playthroughs when you start a new game. This allows you to save people you couldn’t save the first time, take shortcuts to things that took a long time to solve previously and just generally makes your life easier.
This recontextualizes replays from being something you the player are doing to see all the content in this game to something the mc is doing to improve their life. No ending is perfect (though some are much closer to perfect than others) so there is always a reason to come back and try something differently.
Unfortunately for this game I played it after I played Everhood, so now a story about constantly relieving your life to chase after some unobtainable perfection feels slightly wrong to me. There is a way to break this loop, but the game portrays this as a bad ending and offers you to restore the loop with basically no consequences.
I’ll just pretend that after I got the ending that is as close to perfection to me as possible, the mc decided to stop this loop. I won’t replay the game again anytime soon. Solana’s happy.
That’s a pretty decent review but I still feel like it doesn’t do the game justice
start writing a review again
No review can do this game justice. It is far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a queer dating sim, it’s about growing up, it’s a political sci-fi story and it’s a cool meta game, but it’s so much more than this.
This game is really special. Go and check it out.
god this game is incredible. a whirlwind of teenage traumas, growing up, alien adventure and political strife. so full of life. if you're expecting a defanged novel about love or something, you'll be pleasantly surprised!