I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a role-playing video game developed by Northway Games and published by Finji. The player starts the game as a ten year old, going through events that affect their colony on an alien planet until the game ends when they turn twenty.
The game lets players spend their teenage years on an alien planet in a narrative deckbuilding RPG with a timeloop twist. The choices they make and skills they master over ten years will determine the course of their life and the survival of their colony.
Apart from the unusual experience of temporality and consequence, the game challenges players to understand the ecosystem surrounding their colony. Its alienness has a defamiliarizing effect that sparks curiosity, e.g. changes such as the planet’s five seasons: Quiet, Pollen, Dry, Wet, and Glow. The first four seasons each have three weeks, while Glow season is only one week. Activities include learning about the military, studying in the engineering hub, or exploring the planet outside of the main colony settlement. Players engage in a card mini-game that determines statistics increases during each of these activities. They acquire cards through events, each of which is a “memory” with a unique skill bonus associated with it.