3.5/5 ★ – truewalrus's review of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist.

The first 2 hours of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist are incredible. The decisions you make unravel a fascinating story with incredibly impactful, beautiful moments that elicit brutal pangs of loss and the subtle melancholy of longing. In my playthrough, this otherwordly start was capped off by the crushing death of a loved one and at that moment, I thought Exocolonist was going to be one of my favorite games of all time. The following 5 hours of my playthrough were spent trying to figure out how to recapture any of that first 2 hours. After the gameplay loop is fully brought forth, it becomes clear that instead of trying to do your best on this planet along with your friends also trying to do their bests, it's just you doing everything. The plot points are all triggered by whether you are capable or not capable. If you don't solve them yourself, they never get solved and it's entirely your fault. In my playthrough, I went into farming with the family, so the actions that happened relating to farming were excellent. But then it turns out, you max out all of those stats fairly quickly... so might as well do engineering... and so on and so on until it's very clear the only person capable in this entire operation is you. All of the engineering plot points are also yours. And so is the rebellion. And the expeditions. You're special... unfortunately. I ended up trying to seek out events with plot driving dialogue instead of trying to experience the world that they established. Because of the way this is setup, when I failed at a plot point, it made me feel as if I had played incorrectly. That there was an optimal way to get through everything. I was hoping to come in and want to replay this many times choosing different options but it certainly feels like if I were to just use a guide, I'd be able to see all the plots in one play through and play it "perfectly"... which pretty much eliminates my desire to even replay it. It turns out you're not really weighing options against each other, because if feels like there is an ideal route. Complaints aside, I played through a full playthrough all in one day in 8 hours straight and I did enjoy it. It just wasn't what I hoped after that first 2 hours. Minor nitpick: the relationship system is incredibly random. I made out with like 5 different characters that were into me, but then the 6th one... who wasn't really that into me, became the one I was dating. I then broke up with them to no fanfare and no effect. Kinda just seemed shoehorned in as I'm pretty sure you can convince everyone to love you simultaneously.