Show/Hide Show/Hide

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist

 
LudoNarraCon 2024May 9, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsTime for one of my favorite yearly Steam events: LudoNarraCon, a festival featuring demos and discounts from story-rich games like our very own I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/db6f4e1844371118386f78f7fce6e5367a0670bd.jpg This year's featured new games include some of my recent favorites: 🔮The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood 🎵Stray Gods 🗡️Slay the Princess 💰Final Profit Plus 50 other new narrative games, newly-minted demos, big sales on tons of older games, and two days of panels and fireside chats from devs. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/7d5f9a492c64e6a7add30ef7ce70ea7846c4ff05.jpg I Was a Teenage Exocolonist will be 35% off from May 6 - 13, and our demo will be available for the week! This festival brought to you by the following Steam tags: Choices Matter Story Rich Multiple Endings Interactive Fiction Visual Novel Dating Sim Choose Your Own Adventure Deckbuilders Fest and Physical CardsMar 25, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsFor one week only, the demo is live and game is on sale as we celebrate the best of deckbuilders on Steam! I LOVE deck building games. Some of my recent favorites (all roguelikes): 🛸Cobalt Core 🗡️Inscryption 🚂Monster Train 🐉Dream Quest (obscure but essential) 🃏Balatro (current obsession) But there will always be a special place in my heart (and a not insignificant part of my brain) for Magic the Gathering. It's been years since I've played online, but I have an unopened box of Lord of the Rings in my closet just waiting to be drafted. Something about the feel - and that smell - of glue and cardboard. So naturally when I was designing the deckbuilding component for I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, I was already thinking about how to make a physical game out of it. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/04a6f2d658a5eed1b9b0d9fb6a5896e152f8ea46.jpg Behold: you can buy it from TheGameCrafter.com for $14.99 USD! These are made to order (so it might take a while to ship) and feature 52 UV-coated cards in a cute mint tin, with card art from the game. I originally designed them as promotional merch so I'm selling these at cost. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/a7ae6348c1c100cf15508d6acb67c58c0ef9f856.jpg And yes it includes instructions for a playable 1-person game, a simplified version of the minigame in Exocolonist. Shuffle and draw 7 cards, then play a hand of 5 which scores at least 3 points to win the round. Points come from straights, flushes, pairs, or total score, and yes, order matters. Or screw playing the game, just enjoy the feel of your favorite Exocolonist cards right in your hands. Breathe deeply and smell that hot ink and glue. Ahhhhhh. - Sarah ːcccatː Regency Exocolonist BundleFeb 22, 2024 - Community Announcements🚀We're celebrating the launch of our friends' game Regency Solitaire II with a limited time bundle. 🎁Buy both I Was a Teenage Exocolonist and Regency Solitaire II this week for 10% off, or complete the set for a 10% discount on whichever game you're missing. Like Exocolonist, Regency Solitaire II features a mix of story and card game, but set in a Jane Austen-esque world of romance, intrigue, and shifting fortunes. You play as Bella, the heroine from the original 2015 casual hit Regency Solitaire, who finds herself embroiled in a new maze of family secrets. 👑About Regency Solitaire II Revisit romantic Regency Britain and build a glorious garden, in this charming solitaire sequel. Brought to you by the creators of the hit casual card game, Regency Solitaire. Resolve a tangled web of family secrets to help Bella silence the gossips, and host the season’s most anticipated soiree. Unlock gameplay features with your makeover project, and reveal bonus 'Collector's Edition' levels and a love story. Don't miss the party everyone's talking about! 