Preview | I Was A Teenage Exocolonist - Time For Growing Up
Humankind's race to the stars may have halted more or less since the moon landing, but the adventure continues in the minds of millions. Stories about space; the grand quests of captains like Hann Solo and Jean-Luc Picard are at the forefront of sci-fi culture - and these stories are great, but they’re not our stories. I got to play the first year of ‘I Was A Teenage Exocolonist’, a part life sim, part deck builder, colony adventure game developed by Northway Games and published by Finji. Having played this demo I had the chance to talk to Northway Game's Sarah Northway. While she may be the only full-time member of the team she collaborated with artists Meilee Chao, Eduardo Vargas and Sarah Webb (as well as many more who worked on the card art), and worked with Lindsay Ishihiro providing narrative design, writing and additional art.
DO NOT FRIGHTEN NOUGAT WITH A SCARY FACE. YOU MONSTER!
startmenu: So can you explain the basic idea of Teenage Exocolonist, how would you pitch it to someone?
Sarah Northway: I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a narrative RPG where you live (and die, and re-live) your teenage years in humanity's first extrasolar colony. Part life sim and part deck builder, it's gorgeous and enormous, with dozens of skills and career paths, hundreds of cards, six novels’ worth of dynamic story, and twenty-nine different endings.
startmenu: What were some of your main inspirations for Excolonist?
Northway: There is a Japanese life sim series from the 90s called Princess Maker where you raise a little girl in a fantasy world. It shares a fair bit of DNA with Exocolonist, and in the code the player character is called the "princess" as a nod.I was also inspired by Harvest Moon (it's why both of the protagonist's parents are farmers) and collectable card games like Magic the Gathering.
startmenu: What are some things players should look out for?
Northway: I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a cross-genre game so it can be hard to define. Like RPGs? Like narrative games? Deck builders? Life sims? Dating? Sci-fi? Exocolonist is not one but all of these things, and you can play it in whatever way you fancy. The card game is optional, and so are previously seen events during your 2nd+ life. Our content warning explains how to avoid specific potentially upsetting content.
Our impression from the preview: Content warnings are always a good shout. The debate over content warnings and how they spoil story beats is raging on, but in Exocolonist they are totally optional. The ones here are descriptive and upfront and it's up to you if you read them or not. And that's that debate over.
Editors note: The content warnings are super helpful, but as someone that played Exocolonist without reading them… Whew… shit… it certainly doesn’t hold back.
startmenu: Let's talk about the pronoun and gender sliders - that's a really interesting feature, could you tell me a bit more about it?
Northway: You can choose the protagonist's pronouns and appearance (feminine - nonbinary - masculine) through two separate sliders. Gender really is an analog value that can be hard to define with a checkbox, so it felt more appropriate to be able to define your character as 32% masculine or 94% masculine rather than just 0% or 100%. Either setting can be changed at any time, which fits the world narrative in Exocolonist that gender transitioning (or changing your name) is common and totally accepted, especially for kids in the process of discovering their identities.
startmenu: You also have an incredible pronoun customisation system, what work went into that?
Northway: Supporting custom pronouns was much easier to implement than I'd expected, given the size and complexity of our game. It only took an afternoon! We already had a dynamic gender tag for narrative events, so this system goes through all the text in the game, pulls every one of those tags out, and lets you specify your own value for it.
This system is as robust as it sounds - it allows you to adjust terminology for just about anything. I enjoyed this mechanic because it tells a pretty thoughtful parable about how easy it is to adjust language to be inclusive and welcoming. A few text boxes and a few lines of code and this game is infinitely more accessible.
startmenu: Without spoiling anything, you don’t shy away from throwing big, real events at players during their characters' early years - what made you take this approach?
Northway: As you grow up in Exocolonist, the tone of the game will grow darker and more angsty. People die. An authoritarian regime takes root. And the entire fact that you belong on the planet Vertumna may be questioned. So we needed to give players a bit of a heads up! A warning that although Exocolonist is a very cosy game in some respects (there is little/no racism or homophobia in their society), it does contain serious subject matter and even children will be affected.
startmenu: The characters have a really interesting social dynamic - no one is specifically singled out as an adversary, was this intentional?
Northway: I wanted every character to have both positive and negative traits, so everyone could be frustrating, abrasive, or weak sometimes, but even the worst would be sympathetic once you get to know them.
Our impressions: I found these themes were handled very well within the game and, within the gameplay from the chunk I played, characters responded to the events that happened to me - they lived those events alongside my character and it really touched me that even characters that hadn't been especially friendly to me showed empathy after certain events. What Northway and her team have tried to capture is life and by ingraining sympathy in the characters and your life, they have drawn me in even more to the experience.
Teenagers flirting are just as awkward but loveable as you would expect.
startmenu: What kind of ideas went into the theming of the cards?
Northway: We call the cards "memories" because they represent decisions you've made or things you've experienced. So as you are building yourself you're building your deck. If you tend to spend more months doing physical activities like playing sportsball or exploring, or choose to solve problems using your muscles, you'll gain more red physical cards. These have an advantage in card challenges that test your physical skills. And having a lot of cards of the same colour is better, so it's helpful to focus on just a few skills and activities. There will be plenty of other lives to try different approaches.
Our impressions: The most video game-y part of Exocolonist is when you have you use your memories. Each memory has a value tied to it and certain encounters, chores and skill checks play out like a single-player deck building game where you are given a numerical goal and a hand of cards. You must play them in an order that will give you enough multipliers to reach the target. While you can fail these parts, you can also partially pass them, pass them or even "super pass" them depending on your score. But these cards aren't just random - I gained cards specifically for the things I had done. The memory of playing sportsball gave me a low rated physical card, while giving a thoughtful gift to a friend gave me a higher empathy card. I watched my life form through my deck and the name ‘memories” really fit.
Building a deck of memories is pretty metal, ngl.
startmenu: There's some awesome fashion design in this game - I’m talking specifically about Geranium (who I lovingly called ‘plant dad’ my whole playthrough).
Northway: Meilee Chao did a knock-out job of the character and costume designs. Every character is colour-coded (eg "plant dad" wears green because he works as a cultivator in the Geoponics wing). Their clothes also tell the story of many Earth cultures joined together by their desire to explore and settle a new planet.
