Every so often, you get a game that hooks you straight away. A game that you're thinking about for every moment you're not playing it, and a game that you'll be thinking about for a long time after you've completed it.

For me, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is one of those games. The writing is incredible. Every loss hit me because the characters felt so real, and the way that choices interlink to create your own unique narrative is incredible. By the end of the game, my ending and the choices I made felt like the consequences of my actions paid off. And because I cared about the characters, all of my decisions, how I chose to spend each month, felt so tense and terrifying as the game progressed and the stakes got higher.

Also, I love the trans representation in this game. I liked the games fluid approach to gender and how you can change your expression, identity, and name whenever you feel like, even if I never used the feature (I played a girl the whole time). I also loved the trans characters in the game itself, especially Tangent, and how her transness is an important part of her identity and arc without focusing on cliched transition-related angst. There's a scene in the medbay between her and Utopia, another trans woman, that nearly made me cry.

In short, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, is a game I loved, I highly recommend, and I will probably be thinking about for a very long time. It's probably not for everyone, but it was for me, and at the end of the day that's all that matters.

I finished my first playthrough after about 7 hours and 54 minutes, I may have powered through some writing. I enjoy that the game actually feels like it has a lot of different options and choices you can make that affect how the game goes. The card gameplay is pretty simple, but enjoyable. I wish there was a way to ditch useless cards (really don't need a 0 Crawling card near the end of the game) outside of resting, but I suppose that does give the game some difficulty. I know it was at least making things more difficult on me because I wasn't getting rid of small point cards until way later.

The music is nice and atmospheric and the artwork and graphics are nice. The world does absolutely come across as being very foreign with some absolute abominations straight from H.P. Lovecraft. My biggest ask for an improvement on the art/graphics would be for characters to have more than the singular static pose when you talk to them. Or maybe I just talked to Tangent too much and I didn't notice them changing?

Speaking of, character-wise I enjoyed quite a few of them. Somehow I ended up trying to make Tangent my best friend and eventual romance right at the start because she looked the coolest and had dope as hell hair. Then she shaved it and somehow became even colder than before, and I died inside. Thankfully before the end of the game she grew out a dope pixie cut and started interacting, acting like a human more. I also straight off the bat enjoyed Anemone, Cal, Rex, and Nomi-Nomi. I do wish there were more interactions with some of the adult colonists, being able to build friendships with them too. Granted I suppose your decisions are what create your relationships. I just would have enjoyed hanging with Utopia more tbh.

Anyways, it was a solid game. I'm interested to see how things can pan out different in a second playthrough. Considering I put almost nothing into the yellow skills, I think I may go that route this next time.