🔗Complete your bundle here! The Storyteller's FestivalJan 29, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsFrom January 29th - February 4th, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist will be featured alongside the best recent and upcoming interactive fiction and narrative games on Steam. If you like stories that move you, choices that matter, and word counts in the hundreds of thousands, this festival is for you: 📖The Storyteller's Festival📖 We'll be celebrating with a discount, looping restream of me playing the game, and the Exocolonist demo will be up for a limited time. Happy reading! - Sarah ːnyaaːWinter Sale and Limited Time Plushies!Dec 21, 2023 - Community Announcements⛄ Merry various winter holidays! ❄️ It's that time of year, ❄️ ❄️ full of cheap games and cheer, ❄️ ❄️ Exo plushies are near- ❄️ ❄️ ly gone, ❄️ ❄️ So don't miss out, it won't be long! ❄️ {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/09a8cd984ec3d6caa58edd2ace380831cafdbcda.jpg 🧸 Plushie campaign is ending soon ːexobrainː Sol Plush: https://www.makeship.com/products/sol-plush ːexobrainː ːexoflexː Vriki Plush: https://www.makeship.com/products/vriki-plush ːexoflexː Sol and Vriki dolls are flying off the (figurative, preorder) shelves. This limited run campaign is ending January 5th. We don't plan to sell them again after that, so if you've had your eyes on one make sure you preorder soon. 🎁 Winter Sale discount, demo, stream Exocolonist is 35% off for the Steam Winter Sale, a magical time when I impulse buy far too many games even though I'll never have time to play them all. I tell myself it's important for "market research", but really I just love all the games and I can't resist a good deal. The demo is also up for a limited time, and we're re-streaming a cut of 💎 Syafire's 💎 August 2022 launch day playthrough. She's so lovely! She designs her own VTuber characters and posts tutorials on how it's all done on Youtube and Twitch. - Sarah ːnyaaː {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/b1f07d96e0802cb99bed865ff8bece61fc17437e.jpgExocolonist Plushies (limited time only!)Dec 11, 2023 - Community Announcementsːexosmileː ːexothumbsupː ːexosmileː It's plushie time friends!! ːexosmileː ːexothumbsupː ːexosmileː Get your Vriki and Sol plushies here for a limited time ending Jan 5th 2024. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/3a95cc4cd8a4a1f18a2bfb62d5cd72df022cfb9b.gif Twenty-five days to meet our campaign goal We've partnered with Makeship to do a limited run of Sol and vriki plushies. It's like a Kickstarter thing, where we need to reach a minimum order size (200 of each) for the campaign to succeed and the plushies to get made. Once that happens, they'll manufacture and ship them out by March/April. The campaign runs from now until January 5th so preoder yours now! ːexobrainː Sol Plush: https://www.makeship.com/products/sol-plush ːexobrainː ːexoflexː Vriki Plush: https://www.makeship.com/products/vriki-plush ːexoflexː Get a 10% discount if you buy both together! And the first 200 purchases of each comes with a free Steam key - share it with friends if you already own the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/8d2b4b59beec23ba132012212315a580276d4589.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/535feab7cec87f5e5a60c1bd480d3774fb9191ff.jpg Two little buds stuffed full of surprises They sent me some samples to play with and I looooooove them. The minky material is so soft and pettable, they're sturdily constructed with dyed fabrics and embroidered details. Exocolonist artist Mei worked on the production design for these to make them look just right, and finally we know just how many tentacles a vriki has. I took them out to explore the wild and alien world of my houseplants and deck and they fit right in. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/95c016f74a68f84595419bb3add3310e170ee73a.jpg One last time - we don't plan to make or sell these again after Jan 5th, so preorder yours today! - Sarah ːnyaaːSave & Sound Music FestivalSep 11, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsJoin us on September 11-14 for SAVE&SOUND: an online music festival celebrating the fusion of innovation and artistry in gaming audio. 🎧 September 13 at 12pm PDT: Exocolonist sound designer Em Halberstadt shows us how the sounds of Exocolonist were made on the official festival stream. 🎮 All week: the Exocolonist demo is up for a limited time. 🎉Also all week: listen to rad soundtracks and amazing sound design in the other festival games. 