#cheeseaged exocolonist

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Masterpost

For easy reference, I've made a masterpost of Cheeseaged Exocolonist, the run where I play Exocolonist as it was truly meant to be played: as a ten-year scheme to manipulate hearts, minds and time until I have created the perfect world, where I rule with everyone's blessing.

This run will contain so much spoiler content, cheese and psychological horror as to ruin Teenage Exocolonist for everyone. Or make it better. Titles that contain spoilers/triggers are censored on this list, more on request.

Intro

Age 0-9 - Minmax my own early childhood

Age 10 - Neglect my own education for levelling purposes

Age 11 - Ruin Valentine's Day as soon as it is invented by blorboing so hard it becomes existentially horrifying

Age 12 - Announce my intention to rule the world

Age 13 - Forget my dad's love because it's suboptimal

Age 14 - Sol meets her one weakness...

Age 15 - Use my transcendence of time to cheat at cards

Age 16 - Ascend to autistic godhood

Age 16 (Again) - Be so good at the game that I [ruin my own plans] and have to backtrack significantly

Age 17 - Treat people's mental health issues [in a family-unfriendly way]

Age 18 - Use my compassion and mental health literacy to set up a coup and crush my enemies

Age 19 (First Half) - Form a trans lesbian political marriage for the buffs

Age 19 (Finale) - Cement my power...

Epilogue

[deusexlachina]

Let's Play I Was A Teenage Exocolonist - World Domination Run

I'm starting my Let's Play of Exocolonist. This is a deeply narrative, character-driven, game about making choices, good or bad, and seeing where they take you.

That is not what we are going to be doing.

I've already seen many ways Sol's life can play out. But the one thing that still eludes me is the best possible ending. With the collected knowledge of countless lives, Sol will use every weapon and every secret at her disposal. Her entire life - memories, friends, hobbies - will be forged to be the most powerful being on Vertumna. She will achieve universal adoration, play politics like House of Cards, and, ultimately, rule this planet as a benevolent autistic god.

In short, we will be breaking the game in half.

I will call this run "Cheeseaged exocolonist," because I am still amused by Ratboy's meme of the cast with cheese heads. If you want to filter out my other inane posts to focus just on these inane posts, they will all be tagged accordingly.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 15: Use my transcendence of time to cheat at cards

In which I befriend a furry by financially ruining him, in order to reach my full potential and ascend as an autistic god.

Year 15 starts with your home in ruins. There's no special dialogues, and only two ways to pass the first three months: help rebuild or mourn. I choose to mourn, because this is Sol's first time experiencing death (in this lifetime), and because, having maxed out Organizing, rebuilding is highly suboptimal, whereas mourning lets me avoid stress and trim my deck of useless non-blue filth.

Because I chose the sportsball, I find it when sifting through the rubble of my room and get this rather sad dialogue.

Mourning gives you many opportunities to level your Empathy. However, because I have the In Mourning status, all my stat increases are reduced by 1, rendering every single one of these +1 boosts completely worthless.

This always happens, because Kom always dies. I'm not sure if this was an attempt to really underscore how hurt Sol is, an oversight, or a straight-up troll.

After three months of developing my Empathy in nonexistent amounts, the Heliopause arrives, and Sol's home is gradually taken over by fascists who enthusiastically spread disease, worship the military and hate transgender people. I enjoy visual novels because it's a fun escape from the problems of the real world.

Fortunately, there are exactly two nice Helio kids, Nomi and Rex. Nomi is an nonbinary AuDHD techie and Rex is a furry engineer. Rex often reminds you that he is part dog, in case you had missed the ears. His dog traits include a reduced lifespan. This is not, to be clear, a setting where people just have mutations. This was a deliberate genetic augmentation. Someone purposefully made their kid part-dog. Incidentally, Nomi likes anime, so here's a panel from one of my old favourites, Fullmetal Alchemist. They've never seen that one, so really this picture wasn't relevant. Sorry.

I improve my friendship level with Rex by giving him sticks, his favourite item because he is part dog. Rex is easier than most to befriend because he enjoys physical affection, because he is part dog. I love Exocolonist, so rather than saying anything bad about the game here, I will reiterate that my favourite character is Tangent, because she's a complex person with a well-integrated character arc in dialogue with the central themes. The writers really took their time to make a fleshed-out character with deep relationships with the others and multiple character traits.

Once I have high enough friendship with Rex, he wants to play cards with me. I wait to play cards with him until after Vertumnalia, where I beat both Tangent and Nomi at the trivia game. The card you get from doing Trivia is worth 8, making it as powerful as the card you get for defeating a giant in a fight to the death. Better yet, it's blue. Why do I keep picking blue cards? You're about to see.

After Vertumnalia, I am Popular because of my detailed knowledge of pop culture trivia. I would fit right in on Vertumna, except it is currently ruled by fascists. We'll take care of that, but first we need to arm ourselves. Popularity doubles the amount of kudos you get for three months. From all sources. Now's the time to take Rex up on his offer to play cards. Rex is good at cards, but he has one critical weakness: he's playing against someone who has played this particular game countless times. I use my past-life knowledge to win the game, betting 100 kudos that I have a better card.

Sorry, make that 200. Sucker.

