The spaceship carrying your family and friends goes by the wormhole, and also you black out — awakening days in a while a brand new planet, removed from Earth. You’re 10, and that is your new house. It’s time so that you can benefit from it.
In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, a story deck-builder RPG, you’ll come of age on an alien planet. The choices you make as you develop up from ages 10 to twenty affect how the colony survives this new frontier. Fortunately you may have a number of photographs at guiding the colony to a greater life, as a Groundhog Day mechanic allows you to play by time and again with the foresight of your previous lives. The story is superbly tender, and generally tragic. Attending to do it another time is a valuable thrill that makes Teenage Exocolonist unforgettable. How will you assist this time round? Will the adults round you imagine your unusual premonitions? And in your subsequent life, how will you do issues otherwise?
Teenage Exocolonist has a reliable rhythm. You spend every month constructing abilities — like “biology,” “reasoning,” or “toughness” — by doing actions and speaking to family and friends. The colony’s base has a classroom the place you possibly can research humanities or engineering, or possibly you’d choose to babysit or to sneak out and go on an expedition. As a result of there are precisely 13 months per yr, you could spend your time correctly. Annually ends with the “glow,” a month throughout which alien animals are pushed to assault, and their advances solely change into extra lethal annually. You will need to put together.
Doing an “exercise” prompts a easy however catchy card sport. Playing cards are dealt out of your character’s residing deck, and also you construct a hand to realize the perfect poker-like rating: flushes, straights, and pairs give bonuses, and there are three “go well with” colours (yellow, blue, or purple). Relying on selections you make at key story moments, you’ll obtain new playing cards in your residing deck. Sneaking out earlier within the month, for instance, added a yellow card to my residing deck themed to my small act of bravery. (Yellow playing cards are emotional traits, sciences are blue, and bodily abilities are purple.)
Picture: Northway Video games/Finji
Fortunately, shedding the cardboard sport doesn’t spell failure. Almost each problem you tackle, win or lose, will reward you with glorious storytelling and new playing cards. Enjoying as a nerdy however courageous woman named Solana, I even received a card for being eaten by a monster. I wished to defend my mates, so I jumped in, however I didn’t even have the fight abilities to battle the wild beast. On this means, the sport presents a number of choices to advance the story, like utilizing notion abilities to sneak previous an grownup when my persuasion stats had been too weak for me to deceive their face. At age 10, the stakes for my decisions had been decrease, however by age 17 political tensions had escalated in my colony, pushing me to make severe selections in regards to the survival of the native lifetime of the alien planet and my folks’s position in all of it.
Forming relationships can be a core a part of the sport. As Solana, I rolled my eyes at my overprotective dad and mom, however tended Floatcows with my dad nonetheless. I labored in geoponics with my botany-loving good friend Cal, and I advised him enjoyable nature info, getting cute blue Hopeye-themed playing cards for my deck. We grew to become besties, despite the fact that he usually disagreed with my girlfriend, Tangent. (Hooking up with Tang received me a enjoyable “releasing endorphins” card.) In future playthroughs, I fell for candy Tammy who baked me a cake yearly on my birthday, and I received to know Marz, the outgoing good friend who was all the time ready with a plan.
Picture: Northway Video games/Finji
The sport’s portrayal of intimacy is impressively nuanced, from hookups to courting. There may be each amorous and platonic love. At a excessive sufficient friendship stage, any of the characters round your age — no matter gender — might be romanced, with some inquisitive about polyamorous relationships. Darker storylines exist too, like one a few good friend in an abusive relationship (which you’ll be able to, and actually ought to, break up). This spectrum of expertise is core to Teenage Exocolonist. Once you create your character, as a substitute of dictating gender on a binary, a slider permits you to choose some extent on a spectrum — and an additional menu allows you to select your pronouns with extra specificity. Your character’s gender expression might be modified at any level within the sport, and it doesn’t have an effect on who you possibly can romance.
Teenage Exocolonist rounds out to a transferring, difficult coming-of-age story with real stakes and distinctive replayability. For those who don’t like the way in which issues went — and in early playthroughs, you in all probability gained’t — there’s all the time your subsequent life. There are extra mates to be made, extra crises to avert. With 30 potential endings, the choices abound.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist was launched on Aug. 25 on Nintendo Swap, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on PC through Steam utilizing a obtain code offered by Northway Video games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought through affiliate hyperlinks. Yow will discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.
