I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a difficult game to explain - it’s part life sim, part visual novel, and part deck builder. Miraculously, I think it brings those elements together remarkably well even if it doesn’t quite nail some of the individual mechanics.
We played this game for Pride Month and I was thrilled by how well queer themes are presented throughout the entire game. The game opens and you get to choose your gender and pronouns, but more importantly - you can also adjust your gender throughout the game adding a lot of fluidity and freedom to how gender and sexuality is represented. Relationships throughout the game are not as binary and homogenous as we’re used to. It’s a wonderfully queer game.
The life sim elements are the main foundation of Exocolonist as you work on improving your skills and relationships with the other characters. The deck building comes into play as you have to basically assemble poker hands to beat challenges throughout the game using cards you’ve acquired through events and skill-building. My main annoyance with the deck-building is that it’s much easier to accumulate cards than it is to get rid of them. You get a few opportunities to remove random cards but you can’t fully tailor your deck to your liking as much as you typically can in deck-builders.
I’ve lost track of the amount of games that tout the whole “your choices matter” thing, but there aren’t a lot of games that do it better than Exocolonist. I feel like 50 people could play this game and all have pretty different experiences depending on which skills they decide to work on, which colonists they decide to be friends with, and which events trigger because of how you play the game. It’s pretty cool talking to friends and seeing how we all had pretty different experiences. However, because the game is built so dynamically, sometimes it doesn’t totally react properly to things you’ve done. For instance, I got a card late in the game that featured a character that had died years earlier.
Overall, I loved my experience playing through the game and it was cool how much the story I told really felt like my own. The game has so many different possible endings and events that could happen, it makes me want to play it again and maybe I’d do that if the runs weren’t 10 hours long.
+ Fantastic queer representation
+ Fun story with great characters that evolve in meaningful ways as the game progresses
+ The game reflects your choices so well that your experience ends up feeling unique
+ Neat card system for beating challenges
+ Great character art and illustrations
- Deck-building is limited
- Card puzzles get a bit stale
- Some game elements don’t react properly to your choices
- Multiple playthroughs are encouraged but the game is too long for that
We played this game for Pride Month and I was thrilled by how well queer themes are presented throughout the entire game. The game opens and you get to choose your gender and pronouns, but more importantly - you can also adjust your gender throughout the game adding a lot of fluidity and freedom to how gender and sexuality is represented. Relationships throughout the game are not as binary and homogenous as we’re used to. It’s a wonderfully queer game.
The life sim elements are the main foundation of Exocolonist as you work on improving your skills and relationships with the other characters. The deck building comes into play as you have to basically assemble poker hands to beat challenges throughout the game using cards you’ve acquired through events and skill-building. My main annoyance with the deck-building is that it’s much easier to accumulate cards than it is to get rid of them. You get a few opportunities to remove random cards but you can’t fully tailor your deck to your liking as much as you typically can in deck-builders.
I’ve lost track of the amount of games that tout the whole “your choices matter” thing, but there aren’t a lot of games that do it better than Exocolonist. I feel like 50 people could play this game and all have pretty different experiences depending on which skills they decide to work on, which colonists they decide to be friends with, and which events trigger because of how you play the game. It’s pretty cool talking to friends and seeing how we all had pretty different experiences. However, because the game is built so dynamically, sometimes it doesn’t totally react properly to things you’ve done. For instance, I got a card late in the game that featured a character that had died years earlier.
Overall, I loved my experience playing through the game and it was cool how much the story I told really felt like my own. The game has so many different possible endings and events that could happen, it makes me want to play it again and maybe I’d do that if the runs weren’t 10 hours long.
+ Fantastic queer representation
+ Fun story with great characters that evolve in meaningful ways as the game progresses
+ The game reflects your choices so well that your experience ends up feeling unique
+ Neat card system for beating challenges
+ Great character art and illustrations
- Deck-building is limited
- Card puzzles get a bit stale
- Some game elements don’t react properly to your choices
- Multiple playthroughs are encouraged but the game is too long for that