I now have a vast wealth of kudos, most of which I gained from cheating at cards by consulting my past lives. With this ill-gotten fortune, I buy the ultimate weapon in the game, which is surprisingly not the Drone Rifle, an actual gun. It is a "vintage focus device," a fidget spinner. Because Sol is very autistic indeed, a fidget spinner allows her to reach her full potential by letting her stim. Accessibility tools being a luxury you have to buy - in fact, the most expensive luxury in the game - paints a very bleak picture of the colony's ability to handle disability.

That would be just a joke, but Nougat's learning disability, Tangent's drug abuse and burnout, Dys' (potentially literal) alienation and Tammy's phobia of nearly everything all go pretty much neglected unless you step in. It's interesting how much Vertumna recreates the same oppressive structures that it is an attempt to flee from.

Fortunately, we can get rid of ableism through autistic world domination, to which we are one step closer.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseage Exocolonist: Epilogue

For those wondering Where They Are Now in my perfect world.

Having achieved universal adoration, I get to see the epilogues of all my peers, making the epilogue so long that "The Child You Were," which is five and a half minutes long, ends about halfway into the ending, leaving me to read about my friends' fates in an eerie silence as I contemplate the cost of perfection.

I have given all my loved ones their dream lives, but I can no longer be fully part of those lives, because I lived too many others in search of the golden timeline.

As a high-rebellion governor, I Take The Colony In A New Direction, replacing Council members with younger people who are more in line with my kind of reforms, and the other departments fall in line because I have the security squads firmly on my side. I am quoting this verbatim because there is no way I can spin it to sound more colourfully tyrannical.

Having reconciled with her twin brother with the power of drugs, my power wife edits people's brains to make them resistant to Bad Thoughts, a marginally less sinister use for her medical expertise than engineering a plague.

Tangent is also the first person in the planet's history to realize we need a mental health expert who is not a barista. I'm proud of her.

As revenge for stealing her dream job, Marzipan steals my dream girl. Then Tangent dumps Marzipan, because nobody can constrain Tangent.

Thanks to my barista skills breaking up her and Vace, Anemone lives a happy life. She Tears Down This Wall.

Socks keeps growing, and Cal has to release her, having spent his entire childhood with the worm.

Marzipan is part second in command, part confidante and part nemesis, which is more glamorous than just assassinating me in my sleep.

Dys becomes an Animorph. Tangent celebrates this, having finally found common ground with her twin: wanting to leave humanity.

Rex mends his friendship with Vace, who becomes a better person and then proceeds to fly into a wormhole and is never seen again. Having dreamed of exploring space his whole life, he couldn't stand to be stuck on this planet, though he could've if I'd given him exactly five more cakes. I let him escape the wormhole, because I never can.

Tammy is finally confident, and advocates for the communal raising of children, presumably because she's grown up around Tang and Dys, who were not communally raised, and look what happened to them. Her epilogue reveals that Antecedent is still Chief Steward until her nineties. Given that I remove all authorities who don't bend to my will, Auntie must have gone along with My Kind of Reforms, which makes sense because she always knows which way the wind is blowing. The snake.

Nomi becomes a Magical Person who is popular at princess-themed events. With my help, they finish their video game. "Getting a lot of Animorphs vibes from this," thinks woman who read all of the Animorphs books.

My relationship with Tangent having inevitably fallen out, Sym becomes my annoying roommate.

My parents do well. My dad cultivates dizzyweed and hops, presumably inspired by his daughter's therapeutic drug empire.

Even I am impressed with myself, telling myself that "it's not easy to make someone put aside their ego and surrender to a greater power."

That greater power being me, of course.

Thanks for reading!

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 14: Sol meets her one weakness - scripted death!

In which Sol pads her resume with cybernetic technology, has a brief, ill-fated sports career and learns the limits of her powers.

Age 14 is pretty uneventful if you've dealt with both the famine and plague already. My priority is levelling engineering.

Engineering gives me access to Gadgets in the supply depot. On Earth, "gadget" is a generic, someone dismissive term for a small device. On Vertumna, "gadget" means the tools of the gods.

The first gadget I buy is the Brain Trainer, which gives +15 to every skill. And it stacks with other skill-boosters, like Marz' jacket for Persuasion. This is one of the two most broken items in the game.

I do a tutoring job so I can help out poor Nougat. You only really meet Nougat if you're a tutor or babysitter. She's a minor character, but she really needs help, and so she's part of a perfect run. One of her problems is that her cyberpunk hand is infected. I'm not a doctor, but yes I am, because I have the Brain Trainer.

Continuing to use my civilization's most powerful tool to pad my resume, I tell my mom I'm qualified to be a farmer, making her proud of me for like one scene. This is a breath of fresh air, because since I'm going for high Rebellion, she's normally pretty mad at putting up with my antics. Saving both of your parents, Tammy, Tonin, Hal, the governor, and her crops is not enough to get Mom's Love*. It's just as well; I'd discard it as soon as I got it because Mom's Love is suboptimal for this deck.

Towards the end of the year, I realize I want to be on watch duty during Glow in order to protect the colony. This is a problem because I have not even qualified for watch duty, since unlocking that requires spending time in the Garrison, the most suboptimal location. For the second and last time in this entire run, I play what I can only imagine is a very tense game of Sportsball, ostensibly my childhood favourite game. I do unlock watch duty, so I sigh in relief as I get to abandon Sportsball for the rest of my life. Just in time, too, because Sportsball is about to get even less fun really quickly.

