#Sol will spend eternity improving the lives of every alternate version of their friends and family

[notathrowawayname]

So I played I was a Teenage Exocolonist

At first, the game sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I enjoyed playing it and the amount of detail and events that can happen depending on your choices is great. But it also felt jarring to me that runs end at age 20, like that was when every decision you've made locked in. And I couldn't get past the idea that Sol is sort of doomed to continue the loop for eternity. Sure the Transcend Time ending exists but that also means that the loop never ends. Sol has to keep reliving their life.

But having had time to think about it, and all the different timelines, having spent time listneing to the insert song "The Child that you Were" and thinking about all the characters and how you can affect their lives, I've realised there's something incredibly bittersweet about it. The game rewards you for solving a problem by making it easier to solve in the next loop. Finding the Shimmer cure, saving Tammy, your Dr Hal, your mum, replacing Governor Lum, brokering peace, etc.

But they can't make it perfect. There will always be fighting, deaths (Kom), conflict before resolution. We're constantly alluded to the fact that the kids don't really have a childhood. They become farmers, soldiers, scientists and childcarers from age 10. They are fighting for their lives and they experience loss and death far too early for any of them to keep their childhood innocence.

But that's sort of the point.

A lot of people have nostalgia for the past when they were a teenager. But the reality is that no, you can't go back. Even if somehow time went backwards and you returned to your teen years, the fact is, you are no longer the person you were back then. "The child you were will not return," no matter how hard you want them to.

At first I parsed that lyric as a source of pain or torture for Sol, but I realised that it's really no different from how all the kids think. Nem loses her brother, Tammy takes time to adjust to the planet, Tang has to reconcile with her brother and deal with her whole "weakness of the flesh" mindset. None of them think they have that innocence or optimism anymore.

But Sol knows that's not true. Sol knows what they're all capable of, how much potential there is in them. They've seen it across countless lifetimes.

And damn if they won't use that knowledge to give them the best lives possible.

And when they're older and wiser, they can all look back fondly at their childhood and think "I was a Teenage Exocolonist".