I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is officially released today! I started development almost exactly five years ago, and wowowow has the game ever grown up since then!
I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who supported Exocolonist and helped create it. Artists Meilee Chao, Eduardo Vargas, Sarah Webb, Leanne Roed, Sarah Roland, Diego De la Rocha, and our hundred card artsits for making the game so breathtakingly beautiful. Narrative designer Lindsay Ishihiro for making us laugh, cry, and fall in love with their moving prose. Gord, Em and others from A Shell in the Pit Audio, and all of our incredible musicians, for adding another dimension of wonder and beauty to the game.
Thanks to my husband Colin Northway for helping with tricky algorithms and game balancing, and for a tremendous amount of emotional support, idea-bouncing and code checks over the last five years.
Thanks to our publishers Finji, our QA and porting teams, and a very special thank you virtual hug to our incredible beta testers and all of our fans for your support and encouragement. And to my dad, who has logged hundreds of hours living life after life on the planet Vertumna.
Thank you, friends.
Okay enough mushy stuff, it’s release day!
The team and I have been eagerly waiting to open the gates and invite everyone to come explore our beautiful planet Vertumna. I hope you find it as charming, thrilling, moving, and fun as we do, and I can’t wait to hear what sort of Teenage Exocolonist you’ll be.
Vertumna awaits!
– Sarah
That sounds like concern trolling to me, from someone disappointed that their intolerance of sexual diversity was not shared by the developers. Personally I was very impressed with the content warnings provided with the game, which go beyond merely listing problematic topics to offering detailed summaries of the problematic content, in some cases offering optional instructions for how to avoid it. These warnings demonstrate the exacting care and thoughtfulness of the developers toward these topics.
After completing my third playthrough of Teenage Exocolonist tonight, I’m still marveling at this game’s wonderfully engaging gameplay, that is rich with narrative implications and subtle interactions between game elements that are such a pleasure to explore and master. It reminds me of both Alter Ego and Princess Maker, and I’ll definitely be recommending this game as one of the best to come from 2022.
I had to know who was responsible for this, and discovered IwaTE shares the same designer as Rebuild, that I played over a decade ago on Newgrounds. Wonderful, I will be watching.
I have been waiting so long for this game and I’m so happy with the product! Already 50 hours in and on my fifth playthrough, and the story keeps changing! How did you do that? :) Amazing job, please never stop making games!
This game was really beautiful by in terms of art and story. Thank you guys for making it and for how inclusive it was. Tying growth and capability to memories and experiences through the card system was really brilliant. Looking forward to your next project, and in the meantime going to go take another spin on Vertumna reincarnation wheel.