Year 14's Glow attack is a forked charge. A massive monster attacks the walls while smaller creatures try and slip past the defences to assassinate the governor. Since I'm on watch duty, though, nobody slips past anything. I can now also do a difficult combat check to help Anemone's brother Kom fight the massive creature. I succeed, because I have a well-optimized deck. Kom dies anyway, because his death is inevitable.

The devs designed Tammy as a character who Haunts the Narrative. Her death is meant to guarantee you'll regret something on your first run, where it is unavoidable, encouraging you to use the excellent wormhole mechanic. Kom's death is scripted presumably because it really affects Anemone's character arc and it would suck ass to write five years of dialogue for two versions of Anemone.

This marks the halfway point of the game. The second half of the game is considerably heavier, but has several of my favourite scenes. Most of which involve Tangent.

*The quip "just like real life" was extremely tempting, and you probably saw it yourself. I did not make this joke because it would falsely imply I have a bad relationship with my mother. Me and my mother are quite close. This is one of two areas where I am better than Sol, the other being that I am not trapped in a time loop and can experience(?) the sweet release of death.

[deusexlachina]

Cheesage Exocolonist Age 11: Ruin Valentine's Day as soon as it is invented by blorboing so hard that it becomes existentially horrifying

In which Sol tells Tangent about her other lives for free candy and uses fashion to save people's lives before they are in danger.

Age 11 is kicked off by Marz inventing Valentine's day for free candy - you have to pick your Best Friend. Normally, I would do something sensible, like weigh all the different options to see how to maximize Friendship points and choose the Best Friend most optimal for my run. Unfortunately, Tangent is my blorbo and my shameless favouritism cannot be suppressed.

This is the first time I've picked Tangent after completing a run, so I only just now discovered this rather unsettling wormhole dialogue: when she asks for a reason you should be friends (Tangent being one of the harder characters to befriend, you do need a reason!), Sol can tell Tangent about the timeline where they were married.

Obviously this ruins your friendship completely, and...wait, she thinks it's cool? She gives friendship points?

"Grow old together" is a bit of a stretch - in the timeline Sol is referring to, my first playthrough, the marriage dissolved quickly because Tangent can never keep a relationship going with anyone, and also because Tangent lost her brother, had a supervillain phase and burnt out in like her twenties. (God forbid trans women do anything). Canonically, future memories aren't 100% reliable, but this still feels like burying the lede.

Despite this being one of the weirdest dialogues in the game, which is a very high bar, this is one of very few options where you can be completely honest about your other lives without being diagnosed as Delusional. (The twins are both very open-minded).

I really like the wormhole dialogues, because they start out awesome but the more of them you pick, the more you realize just how horrifying this whole situation is. This poor kid just trying to deal with having numerous other lives and no idea what to do with them with PTSD from stuff that hasn't even happened yet. They just get more and more detached from the world around them the more they loop. And they keep looping forever.

Marzipan gives me -2 Friendship for picking Tangent instead of her. But I like to think the penalty is really for ruining Valentine's Day by being 11 and reminiscing about married life/the only life Sol ever lived organically. I mean, she doesn't mention that. But would you? Really, this was a suboptimal choice, but I want to share some neat Easter eggs along the way.

Most of the year proceeds as normal, by which I mean neglecting my studies in favour of deckbuilding. I get Marz's friendship high enough for her to give me her jacket. Unfortunately, because she's my coworker, she knows how much money I have and, seeing I have more than 50 kudos in the bank, she will instead sell me the jacket. I take the L; it's fair for ruining Valentine's Day.

Besides that, the jacket is crucial. Tonin is living on borrowed time - late this year, he will be killed in a manticore attack. I could go out and save him just in the nick of time. But that would be traumatic for him and poor Tammy. More importantly, it would give me more cards [bad]. Another route is persuading him to stay home, but, having neglected my education, my persuasion is at 0. Fortunately, I have Marz's jacket, which makes me cool enough to persuade him to babysit instead. Tonin joins his daughter in being saved without any idea of the danger they were in.

A couple months later, I save Hal. This is the first time I've saved someone and gotten recognition for it. This is a sign that these mortals will eventually bow to me as their ruler.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Year 19 2/2: Cement my power by letting people fuck

The finale to my perfect life, in which I reconcile Tangent and Dys, civilization and nature, human and Gardener. And rule over all of it with an iron fist.

CW for discussion of ecofascism. The villains are pretty foul.

My first act as governor is to immediately fire Seeq for attempting to bribe themselves. I install Marzipan in their place. She jokes that she intends to be leader of the opposition, which is funny, because this is a one-party state.

She is actually not joking; the ending confirms that she leads the opposition. I can only assume that her insincere levity is to make herself look nonthreatening; the last politician to oppose me, Lum, was last seen dragged off by soldiers. He is never mentioned again in this visual novel.

On my inauguration, the council advised that I spend individual time with everyone. Naturally, I do this in the form of barista therapy, because Tangent needs it and so does Dys. I warn Dys about the dangers of drugs, which he dismisses, presumably because I am telling him this while giving him drugs. Just because I'm a hypocrite doesn't mean it's not good advice.

