I Was a Teenage Exocolonist explores how kids absorb politics | Digital Trends

It’s an addictive loop that calls to mind Persona’s social link system. The game notes upfront that players won’t be able to max everything out by age 20, so they’ll need to think hard about who they want their character to be. I experimented early on, trying to settle on my future, before naturally gravitating toward a bolder child who wasn’t afraid to explore the world outside of the colony walls. Dialogue options can shape stats too, as well as increase my friendship with the few other kids in town (there’s a romance aspect too once you’re old enough).

What’s incredible is that I could really feel that gradual growth — it wasn’t just reflected in vague RPG numbers. At the start of the game, I played as a sweet kid that obeyed their parents and had a loyalty to authority. Everyone seemed well intentioned, so I had no reason to question them. That shifted radically, but naturally, by age 20. When my biologist parents revealed that they’d been hiding a serious food shortage from the colony, I started forming a distrust of the adults around me. I could see my real feelings reflected in the UI’s loyalty versus rebellion bar; it started sliding farther and farther to the right as I personally started questioning the structures of power I’d found comfort in initially.

When the game reached its conclusion, that blank slate was entirely filled in. My naïve 10-year-old who loved sports was now an adventurous 20-year-old who respected nature and understood that the people in charge aren’t always right. I could see my own journey through their eyes.

Memories as cards

But what’s significant about the system is the cards themselves. These aren’t your standard-issue cards — each one is a physical manifestation of a memory. A memory of your character crawling for the first time might be a strength suit with a zero value, while one of eating cotton candy for the first time is worth 2. Throughout the 10 years, player’s decks grow larger and larger as they have more complex interactions with the world. A traumatic run-in with a shadowy stranger gives me a high-value card that’ll add 10 stress to my bar when played.

Cards, like memories, can be a curse. The game doesn’t exactly want players to curate a perfectly synergized deck. By the end of the game, mine was a bit of a mess as I lived with the baggage of my past. Resting gives players the option to delete a memory from time to time (I cut my less-valuable early memories first, mimicking how many of my own earliest moments are lost), but you’ll likely end the game with dozens of complicated cards that can make it harder to focus in the late game.

It’s another way the game brilliantly translates the feeling of growing up into mechanics. Everything in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a puberty-induced juggling act. Players are exposed to a constant stream of information, and each piece of it becomes a physical part of the character and their ability to navigate the world. Success comes from learning to live with that educational overload and mentally organize it. Turning a stream of memories into a functional deck is the key to creating an adverse human who’s prepared to deal with life’s unpredictable hurdles.

As the game’s title suggests, this is a loaded game about colonization. Humans come to a planet, start leeching off its resources, and go to war with its wildlife. There’s no ambiguity about which side of the political spectrum its creators likely fall on, but the game isn’t an overbearing parent. Instead, it’s up to the player to decide how their character will respond to their political environment.

Like many games that emphasize choice, that puts I Was a Teenage Exocolonist in a tricky spot. Whenever you allow a player to guide the narrative, you’re forfeiting some level of authorial intent. The game can’t exactly take a matter-of-fact stance on capitalism if it wants to give players the option to embrace it. Considering that the game features dozens of endings, over 800 unique story events, and a narrative setup that encourages players to live their life again, it’s hard to mine a universal truth from it all without undermining the premise.

The game seems to understand those limitations, which is its secret weapon. Rather than trying to make a grand commentary, it’s squarely focused on exploring how politics factor into a child’s development. How does a distrust of the adults in your life affect how you view authority figures? How does buying into nationalistic camaraderie cloud your judgement later? If the game’s beliefs seem naïve at times, it’s because we’re always looking at the world through the still-developing eyes of a kid — something that’s emphasized by characters often responding to situations with snarky meme-speak rather than enlightened monologues.

In one particularly effective scene, I was tutoring a younger child who asked what happened to the Earth. My directive was to lie, which would hide the fact that humans destroyed the planet. Instead, I chose to rebel and tell the truth. I never see how that plays out down the line, but I recognize it as a pivotal learning moment in that child’s life because I’ve had plenty like it before then.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist understands how people’s worldviews are byproducts of their environments. Rather than lecturing players, it urges empathy and patience for those who are trying their best to untangle decades of ingrained beliefs. Sometimes I wince at the edgelord I was in my teen years, but I’m ultimately proud of how I shuffled all the cards I was dealt growing up.