🎶Also-also all week: We're streaming the Exocolonist soundtrack on Steam. Our soundtrack features two hours of tracks from fourteen artists, including Em and Gordon from A Shell in the Pit (who did our sound and trailers too). If you want to know more, I wrote a blog post about it! Really don't miss Em's deep dive stream - her process for making the Exo ambient tracks is magical. Spoiler: It involves CAMELS. Hosted by Bedtime Digital Games and a group of amazing creators, the live SAVE&SOUND show will stream here on Steam, and on Twitch and Youtube. See the official site for more info.Happy Exoversary!Aug 25, 2023 - Community Announcements🎈 Exocolonist just turned one! 🎈 We're celebrating with a 35% off sale all this week, and the demo will be available for a limited time ⏳. It's been a wonderful year of player stories and kudos (the kind you can't spend on soysweets and cake, usually). 🎨 People have written 143 fanfics about Exocolonist on Archive of Our Own. 📝 They've posted countless works of fanart on Instagram, The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter, and yes, even Tumblr. 🏆 Exocolonist was nominated at just about every video game festival last year, and even won a few (Best Video Game at the Canadian Screen Awards, aka the Canadian Oscars!) We've been celebrating a month-long Vertumnalia festival on the Finji Discord with giveaways and livestreams. While prepping for a developer Q&A, I took a trip down memory lane and dug out my original design documents from 2017. Read my post about it but beware of spoilers, spicy details about inappropriate romances that never were, and Sol's long lost sister who was cut from the final game. Stay tuned for streams here on Steam and on Twitch from some very lovely streamers on the 26th, 27th, 28th. Happy Vertumnalia!!! 🎉 {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/2a4e866f7a888ce740e5f4f62869cec1e6a96edf.jpg Oh - and if anyone was wondering about the outcome of the plushie survey: We had 3000 responses! People want: Vriki (73%), Sol (60%), Socks (54%), Hopeye (52%), Dys (42%), Rex (39%), Sym (37%), Nomi (34%), Faceless (29% adjusted for being added late), Tangent (28%), Tammy (27%), Unisaur (25%), Anemone (23%), Cal (22%), Marz (14%), Vace (6%). 14% want a character, 37% want a creature, 49% want both. 90% of survey responders were playing on Steam and 80% heard about the survey from Steam You're all wrong about Marz!! Marz is the coolest! Thanks to everyone who shared how their day was going. ːexosmileː Still no guarantee we'll make these plushies, but we will let you know when we have more news on them! Vriki and Sol are the clear winners! - Sarah ːnyaaːVertumnalia Festival!Aug 18, 2023 - Community Announcements🚀 Celebrate a Year of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist with Vertumnalia Festivities! 🚀 Can you believe it's been a year since Exocolonist blasted its way onto Steam and into our hearts? We're setting out the feast table and building the stage for an exclusive Vertumnalia Festival on the Finji Discord! 🎨 Show off Your Talent Starting now! Dive into our digital talent showcase: Showcase your Exocolonist fan art, fiction and cosplay magic. Culinary wizards, cook up and share dishes inspired by Exocolonist Send the developers your questions for our upcoming livestream! 🎙 Exclusive Creator's Corner Q&A Mark your calendars! On August 25, 12PM PDT/3PM EDT, join the minds behind the game: Interact with Lead Developer Sarah Northway and Writer Lindsay Ishihiro. Watch as Artist Meilee Chao crafts live Exocolonist art inspired by fan suggestions. Plus, get a chance to win some Exocolonist goodies including Steam keys, exclusive pins, and rare press kits! Start dropping your questions and artwork ideas in our Discord now. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/af2fe56627abad06bd81bdb12d0c34e0fd4c68f0.png ✨ More Surprises in Store! Stay tuned to our socials for community-led special streams on Twitch & Steam and other surprises. Let’s make this anniversary a blast! 🚀🥳🌌 - Sarah ːnyaaːPatch #4 (minor update)Aug 3, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsI am still chasing that sweet green checkbox for being fully verified on Steam Deck. Although those in the know can tell you it plays beautifully on there already, there are some sync issues that could make it annoying to switch between deck and PC and downgrade us to only "playable". {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/b47d117833222d4791cbc6ddff6bb3b5618ae370.jpg While I was tackling that, I went through all the bug reports you lovely, lovely people have sent through the game's feedback menu (thank you! ːexoflexː) and fixed some small issues with particular cards