In between these sessions, Instance comes in to vent about Tangent facing too much pressure, perhaps because she is queen-consort of the most powerful human on this planet. I tell her not to push Tangent too hard. This reduces Helped Tangent even more. This has no mechanical effect, because Tangent doesn't even have enough time to be a supervillain. But it's still sweet to see Instance realize the error of her ways and stop pushing Tangent too hard. Before she kills all non-terrestrial life on the planet.

Having narrowly achieved 90 Friendship with Vace, he texts me that he's going to go to therapy and apologize to Rex for bullying him for being a furry, redeeming himself a literal month before the end of the game.

At the end of the year, the Gardeners amass a vast army of animals and genetically-engineered monsters, with the intent of wiping out humanity if we cannot reach an accord. A responsible leader would prepare either for war or for negotiation. However, I am drunk on my own power, so I decide to spend the final month of the game reconciling my wife and brother-in-law.

They share that they've missed each other and felt terrible. Tangent recommends an antidepressant implant. Dys refuses, because I have taught him well and he says no to drugs. Then he sips his second cocktail of the night.

Having reconciled a decade-long grudge by plying each party with drugs until they are intoxicated enough to talk about their feelings, I am now in a good headspace to negotiate on behalf of humanity. The negotiations go smoothly until Nocticulent demands that we stop fucking.

I know my people will not stand for this. How will Tammy engage in her favourite pasttime of being pregnant? How will Rex be able to sire a wave of children like a furry Ghengis Khan? As leader, I step forward and renegotiate. This requires a social, mental and physical check, each of which I complete effortlessly because I have a fidget spinner and am stimming constantly, unnerving Nocticulent, who must be unsure if this is some kind of alien sorcery.

Nocticulent is impressed with me, because I have learned a lot "in ten years." I do not correct him that I am trapped in a timeloop, with the combined knowledge of countless lifetimes. He cites my learning as a sign of human potential and thus cause for peace. He does not say whether this decision was informed by my godlike powers or by my wife being a supervillain who can turn his own plagues against him to destroy him at the genetic level. You decide.

Grateful that I have ended the war, and, more importantly, preserved the right to fuck, my people rejoice, and bow to me as I rule this planet for my long life. I have it all: power, women, fulfillment.

And my mom is finally proud of me.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 18: Use my compassion and mental health literacy to set up a coup and crush my enemies

In which we fill the hole in our friends' lives with logs and eggs, use ill-fitting clothes to convince my people to make me their queen, and thwart an alien invasion by being the world's best barista.

CW for discussion of domestic abuse.

Having done most of the work needed to get a perfect ending, you'd think year 18 would go by pretty quickly. However, I now have the power to give gifts every month instead of once per season, and with great gift power comes great gift responsibility. After all, we're nearing the end of the game. I deliver a gift to every single friendable character each month. So I will dedicate this log to my friends. The virtual ones.

Nomi is self-conscious about being an artist and asks what I want to be when I grow up. I give the same answer I have given everyone else: I want to be in charge.

I've been throwing cakes at Vace, in hopes that his terrible attitude is caused by low blood sugar. Vace sees that I've been grinding friendship with his girlfriend, and he doesn't want any grinding going on with his girlfriend. He threatens me, telling me not to make him worry about me hanging out with his girlfriend.

I reassure him there's nothing to worry about, then immediately go talk to Nem and tell her to break up with him. Telling people they are in an abusive relationships is always a hard conversation, but she's ready to have it now because I have fought valiantly by her side, heroically tried to save her brother, but mainly because I have given her dozens of eggs over the course of this run. I use my teenage drug-slinging psychotherapist skills to diagnose Vace with being a dick.

Because I have high friendship with Vace, I get him to open up about his problems, discovering that his girlfriend suddenly broke up with him. Rallying all my baristastic expertise and courage, I suggest this is because he's an abusive dickhole. Vace does not put two and two together and realize that I tanked his relationship, so we can keep befriending him in our cynical ploy to manipulate him into becoming a better person, like a blue-haired Christmas Wraith.

After these therapeutic successes, I have a therapy date with Tangent. She asks for extra-strength blep tea, which I do not give to her because that will Help Tangent. Recall that even one Helped Tangent will trip the flag for the Engineered Plague. This girl is a cup of very strong tea away from wiping out all non-terran life on the planet. I love her.

I start getting people to 100 Friendship. Marz tells me about her plan to overthrow Lum, and I promise to keep her on her toes.

I decide the best way to keep her on her toes is by running as her opposition. This requires 50 Persuasion, which I have from equipping the Emojiproji (+10 to social skills), the Brain Trainer (+15 to everything) and, in a real stab in the back, Marzipan's second-hand jacket (+20 Persuasion). This is such an audacious Ides of March that Marzipan can't help but be impressed.

It also requires you to have consistently shown opposition to the existing authority, to the tune of 70 Rebellion. This is why I have been talking back to my mom so much. Now it's time to confront her. I spend the month farming, solely because the other Geoponics jobs will all give me events that will override the event where I meet my mom. I explain to my mom that I'm not a bad kid, I was just grinding Rebellion to go for the golden ending. She finally understands and promises me her full support in overthrowing Lum.

Immediately after this, I get an event where I have to save Socks from being put down, because this event happens in Geoponics starting in year 17 and, since saving her the first time, I've put off working in Geoponics for so long that the game has gotten impatient with me.

