I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

wonderful art and music, and the diversity is amazing (as a genderfluid person i absolutely ADORE the pronoun select screen, i wish more games were so in-depth with that!!), but the storytelling and characters fall incredibly flat for me. feels like a missed opportunity, at least to me. note that i've only played tangent's route ([spoiler] both the bad ending and the good one [/spoiler]) the ideas the game plays with are really interesting - morals of eugenics and genetic modification, rebellion vs. obedience, corrupt governments and genocide/colonisation...... genuinely, the worldbuilding was probably the best thing to me about the writing. it didn't feel perfect, but it DID feel interesting. i was hooked at the start, especially. genuinely, i loved this part of the game. but this is also a dating game. you don't HAVE to date people, but that's the secondary aspect of the game. so it's important to mention that i don't think the characters are interesting. personally, everyone felt like character stereotypes that just..... weren't fleshed out. they tried to give them needs and desires and motivations, but at the end of the day.... i didn't really feel much for anyone. i liked the dad a lot, but other than that, no one especially caught my eye (i only dated tangent because she was the most interesting to me, and even then i feel she was underutilised in a lot of ways that i struggle to put into words). weirdly, the characters i was most invested in were the ones who weren't dateables - which is awesome, but from a design standpoint, i SHOULD be invested more/equally in the dateables than the non-dateables, in a dating sim. on a similar note: for tangent, as much as i love her, i do feel that there should be a bigger hint that she's implied to be aromantic. don't get me wrong- i'm aroace myself and i LOVE the representation of aro people, but when i first played the game, i hadn't realised that about myself, and i felt hurt that she wasn't returning my romance, before i realised she's aromantic. i get that you might be able to tell from her personality that she's not overt in affection a lot, but i do think it's important to specify, especially for alloromantics, that being in a relationship with her won't be romantic. that could be a big issue for some people in terms of feeling rejected or dissatissfied if they don't want an aromantic allosexual relationship. (maybe this was hinted at early on and i just missed it (am neurodivergent so i could likely have missed hints), but i'm 99% certain that nothing hints at this outside of her personality - which i originally read as autistic allo until i realised she was also likely aro. representation is massively important, and i like that she's never overtly said to be aro, but it's important that people know from the get-go that she's aro if they plan to romance her. maybe there could be a sexuality disclaimer for each character that can be seen by hovering your mouse over it, and then people who don't want to be spoiled won't be, and those who don't mind can check quickly?) again, it's AMAZING that tang is aromantic, genuinely, i just feel that people should be able to know in case they're alloromantic and that's not something they're comfy with in a relationship. and yeah, nothing about her felt fleshed-out. she has so much potential, but none of it was utilised imho. idk how to explain it except that it felt hollow to me. the same goes for all the characters except the non-dateables, like the governers and the parents, who felt ACTUALLY interesting to me. in terms of doing multiple runs like the game wants me to do: the card game is repetitive and boring, and i don't want to leave things up to a coin flip as an alternative. my single playthrough took me 7.5hrs ([spoiler] i got the second ending by reloading my save so it only took me 10mins or so [/spoiler]), and nothing interested me enough to return and not drop the game within the first few minutes. it just feels like a slog, and that isn't my ideal experience with games. maybe i'll try a different route if i'm bored or have taken a year or two as a break, but genuinely this game feels like wasted potential. wishing the devs the best of luck in developing games, bc they clearly have amazing ideas!! it just felt like a hollow execution, to me. sorry. </3

Special game, great story, great card game, great to replay

sym，非常会勾引的人外，被他勾得要叛族了（……）他和dys在一块让我合理地尝到了被两个喜欢的人背叛的感觉：“啊？你们竟然背着我搞在一起了？”旮旯给木不是这么玩的！！可恶……

玩到最后 只觉得我这倒血霉的一生像安陵容 只剩下一句精疲力尽( ˙-˙ )

10/10 please more games like this

I loved every moment with this game, and often times find myself thinking about it years after having played it

I really enjoyed the story. The stat raising aspect can hit a bit of a wall towards the end of runs where you're maxed out on the ones you want but end up going back to the same sections, but as a whole it's a really good system. The characters are charming, some unexpectedly so. You can only focus on a few friendships a run, so picking different friends is a really simple way of keeping things fresh. They all evolve so well through the years, it's great. The story itself is fun. You do want to make sure you go outside the walls early though, it seems like most things need a little of it, but other than that it's pretty good about letting you make decisions on what's important to you. The world feels really alive, especially on your first run when everything is new but on later runs there's enough going on to keep it fresh. Different choices DO affect the story, some more than others. But also it feels like the story affects the character, you're not just transplanted in. And you want to make choices that honor that. For example, I ALWAYS do charisma routes first when available but there's an event early on that literally made me go 'Well that would have changed the trajectory of my life forever' and swap over. The multiple-run bits are well intergrated into the story, (And one of the endings even goes further in depth into it) Do take heed of warnings, especially for character death. There are a few potential deaths (Most of which WILL happen on your first run) and at least one unavoidable one.

A super engaging mix of life-sim and deckbuilder. It spans ten years, so you are able to really shape up the future of the colony and your character with your decisions. Which relationships you invest in, whether you explore outside or focus on building your skills inside, which stats you will focus on, etc. It is a game with a lot of freedom and replayability. The writing and characters are top notch. There are romance options and multiple endings. The deck-building aspects also seamlessly integrate with your gameplay: each event that happens nets you "memories", that is, cards. And you need to use these cards in order to surpass certain challenges based on your stats. There is also a way to give up your cards. Definitely recommend!