I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

It feels a bit unfair to call I was a Teenage Exocolonist a video game. This is rather a journey, a trip across our protagonist's life in which we can enjoy the experience of being an intergalactic colonist.

Across the wormhole

Just as the iconic Interstellar movie, this story begins in a spaceship full of colonists that come across a wormhole looking for a better future. On the other side there's the Vertumna planet, a flora and fauna paradise chosen by our little colony as their next home. These pleasant colonists must face the everyday-problems in order to make the planet habitable as soon as possible. We must face food shortage, climate troubles, local fauna attacks, and, especially, troubles derived from cohabitation. We represent a 10-year-old young boy who must find his place in this peculiar colony.

As in an Agatha Christie novel, the first death can happen in the first chapter. At the very moment you land, the problems will come one after the other, and we must decide what to do. Exactly, DECIDE, in bold and capitals. Exocolonist is, in all its wide definition, an RPG, where we'll write our own story. Along with the different conflicts, we'll try to do the correct things while moving between classes, the job, or spending time with our friends. Vertumna will show us its secrets as we ask it, and it will soon make us decide which type of person we want to be throughout our next 10 years. This is literally Star Trek for adolescents.

The freedom of the future and space

From the beginning, Exocolonist allows us to choose, from our name to our gender or look, far away from tags of any kind. That freedom will be extended to our friendships, our working interests, and we'll have to face them being aware there's no way back. Bad decisions don't exist, but are rather a different path we've chosen.

We'll be able to do what we want in Vertumna during 10 years of our life. We can become the warrior hero of the village, its best scientist, or spend our years being more peaceful. There are no limit to our wishes. The game has a HUD, which includes the reputation we have with our colony. Of course, with the passage of time, our skills will increase, always based on our interests. We show this improvement in abilities through card fights, which represent our memories. The more vital experiences we overcome, the higher our ability to best these barriers.

It's worth mentioning that I was a Teenage Exocolonist is too dense. It's not a game for everybody. The exocolonists' adventures will make us think about what is our role in the world as the human race, and what are we doing with the planet. Exocolonist draws our attention to humanity's massive use of natural resources and makes us go back to an ancient age, and at the same time it throws us to a probable and non-encouraging future.

In this game you won't find action or shooting sequences, but that doesn't mean you won't feel emotions either. This isn't Animal Crossing in space. Exocolonist is like the Star Wars cave, you will only find what you're carrying with you. If your decisions are violent, you'll get a narrative at that level. If you like more romantic relationships, you'll be able to experiment flirting with several characters. Nonetheless, no matter what path you choose, none of them will disappoint you and you'll always find emotive scenes to make you think.

The end of an adventure

To say that we were able to see the end of Exocolonist is a bit unfair since we can find 50 different endings, which ensures an incredible number of gameplay hours, especially if you don't get the end you wanted. We can try to live over and over during those 10 years, trying to make our decisions in the places we didn't explore before. In fact, the game has a gallery for both endings and iconic scenes to see how many we've experienced.

The game's art is magnificent, and there are similarities with the planet and creature design in a few current animated series (such as Ricky and Morty). The character design, on the other hand, is often more similar to Japanese animation.

Regarding its performance, we enjoyed its adventure on a Nintendo Switch, allowing us to say that its portable design fits great. I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is so fluid that you'll never see FPS descend, and it probably works on any PC. In fact, it was released not only for PC, but also for PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Mac and even Linux. It's a charming adventure everyone will enjoy.