The same month, I use my baristatherapist skills to talk down Dys from planting a bomb on our walls as part of a deal he made to become an alien and live happily ever after with his alien boyfriend Sym. This is a very strange deal that gets even stranger when you learn that he made this deal with Nocticulent, not Sym.

Having gotten my mom's approval for the first time in my eighteen years, I then move on to recruit Seeq, the administrator. They agree that Lum needs to be deposed, but, showing no solidarity with their fellow trans person, demand a bribe in the form of kudos. To make clear how utterly preposterous this is, we are living in a mostly communistic society, where kudos are the currency given by adults to children for good deeds, spendable exclusively on luxury items in the Supply Depot, which Seeq is in charge of.

Because I saved Eudicot's life, she shows up to rebuke Seeq, making them the first person in this planet's history to attempt to bribe themselves and fail. This is good because I have spent all my money on overpriced accessibility devices, spa days and plying Vace with baked goods.

I then recruit Rhett by reminding him of how Lum nearly got some of us killed in a stunt to look cool, and Instance with a persuasion check.

At the end of the year, the enemy is ominously waiting just outside our walls. We know from past lives that they're waiting for Dys to blow up the bomb, not realizing that I have turned him to good with the power of coffee and medicinal roots. For their trouble, they get Socks sicced on them.

In the final year, because of my talks with Sym, the Gardeners will negotiate peace with humanity. I like to think that has something to do with them just having suffered the most embarrassing defeat in the history of their war with humanity. And I owe it all to being a barista.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 19 1/2: Form a translesbian political marriage for the buffs

The first half of the final year, in which we shake down my centrist auntie, use the gentle love of a transgender woman to become a political powerhouse, and fight against both competitors for rule of the planet.

And I come dangerously close to having to play fairly.

The final year is a busy time - so busy that I split this year into two logs. I've saved everyone who can be saved, and improved the lives of almost everyone in the colony. But it will all be for naught if I don't depose Lum, because he will never make peace with the Gardeners.

I get Utopia on board, giving me the vote of everyone except Antecedent, a centrist who doesn't believe in war but supports Lum solely because he surrounds himself with Very Fine People. The only named character in Lum's circle is Vace, who was in an abusive relationship with Antecedent's daughter until I destroyed it without her help or apparent knowledge that her daughter was being abused. Antecedent is the single worst mom in the colony and being a mom is her whole career. And she's competing with Instance, who is evil.

However, once I tell her I have the support of every other authority figure in the colony, she sees which way the wind is blowing and immediately decides to support my coup of the man she supported seconds before.

I have successfully gotten the entire council on board with overthrowing Lum. At this point, Marz could really take it from here. However, despite planning her whole life to be a political leader, she's a terrible leader with terrible politics. She only discovered capitalism was bad when she was seventeen, which is an impressive level of ignorance given that she is the child of an anti-capitalist group fleeing from an Earth doomed by capitalism. This whole story is taught to ten year olds as part of the basic Humanities curriculum.

Her environmental policies have also been quite bad, which is not a good thing in a planet where the environment is sentient and able to murder you.

In terms of leadership per se, even with the colony on the line, she decided to get all the adults onboard with the coup and then let me do all the work of recruiting. She doesn't get any votes on her own, and doesn't even allude to trying.

Lastly, and most importantly, she does not have godlike powers that allow her to use the knowledge gained from every possible life she could have lived. Only I am fit to rule this planet. And that means I have to take her down.

Unfortunately, it turns out that you need to have Persuasion maxed out to actually defeat her. This catches me off-guard, because achieving peace is the one ending I've never gotten. Even with Marz's jacket, I don't have enough. Worse, there is only one job in the game that primarily levels Persuasion (i.e. levels it anywhere close to how much I need), and I haven't even unlocked it yet because it requires either persuasion, which I don't have, or loyalty, which I have actively avoided. And the deadline is the end of Early Dust. Even if I backtrack by several months, it's not enough.

I don't just need cheese here. I need stinky cheese. I take longer than I will disclose calculating how much Persuasion I need and where I could get it. Eventually, I come up with a plan that I am prouder of than it frankly deserves.

There are three statuses that reliably boost stat gains. If you defend the colony, you get Heroic, which boosts Physical gains. Mastering a skill gives you Enlightened, which boosts Mental gains. I could do either of these easily, but Persuasion is a Social skill. There is only one status that boosts Social gains: Smitten. It is the buff you get for entering a relationship.

She's not seriously...oh, but I am. That's right. Citizens of Vertumna, I am about to enter the planet's first political marriage!

I spend some time deliberating on who will be the lucky girl before selecting Tangent. It has always been Tangent. It is always going to be Tangent.

I tell her our shared trauma could be romantic, which sounds glib but is one of the most sincere things I have said in this entire run. Everyone else I have detached from, just pawns for me to put in the perfect position to make the perfect world. Tangent is special, different, perfectly imperfect. She was my wife in the one timeline I lived organically, the one life where I naively thought I could die. I woo her out of a longing for that innocent time, but I am no longer innocent, and she is only innocent because of my manipulations.

Anyway, this gives me the Smitten buff, which allows me to grind Persuasion really fast. It increases all Persuasion gains by one, so I make sure to get as many little Persuasion boosts as I can while the buff is active, exploiting the game mechanics as much as Sol exploits her loved ones.