and rare errors. Here's the list: Typos typos teh-zypos! ("only" 20 of them) Make Small Skills Boost perk and Clear Minded status roll their chances separately instead of adding them together in a confusing way Fix Bravely Helping to Fight and other +1 to total cards showing bonus beside the total, but not actually adding it to the total on rounds 2 and 3 Fix Tracking the Airsquid card text to explain it only affects physical cards Confirmation dialog when forgetting or not forgetting a card while relaxing, so it's much harder to skip by that option by accident Warn in a popup the first five times any file fails to save during each play session Slightly speed up first game boot after install or update (stop unnecessarily recompiling story files) Fix controllers not closing text input popups on Steam Deck Hide resolution and quality settings on Steam Deck and stop syncing them between deck and pc, just default to what works best on that specific hardware - Sarah ːnyaaːPlushie survey!Jul 27, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsWould you like a real-life squeezable Cal? A huggable squiggly Vriki? We're still in the early planning phases but we'd like to bring an Exocolonist character into the world as a stuffed toy. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/15c6931e0c2d854059da58be1594b2085cbc61e1.png The burning question is... which one?? Don't think of this as a "which is your favorite Exo character" quiz; think of it as "who would look coolest as a teddy bear version of themselves" or maybe "what would I be the least embarrassed to put on my bedroom shelves"? Yes, Vace is on the list. For some reason. Here is the Google Forms survey. All questions optional and anonymous. Tell us what you want, and we will do our best to make it happen! Also! There is a small Patch #4 coming soon to Steam, and now up on the testing beta branch. Feel free to take it for an early spin! Here are the changes: Typos typos teh-zypos! ("only" 20 of them) Make Small Skills Boost perk and Clear Minded status roll their chances separately instead of adding them together in a confusing way Fix Bravely Helping to Fight and other +1 to total cards showing bonus beside the total, but not actually adding it to the total on rounds 2 and 3 Fix Tracking the Airsquid card text to explain it only affects physical cards Confirmation dialog when forgetting or not forgetting a card while relaxing, so it's much harder to skip by that option by accident Warn in a popup the first five times any file fails to save during each play session Slightly speed up first game boot after install or update (stop unnecessarily recompiling story files) Fix controllers not closing text input popups on Steam Deck Hide resolution and quality settings on Steam Deck and stop syncing them between deck and pc, just default to what works best on that specific hardware - Sarah ːnyaaːLudoNarraCon Narrative FestivalMay 4, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsThe narrative games festival LudoNarraCon will run from May 4th - 8th right here on Steam. This is your chance to check out what is new and upcoming in narrative games, and get I Was a Teenage Exocolonist at limited time discount! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/d530e57804a86e8369b061b771bf32fc4da1cffb.jpg We also have two Exocolonist-related narrative panels during the event: Lindsay's is at 1pm PDT on Thursday May 4th. They'll be discussing whether a game narrative needs words with Tunic creator Andrew Shouldice. https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/33025617/view/3710443172337737687 Mine is at 1pm PDT on Friday May 5th: a sit down with some very cool fellow devs to chat about systems-based narrative writing. https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/33025617/view/3710443172337887533?l=english - Sarah ːnyaaːExocolonist Patch #3 (version 2716) changelog!Apr 11, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsI Was a Teenage Exocolonist Patch #3, version 2716 (March 16) is up now on Steam! This build restores some accidentally lost content, adds custom cursors, fixes issues with equipment bonuses and some statuses, and a bunch more small issues and typos. store hogs in save files and offer to restore if Groundhogs.json corrupt improve loading an age 11+ game in a demo version custom cursors, can be disabled via settings, bigger on 4k better fix for cards getting stuck