I Was a Teenage Exocolonist Wants You to Game Its Decade-Long Groundhog Day for Happiness

ign.com:

The first hour of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is dictionary definition coziness, by and large. There are vague hints of outside or future threats to the space colony on the planet Vertumna, but within the walls of the colony my 10-year-old protagonist is safe in a world of cotton candy trees, gentle guidance from adults, simple school lessons, and low-stakes interactions with peers. I chose to fill my days with sports, digging in the fields to help the colony, and occasionally studying engineering.

And then, one of my friends died – suddenly, seemingly unpreventably. I was crushed. They had been a favorite character of mine so short a time in. And from there, the pastel loveliness of the colony dimmed a bit, and the world of Vertumna became a bit more grounded, a bit more human.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist deftly balances the dichotomy of its soft aesthetics and loveliest moments with stories of grief, conflict, confusion. It is, after all, a tale of growing up. The protagonist is a child brought to Vertumna with their family to build a new life with a colony on a (so we think) uninhabited planet, where the colonists have big dreams of freedom from capitalism in an (at first) peaceful, self-sufficient society. You play through year by year, choosing which activities in the colony you’ll engage in each season, which in turn influence your stats and unlock different careers and paths for the young exocolonist. Your decisions, knowledge, who you choose to befriend, and how you interact with the rest of the colony will ultimately influence both its direction and yours as you grow to age 20.

It’s a brilliant encapsulation of what creator Sarah Northway tells me she set out to do when she first began working on the game in 2017.