It goes without saying that I timed my romantic confession to squeeze out the most extra Persuasion points. Which turns out to be 5. Even sadder is that this paltry bonus ends up being crucial.

With this boost, I get just enough to qualify to Assist The Governor. I decide the best way to Assist him is by facilitating his retirement. In this job, he assigns me to make propaganda, so I make him a meme. This is not essential to deposing him or becoming governor, and in fact actually costs me 10 kudos. But it is a small price to pay to humiliate my enemy at the end of his career.

I use my remaining kudos to buy a doll, so I have all four item slots with a persuasion-boosting item. But here I encounter a dilemma. I'm still five points short. The whole game, I have been relying on the broken pet vriki I got in year 12, which boosts skill gains on a success (for me, all the time).

But the coup happens immediately after Early Dust, and you have no opportunity to switch items, so I have to be equipping all my persuasion items to have enough for the check. Without the vriki, I can only count on four points. The only way I can get five points is by getting a super goal. This would be easy, if not for one problem. The fidget spinner, the source of my powers, also takes up a gear slot.

I cannot stim.

For the first time in years, I have to play the card game with real numbers instead of my bullshit all-wildcard deck that breaks the game in half. The fate of the colony depends on me winning without cheese!

I draw a bad hand. I use a crystal to draw a new hand, and thankfully the redraw is much better. It's good enough to win...but still not enough to get the super goal. I rearrange my hand, something I have to do because the numbers actually matter this time. But no combination works. Are my strongest memories not enough?

In a tragic twist worthy of the Twilight Zone, my all-blue deck works against me, because they can't benefit from the fidget spinner, and yellow cards are worth more here. If only all my cards were yellow...

I have a desperate plan. At one end, I play a blue card with a gem, which for this challenge is rainbow - it counts as any suit, including the vaunted yellow. Then, I put my memory of Nomi right in the centre, a special card which transes the gender of its neighbours so they're rainbow too. Finally, I use one of my few remaining consumables to turn my best blue card yellow. At the end of this trickery, I have an all-yellow hand without having a single yellow card.

And then, just as I'm out of ideas and resources:

No pressure.

Having gotten a Super Goal by one measly point, I get 100 Persuasion. I am ready to rule the world. And not a moment too soon, for immediately after, it is Vertumnalia, the annual festival when our coup is planned.

With the combined might of every leader of the Stratospheric behind me, I depose Lum...

And am elected ruler of the only human colony on Vertumna! I am formally granted this position by Dr. Instance, presumably because I am in a de facto political marriage with her daughter.

Trial basis, good one, Doc! I am ruling you ingrates for life.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 16 (Again): Be so good at the game that I doom all of humanity and have to backtrack significantly

In which I, the player, get trapped in a time loop to fix my mistake (of not making horrible decisions).

I reach age 17 and realize I made a slight oopsie by never successfully meeting Symbiosis, a godlike alien(?) lifeform trying to make peace with humanity. Unfortunately, the only human Sym has met so far is Dys, Tangent's Equally-Maladjusted-And-Evil-But-In-A-Different-Way brother.

The two fall in love in a Romeo-and-Juliet situation, but this will not result in peace, largely because Dys is basically the kind of internet leftist who thinks that talking to people and working together is politically naive and that violence is just inherently Better Praxis. So it is up to Sol to arrange peace between humans and Gardeners.

So I really should've been going out of my way to meet Sym and...didn't do that. I only caught a glimpse of him once, but you need to encounter him three times - I'm two First Contacts short. The reason is that the most reliable way to meet Sym is to get into dangerous events and then lose the skill check. This will put you in a near-death situation where only Sym's intervention will save you, giving hints of another intelligent species on Vertumna.

The "lose the skill check" part is a little tricky, though, if you've gotten into the habit of passing every skill check with flying colours. I am so powerful that even Sym fears me. It is lonely at the top.

I reload an earlier save, consulting the Exocolonist fandom for which events trigger Sym, because I have long ago forgotten how to lose. Going to people for help is almost as embarrassing, but just as necessary, as flirting with Vace to squeeze more friendship out of the bastard.

WIth this guidance, I press forward once more. This time, I get myself swarmed with adorable hopeyes, which are not actually dangerous but could kill you if you just helplessly sit there, which I do, playing no cards at all. Sym comes to my rescue.

Then, I steal a manticore's egg that I don't even want, for the sole purpose of pissing off a manticore. Manticores are very dangerous, though I could easily defeat them with stimming. But I choose not to. Sym intervenes to save me from the inevitable consequences of my own actions. He puts the egg back where it was, either to mollify the manticore or, just as likely, to prevent me from choking myself on the shell.

This pattern of alarmingly self-destructive behaviour is enough to help me track down Sym, who is hiding in a glowing golden exclamation point. I yell out his name, because I've met him before, and we start the process of peacemaking by presenting him with a gift of knowledge and internet memes.

I then conclude my sixteenth year, ready to move forward again and step into year 17. Then I realize that I forgot to take screenshots for any of this.

I do not reload again.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 13: Forget my dad's love because it's suboptimal

In which I get a little ruthless with deckbuilding, I save my friend's pet, and decide that puberty is a skill issue.

With the ability to forget cards as soon as I get them, I can level much more freely. The outside is finally safe (from ruining my build).

My dad thanks me for saving his life with my research. He gives me the memory "Dad's Love." I forget this card as soon as I get it, because Dad's Love is suboptimal.

