How I Was a Teenage Exocolonist built a better content warning system

polygon.com:

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a game about growing up on an alien planet — from age 10 to later teenage years. It’s about discovering and surviving in a new world called Vertumna, and part of that means exploring darker areas of life on the planet and, well, life in general. Developer Northway Games did not want to shy away from any of these more complicated themes, whether that’s death and dying, sex, abuse, or large-scale traumatic events. It also wanted players to be aware of what was coming.

Coming from a fandom background, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist writer and cartoonist Lindsay Ishihiro is used to content warnings; in fan communities, detailed content warnings are typically more normalized. There are also more mainstream examples like Does the Dog Die?, a community-run site that started by tracking dogs in movies but has expanded to crowdsource details on other triggers in media, too. With the go-ahead from Northway Games founder Sarah Northway, Ishihiro took inspiration from the game’s visual and gameplay language — it’s a visual novel with point-and-click elements — to build out a content warning system that felt like a choose-your-own-adventure game.

The content warning system is accessible right on I Was a Teenage Exocolonist’s main page, and there’s also a reminder when you hit play — a reminder to check that page if you need to.

“We’ll tell you right at the beginning, ‘Here are the major content warnings,’” Ishihiro said. “And then give the choice. If any of these are related to something that’s your trigger, click on the button and get lightly spoiled.”

If you’re sensitive to, say, eye trauma, Ishihiro said, you’d click on the button that’s labeled body horror and see if it’s listed there. The idea is