redirecting thumper now adds to defense one time immediately skip current card challenge when you disable it via tutorial show card art and text in controller tooltips that include both strip exoscript markup from all user-entered names fix starting the game in controller mode with no controller plugged in fix hitting home with H hotkey while entering name if input box loses focus fix feedback menu truncating jankily after 13 lines fix tooltips disappearing too fast when using mouse and keyboard together fix steam deck tutorial where it says "click" so we can finally be verified fix disabling past lives with negative checks fix WAKE UP font being huge sometimes fix medallion and other gear bonuses that should only be on the first round fix becoming enlightened after first or second perk with gear skill bonuses fix fillbars not showing changes when gear bonuses push skill over 100 fix autosaving when returning from an expedition before the date changes fix showing -15 when you have net +0 skill change and gear equipped fix calm and starving statuses not affecting skill changes fix not showing skill bonus info in bubble tooltip when net is +0 fix remove incrementMonth to keep from skipping important events fix opening credits menu during ending doesn't let you close it again fix upgrading hopeye fix missing skill card sub-events for vace/rex/nomi/sym fix old sol not saying interesting things about many endings a regular helping of narrative fixes and typos Another giant thank you to everyone who reported bugs from inside the game's feedback menu! I couldn't have found these without you! ːexoflexː - SarahAwards Season for Exocolonist!Jan 27, 2023 - Community AnnouncementsBig news - I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is a finalist for Excellence in Narrative at the IGF (Independent Games Festival) (plus an honorable mention for Visual Arts!). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/d24bdba518026fa0348f79164161d8cac20f41ec.jpg Not only that, our game has also been nominated for Best Narrative in the GDCA (Game Developers Choice Awards - these are like the Oscars of video games) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/7c1a8a7e29980e831704b03a8edb63b0fa319edc.jpg AND we're a finalist for the Social Impact Award in the GDCAs. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/3c4267bc04d665d8ebbb98ff2e60588e41472d8c.jpg These are the big ones; the awards that devs (speaking of myself here) spend their entire career working towards. It is an incredible honor to be nominated. The IGF also features an audience award, so jump in and cast your vote here! Since our narrative design is getting so much attention, here's an article I wrote for gamedeveloper.com about The Narrative Octopus of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. If you'd like to play around with Exo's custom scripting language yourself, I've made a rough version of Exoscript open source on Github. - Sarah ːnyaaːMerry Vacation and a Happy Steam Sale!Dec 26, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsTo celebrate the Steam Winter Sale (December 22nd - January 5th), I Was a Teenage Exocolonist will be 20% off. We'll also be streaming the official soundtrack here for your listening enjoyment (yes, the soundtrack is also on sale!). The soundtrack features 2 hours of music by 14 incredible artists: Gordon McGladdery (A Shell in the Pit) Daniel Rosenfeld (C418) Shannon Mason (Pongball) Andrew Rohrmann (scntfc) Gabriel Koenig (Ghost Time Games) sintecta Kiyoshi Iio (Koku) Al Diaz, Rupert Lally and Espen J Jörgensen Boris Potschubay (Jogging House) Tim Rich (Crooked Walking) Jake Gauntlett Frances Aravel Colin Northway Em Halberstadt For more about the music of Exocolonist, I wrote a whole dang blog post about it here. - SarahNominate Us!Nov 23, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsSteam Awards nominations are now open! Time to let the world know about your favorite games released in the last year. Final voting will be held during the Steam winter sale. You can nominate I Was a Teenage Exocolonist for any category, but you can only pick one. How abouuuuuut Outstanding Story-Rich Game? Lindsay and I are so proud of our dynamic storytelling in Exocolonist. It's 600,000 words (that's like 6 novels!) of complex triggered events and choices that really matter. Here's a GameDeveloper article I wrote about our custom scripting language and how we wove