This stage of the game is dominated by a pair of disasters: the Shimmer plague and the famine. Or, it would be, if I hadn't already cured the Shimmer and prevented the loss of our crops in the intro. For good measure, I also warned dad about pixie beans, aka the devil's legumes, so we didn't devote all our fields to a crop that makes all the kids go crazy, hurting our food supply. Once again, I have saved everyone before they are even aware of a problem.

Unfortunately, the absence of either pixie beans or the famine also means there's not a lot going on around this stage of the game.

Emotionally, however, this is a tumultuous year, because that's when all my friends enter puberty. I decide that's a skill issue and unilaterally refuse to develop sexual characteristics. I have no idea what this entails. Someday, I will work up the courage to ask the writers what they meant here.

Whatever you select here, you will get a corresponding cutscene. The writers went out of their way to make this as embarrassing for you as possible, and they succeeded. If you menstruate, you'll get your first period. If you can ejaculate, you'll have a wet dream. What happens if you can't do either? You just get really angry and yell at your parents. Puberty reduced down to its bare essential.

The big deadline is Socks. I have to find Cal's pet food by the end of this year. Actually finding the food is the easy part. The hard part is discovering that Socks exists. You only discover Socks after doing Geoponics jobs, most of which are really suboptimal. I end up shovelling dirt just because I'm short on time, but I'm not happy about it. You ever heard phrases like "it sure beats digging dirt?" This is what is getting beaten. The pay is horrible and the only stat it raises is Toughness, which is kind of bad. I would rather do literally any other job. Finally, I discover Socks and find it some food.

Socks is a lot of trouble on any run, and it will continue to be trouble in this one.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 12: Announce my intention to rule the world

Wherein I share my ambitions with my parents and save the world by leaving my best friend in the lurch.

On my twelfth birthday, I get a choice of presents. I decide that my favourite present is the Photophonor, because this is the most optimal birthday present.

My parents ask me what I want to be when I grow up.

I have a variety of choices available to me, but really there is no choice at all. My destiny is to rule this planet. My parents take their child's desire to outrank them quite well.

I do one last supply delivery, delivering Instance a carving of a naked Instance, made by my boss Seeq. Instance does not want a naked carving of herself, so I open it up to destroy the evidence and get a card, which I keep because it is blue. Blue cards will be useful later. I tell Seeq she loved it, and as a reward get money and max out organizing. I now never have to get an unwanted card again, massively improving my deck at the low low cost of my dignity.

Maxing out Organizing gives me a bonus to learning mental skills, so I decide it's time to actually go to school. I have missed more than a year of classes, but my teacher is happy to see me because I saved his delicate life. What is truancy to a god?

My dad is infected with the Shimmer. Tangent asks for my help with an experiment. A normal, non-time-traveller person, would think it's important to help her. But I already know how to cure him. Get good, Tangent. Besides that, she's starting to talk a little like an eleven-year-old supervillain.

"Tangent's wild-eyed rhetoric is trending a little too hard towards dominate all life on the planet for your liking." This is partly because I've already seen her nearly destroy the ecosystem but also because I want to dominate the planet, and Tangent is competition.

Having avoided Tangent's ascent into supervillainy for now, I keep studying Engineering. Glow of this year, I can get a pet that is very broken indeed, but I'd need more Bravery and Animals. I get Bravery from finally playing Sportsball, ostensibly my childhood favourite activity, until I'm brave enough to sneak out. For Animals, I just buy an Animal Book. That's the same as being an expert, right?

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 0-9: Minmax my own early childhood

The Vertumna compound is all about getting kids a good early start, and Sol is no exception. We're going to start breaking the game before it has really begun.

I go with Solanacae, the scientific name for nightshade. This fits the botanical theme common among the Stratos and makes dad's nicknames - daisy, tomato, potato - make sense. It seems like soft canon.

I have a Calm Temperament, partly because I know all the threats I will face and all the optimal solutions from them. And partly because this augment is cracked. It reduces all stress gains, allowing Sol to do much more adventuring before having to rest.

My favourite toy is the Sportsball. This is not because I have any intention of playing Sportsball, but because the Sportsball gives me +5 starting Toughness and +5 Toughness when equipped, allowing me to access the Supply Depot without grinding.

My favourite bedtime story is the ship's engineering manual, and my best friend is the ship's computer. Both of these are New Game+ options that are absolutely cracked, but, more importantly, the combination allows me to divert power to the shields when we go through the wormhole, preventing a famine several years before it ever starts. And also protecting my mom's hard work.

Despite this good deed, my mom is not going to be happy with me this run.

[deusexlachina]

Cheesage Exocolonist Age 10: Neglect my education for levelling purposes

My life on Vertumna starts. Chronologically speaking. Causation-wise, I have lost track of which timeline, if any, was the original.

Your first job always has to be going to school. You get to choose between Bio and Humanities, so I pick Bio. It will be useful later on.

I complain about school for the sole purpose of levelling rebellion, then immediately negate that bonus by fetching candy for Marzipan so I can avoid fighting over it and thereby getting more cards in this card game [bad]. Progress in this game is often circular like this, much like the time loop from which not even death can deliver me.

