This excellent sci-fi RPG shows how kids absorb the politics around them

digitaltrends.com:

When I was a kid, I wasn’t exactly tuned into politics. I wrote it all off as boring adult stuff, focusing my attention on important things like games and edgy humor. What I didn’t realize at the time is how much the tense political climate happening in the late 1990s and 2000s was quietly shaping me. I may have been too young to full understand the War on Terror when it began, but many of my views would end up shaping around it. I formed an anti-war stance and a distrust of authority thanks to then president George W. Bush. Had I simply spent my teen years buying into American nationalism, there’s a chance my views could have looked very different today.

Newly released indie game I Was a Teenage Exocolonist perfectly captures that experience. Developed by Northway Games, the narrative RPG tells the tale of a pack of human survivors who have fled a dying Earth and are attempting to colonize an alien planet. The story follows a child in the colony through 10 years of their life, from age 10 to 20. The player’s job is to guide them to adulthood as they navigate the political turmoil of their colony.

It may not nail every nuance, but I Was a Teenage Exocolonist doesn’t set out to reinforce player’s own beliefs with an obvious anti-capitalist critique. Instead, it’s focused on exploring how a political landscape shapes a child in their most malleable years. That’s all accomplished through thoughtful RPG and deck-building systems that reflect how kids absorb every little detail around them, even when we think they’re not paying attention.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist begins with some key setup. A spaceship full of humans is in the midst of a 20-year journey to find life on a new planet due to the Earth’s environmental