Conquering Puberty and Xenofauna

After fiercely contemplating my Steam wishlist, I finally decided to make two summer sale purchases.  I chose to grab I was a Teenage Exocolonist and Stray.  What spurred me to these two very different titles?  Mostly the fact that they both had "overwhelmingly positive" reviews.  I started off with I was a Teenage Exocolonist and have completed a full playthrough and have to say that I'm pleased with my purchase.

What is it?

At first glance the title seems slightly zany and silly--I was a Teenage Exocolonist though is anything but that!  It's a sort of deckbuilder, card puzzler/battler, RPG, and according to its Steam tag, a "life sim."  The story has you playing a the role of a colonist from Earth who is attempting to settle a new planet.  You start off at the age of 10 (so you're just a kid) and then the story takes place throughout your teenage years.  Gameplay takes place each "month" in the new calendar year of the planet--during each phase you get to choose how your character spends their time--there are a variety of tasks that reward you with skill points in specific areas.  No matter which activity you choose you will play a card-based challenge (although some challenges are specifically skill based and reward points in specific skills) that requires you to combine cards to earn a specific score in order to succeed (you can fail).  As you complete activities and interact with the other colonists you are rewarded with "memories" in the form of new cards.  Activities also cause your stress level to rise and you need to periodically spend time relaxing--each time you relax you can choose to forget up to two memories (which are randomly selected and then you can opt which you want to forget--or not forget) which can be a useful way to slim down your deck and get rid of low value cards.  The scoring for the card play seems fairly straightforward--basically you get points based on the face value of the cards, but you also get bonus points for things like matching pairs (of number or color), straights, or flushes--but is actually complex.  Card "colors" are tied to skills that you build for your character by choosing specific activities--there are three large categories--social skills (represented by yellow), intellectual skills (blue), and physical skills (red) that break further down into four specific subskills for each category.

There's also a social aspect to the story--you can gain the friendship of other colonists through engaging with them.  You can also give them gifts of items that you find (and, yes, they do have their own likes and dislikes).  As you get to know them better they will reveal information about themselves.  It's fairly challenging to fully befriend all the other colonists because they all have their own interests and activities--if you focus on a different skill set you probably won't fully earn their friendship.

A full playthrough sees your character aging through their teenage years--from 10-19.  I clocked mine at 17 hours (there is likely some paused time in there), so count on a decent chunk of time.

Pros:

+ The gameplay is easy to pick up and was fairly easy (maybe a bit too easy, but there are options to crank up the difficulty of the card challenges).  It's very forgiving and you can experiment with different cards/combos before you complete your hands.  I think I only failed 2 challenges throughout the entire game.

I enjoyed how the deckbuilding was tied to the story and that cards are "memories" tied to the events you choose.  Since I focused on the "physical" category I accumulated several cards related to winning the yearly festival strength competition.  You can also acquire cards that have a negative effect from bad memories (they're good ones to forget while relaxing).

There are also special "perk" cards that can be equipped in equipment slots.  These cards are either rewarded for certain events or can be purchased using "kudos" that your character earns from doing certain tasks.  As you become more skilled you can unlock more equipment slots.  "Perks" are very useful and often buff certain cards or combos and can even give you a small boost of certain skill points.

+ Extremely choice based.  From the very beginning you get to make a ton of choices--your first choice is the sex/gender of your character (it's very inclusive allowing you to choose your pronouns--including an option for they/them--and if you want a feminine, masculine, or androgynous character), your name, and a genetic augment (every colonist has one and half the fun of learning about the others is finding out about their augments).  Your genetic augment sort of leads you toward a specific skill set--I chose a physical augment that gave me bonus perception.

Once you've landed on Vertumna (your colony planet) you choose how to spend your time--you can choose activities that help build up specific skills.  Each activity presents you with a new scenario which plays out with a story and a card play phase.  Depending on your success/failure in the card play phase you often gain a new memory (card) which can be good or bad.  You also earn friendship with the other colony kids through participating in activities, interacting with them, and giving them gifts.  Early on your activity choices are a bit limited (which is tied to the story and the age of your character), but more options unlock throughout the story (some might hinge on specific skill levels in certain skills).

When you interact with the other colonists you also get to choose dialogue.  Your choices can impact how much friendship you gain (or lose) depending on those choices.  Paying attention and knowing more about other characters and their personalities/quirks can help you make better choices.

The choices you make have a direct impact on the story and its outcomes.  I had several negative outcomes and will definitely try to remedy them on a re-play.

+ Engaging story and characters.  Part of the story deals with the challenges of your colony group trying to establish a firm foothold on a new planet.  The other part deals with the challenges of growing up.  I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say that the colony has a rough time (in my playthrough it did...which also might be tied to some of my choices) and is frequently confronted with challenges.

The cast of characters in the game is fun--they each have unique personalities and interests.  There's Anemone, the spunky redhead who loves Sportsball (my BFF in my playthrough); there are the twins Tangent, a genius, and her anti-social brother Dys; there's Cal, the animal-loving pacifist...and many more!  As you befriend different colonists you can unlock new information about them--things like when their birthday is (so you can be sure to give them a special gift), what their genetic augments are, and their general likes/dislikes.  Getting older also means that you can establish romantic relationships with other characters.

+ Vastly, vastly replayable.  The choice based nature of the game means that there are always different choices to be made.  There are 29 different endings and over a hundred different cards/memories to be unlocked!  It's the kind of game you can go back to time and time again and experience it a different way every time.

+ Vibrant artwork and some fun "collectible" type of mechanics.  As you experience different events in the game certain events trigger special artwork to appear.  The artwork does a great job of reflecting the spirit of the characters and events and can be viewed through the menu.  If you fully befriend specific characters they will appear on the main menu window--it's very cute and gives you yet another reason for a replay.

+ Nice music that matches the tone and vibes of the game.

+ A casual affair.  You can play as little or much as you like within one session.  The game autosaves frequently and you can create your own saved game at almost any time.

Cons:

- If you are the type of person who doesn't enjoy reading in your games...well, there's no voice acting and lots of text to read.  I didn't find the amount of text overwhelming and it's well written and easy to read.

- Gameplay loop gets a bit repetitive.  I found myself getting a bit bored and played something else at a few points.  Especially in the early years where your options are a bit limited.

- Story choices that felt unclear.  At certain points of the story there are major events where it is hinted that you need to do something or go to a certain place to try to find a solution to an issue--that's clear, but once you find what you think might be the solution there's not really an event or dialogue that's like "wow, you solved that!"  Maybe that's a bit hand-holdy, but I feel like I had some bad outcomes due to the fact that I had found the solution I needed to find, but that I didn't do the correct event the following month to address it because it wasn't completely clear.  My advice--just check everything if you feel unsure about an event.

- Capping out your skills isn't too difficult, but figuring out what to do once you've capped them can be confusing.  Doing exploration related tasks seemed fairly mandatory for completing parts of the story (even though they're not) but it felt a bit like wasted time--the events in a zone are the same and respawn in a different location/order--the major plus is that you can do different challenges and earn some new skill points.

- Star rating system tied to card encounters.  After you complete each card activity there are three stars that appear on the top panel--it seems like you get some kind of rating during card battles.  For some reason, I feel like this is never explained (although, it might've been explained during the tutorial and I just didn't fully absorb it).  I don't think the star rating effects anything though.

Recommendation:

Despite getting a little bored with the gameplay in the early part of the game, I ended up enjoying I was a Teenage Exocolonist.  The vast array of choices and options offers up a game begging to be replayed.  If you're in the mood for a casual game that gives you a ton of choices, I would highly recommend giving it a shot.