I Was a Teenage Exocolonist review: The best time loop game of 2022

The spaceship carrying your friends and family goes through the wormhole, and you black out — awakening days later on a new planet, far from Earth. You’re 10, and this is your new home. It’s time for you to make the most of it.

Teenage Exocolonist, a narrative deck-builder RPG, you’ll come of age on an alien planet. How the colony will survive this frontier is determined by your decisions as you age between 10 and 20. As a colony leader, you can have several chances to make it a better place. Groundhog DayYou can play mechanic over and over again with the insight of past lives. This story can be both tender and tragic. It is an incredible thrill to be able to go back and do it again. Teenage Exocolonist unforgettable. What can you do to help? Are your premonitions believed by the adults in your life? What about in the next life?

Teenage ExocolonistIt has a consistent rhythm. You spend each month building skills — like “biology,” “reasoning,” or “toughness” — by doing activities and talking to friends and family. The colony’s base has a classroom where you can study humanities or engineering, or maybe you’d prefer to babysit or to sneak out and go on an expedition. There are only thirteen months each year. You need to be careful with how you spend your time. Each year ends with the “glow,” a month during which alien animals are driven to attack, and their advances only become more deadly each year. Preparation is key.

Doing an “activity” prompts a simple but catchy card game. Cards are dealt from your character’s living deck, and you build a hand to achieve the best poker-like score: flushes, straights, and pairs give bonuses, and there are three “suit” colors (yellow, blue, or red). Depending on decisions you make at key story moments, you’ll receive new cards in your living deck. For example, sneaking out early in the month added a yellow card for my living deck that was themed to my act of courage. (Yellow cards refer to emotional traits. Sciences are blue and physical abilities are red.

A card game with a hand made of cards in yellow, blue, and red from the video game I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. The highlighted card is labelled “talent show champion.”

Luckily, losing the card game doesn’t spell failure. Nearly any challenge, regardless of how it is won or lost, rewards you with great storytelling and brand new cards. Solana was a brave and nerdy young girl. I received a card after she was attacked by a monster. I wanted to defend my friends, so I jumped in, but I didn’t actually have the combat skills to fight the wild beast. The game gives you multiple choices to help advance your story. I could use perception to pass an adult, but my persuasion skills were not strong enough for me to lie. At age 10, the stakes for my choices were lower, but by age 17 political tensions had escalated in my colony, pushing me to make serious decisions about the survival of the native life of the alien planet and my people’s role in it all.

It is important to form relationships. Solana: I was a little jealous of my protective parents but still tended Floatcows together with my dad. Cal was my botany-loving friend. I taught him interesting facts about nature and helped me to make Hopeye-themed cards. Although he sometimes disagreed with Tangent (my girlfriend), we became friends. (Hooking up with Tang got me a fun “releasing endorphins” card.) My love for Tammy became a true friend. She baked me cakes each year, which I was able to enjoy in future playthroughs. Marz, my outgoing friend, also made it easy for me to fall for her.

A young boy lays on the soft ground, looking at the stars, in a screenshot from I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. The game gives you interaction options including sharing music, enjoying the night sky, or holding hands.

The game’s portrayal of intimacy is impressively nuanced, from hookups to dating. You can find platonic and amorous love. At a high enough friendship level, any of the characters around your age — regardless of gender — can be romanced, with some interested in polyamorous relationships. There are darker stories, such as one that involves a friend who is in an abusive relationship. You can and should end it. The core of this experience is Teenage Exocolonist. When you create your character, instead of dictating gender on a binary, a slider allows you to select a point on a spectrum — and a further menu lets you choose your pronouns with more specificity. Your character’s gender expression can be changed at any point in the game, and it doesn’t affect who you can romance.

Teenage ExocolonistThe story is an emotional, complex coming-of-age tale with real stakes. It also has exceptional replayability. If you don’t like the way things went — and in early playthroughs, you probably won’t — there’s always your next life. There’s more to do, and even more to meet. The possibilities are endless with 30 different endings.

Teenage Exocolonist The game was available on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 as well as PlayStation 5 and Windows PC on August 25th. Northway Games provided a code for a Steam download. The review was performed on PC. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.