it all together: Deep Dive: Using Exoscript to tame the "Narrative Octopus" of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/5437431fb57bd1442ca4acd8e567878260d0051e.png (Nomi-Nomi writes a multi-ending visual novel in Exo, because everybody loves a game-within-a-game)Exocolonist Patch #2 (version 2315) changelog!Nov 15, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsI Was a Teenage Exocolonist Patch #2, version 2315 (November 15th) is up now on Steam! More typos and a few bugs with gear and collectibles squashed. Patch notes: fix double-equipping gear when upgrading, not being able to equip fix crystal cluster making cards unselectable in controller mode fix negative skill bonuses for statuses (mourning, injured etc) fix (hopefully) can't drag battle cards in mouse mode fix (maybe) groundhogs steam sync issue, stop saving on game exit fix gear menu card scaling in biggerMenus mode fix some job start events that weren't high priority fix a bunch of references after you preempt famine move hard-coded english strings into localization tsv for modding buncha typos One bug I'm hoping to (maybe) fix with this update is an issue where past memories are disappearing (characters from the main menu, endings and achievements in the gallery). This might be due to a Steam sync issue reverting the file Groundhogs.json. If you think this might still be happening to you with the new version 2315, please report it from inside the game, and if possible please also email your Steam cloud_log.txt and cloud_log previous.txt files to [email protected] (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\logs on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/logs on MacOS, ~/.local/share/Steam/logs on Linux). Another issue I haven't been able to track down is fast-disappearing tooltips. They're supposed to stick around under your mouse, not disappear after a second! If this is happening to you (especially if you can figure out why!) please report it from inside the game. Thank you for all your help! - Sarah ːnyaaːMore award nominations!Nov 14, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsI Was a Teenage Exocolonist has been nominated for best Games For Impact in the Game Awards, and best Playstation Game of the Year in the PLAY Magazine awards. It's a big honor to be included in these shortlists! Seeing our game casually listed beside Elden Ring and God of War is a trip. And yes, these awards are both public ballots so you too can vote for Exocolonist! The Game Awards winners will be announced in a live ceremony on December 8th at 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET. - Sarah ːnyaaːI Was a Teenage Exocolonist @ IndieCade 2022Nov 5, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsStop by and watch pre-recorded streams by amazing streamers like Syafire, Zeenigami, and Skittzipoo. And don't forget you can try out the I Was a Teenage Exocolonist demo through November 11th! Exocolonist in the IndieCade 2022 showcase!Nov 4, 2022 - Community AnnouncementsI Was a Teenage Exocolonist was the winner of the 2020 IndieCade award for Procedural Design (now called Systemic Design). Now that our game is all grown up and released, it'll be featured with other IndieCade alumni games as well as this year's nominees in a special Steam festival from November 4 - 11 2022. :r3fuel: Visit the Steam festival page here :r3fuel: IndieCade is a special show for Northway Games because we used to drive down to LA for it back in the early dawn of indie games (all the way back in 2010 when I was making Flash games), and I've helped judge the awards off and on in years since. They often feature games which push the boundaries of what a game can be, from massive meat-space events to interactive art exhibits. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/37830808/efdeb66379354da8e5cfef03d5d4afd1076dd7a5.png This year's IndieCade festival will be online, with an awards ceremony on Steam and Twitch on Saturday, November 5th at 11:00am PDT. I'll be watching! During the 2020 ceremony I was so convinced we weren't going to win that I was in the middle of making lunch when Exocolonist was announced as the winner. I had to do a mad dash to setup a webcam and give an acceptance speech. :nyaa: The Exocolonist demo will be up from November 4 - 11, and we'll be re-streaming some of this year's interviews and developer playthroughs on the Steam page. - Sarah :eyebug:

Meta