As a reward, I can apply to the Supply Depot. This is immensely helpful to my career, because it levels Organizing, the only stat that lets you say no to cards [bad]. I will later repay Marzipan by becoming governor so she doesn't have to. Normally, I would not be able to work at the Supply Depot right from the start, but I show Seeq my sportsball to prove I am a jock and can lift supplies. Then I put away my sportsball, never to use it again.

I keep working at the Supply Depot for a while, largely neglecting my education because I am trapped in a time loop and have memories of countless past lives, and also because classes are suboptimal for levelling purposes.

On the social side, I try to befriend everyone evenly. I save Tammy, who doesn't realize I saved her, because nobody could comprehend the vastness of my knowledge and power. That's fine. They will soon.

[deusexlachina]

The regrets of an alien tyrant - Ways I could've improved my run of Cheeseaged Exocolonist

I really underrated the impact of Studying Humanities. Persuasion and creativity are two of the best skills, and there's no other way to consistently level Persuasion until Assisting the Governor...which requires either persuasion or high loyalty, and becoming governor for the first time requires low loyalty. So this was a catch-22 that took most of the game to fix.

I got almost all the cool events, but I missed a couple. In particular, I wanted a pet robot and to learn about the human fleet. Curiously, I didn't get a wormhole option to already know about the human fleet. I'm not sure if there is one, or where it would be.

I should have done even more advance planning. There were a couple times when I overlooked something critical and had to backtrack, which was far and away the least fun part of this run.

I could've got Marzipan's jacket for free, if I'd managed to spend my kudos on something useful instead. The trade-off is that I have to save for the Brain Trainer and the Vintage Focus Device - the sooner I can get those, the better. There's probably an optimal timing and purchase order where you can get the jacket without wasting money and without having to put off talking to Marzipan (and thus her friendship level stagnating). Maybe rushing creativity and buying the emojiproji early?

Getting Vace to 100 friendship would have been a feather in my cap. 90 friendship made him a better person, but 100 friendship keeps him around. I came close to this, but I got 100 Creativity too late (see "poor planning"). Between that and even more harvesting, I could've gotten to 100. I could've also gotten the white astrantia for +10 friendship, but I could already get 100 friendship with everyone else, and there's something very unappetizing about getting that flower, saving it for three years and then giving it to the biggest dickhole of all the kids. Not Tangent, not Marzipan. Vace. That one hurts.

I could've gotten Sym much earlier on if I'd recalled which events lead to finding him. In particular, that you have to fail them. That's the hard part.

[deusexlachina]

Cheeseaged Exocolonist Age 17: Treat people's mental health issues by giving them a steady supply of drugs

In which we help Tangent by not Helping Tangent, and Sol becomes that therapeutic bartender archetype but intentionally and it's the closest thing any of these fuckers are getting to real therapy.

CW for brief discussion of suicide and drugs - this is the heavier part of Tangent Lore.

By age 17, Rex has nearly finished work on his bar. I tell him he's completely finished, because my past memories say it's not the size that counts, and also that Rex is going to die soon because he is part dog. So he opens it immediately.

After I am done attempting to visualize the architecture of a bar that could be halfway completed for one intended size and then quickly finished off at a last-minute different scale, I spend some time in the place. I perform a song onstage to celebrate, and also because that boosts creativity, the most optimal skill I have yet to max out.

A little later, Dr. Instance walks into the bar, which is also a cafe. Instance is a mad scientist and Tangent's teacher, gender-affirming care provider and adoptive mom. She is an evil influence on Tangent, sculpting her into a ruthless mad scientist with no self-care who is increasingly alienated from nature and, with it, her twin brother Dys, which will lead to tragic results for both of them and maybe the whole planet unless Sol intervenes. But also, she helped Tangent transition before she was 10, so that's pretty based. As parents of trans kids go, she's honestly not so bad.

Instance laments that we suffer from having no psychotherapists in the colony. She vindicates this statement by guzzling blep (a Vertumnan drug with the properties of coffee, marijuana and LSD that both she and Tangent drink liberally - see "no self-care") and deciding to tell her 17-year-old barista/bartender about how the previous therapist, Tangent's birth mother, killed herself.

You can either tell Instance that the colony needs a counsellor or that you could be a counsellor. If you pick the former, she suggests you could do triple-duty as a barista/bartender/counsellor. If you pick the latter, she reminds you that you lack specialized training, that being a counsellor is a heavy burden even if you do have the specialized training, and then suggests you could do triple duty as a barista/bartender/counsellor.

I assume Instance is pushing me into this very unhealthy role because she's trying to get her daughter therapy, and she knows she can't give Tangent therapy herself, not least because she's clearly the source of about a third of Tangent's mental health issues in the first place.

Fortunately for her, I agree to work as a counsellor, because I am also trying to help Tangent. But I am not trying to Help Tangent, because if I Help Tangent, even once, she will become a supervillain, ruining her life even if you stop her evil plans.

This year, I go a step further and get negative Helping Tangent, by affirming that colonization is bad and we can avoid the mistakes of Earth. If you've helped Tangent once, this is your chance to stop her from being a supervillain. We didn't Help Tangent at all, but I still like this dialogue and it's worth highlighting. It's a very heavy scene, especially if you've seen where her dilemma can lead. In a different part of the same dialogue tree, Sol can offer to have no-strings-attached sex with Tangent to relieve each other's stress.

I screenshotted this one because it was funny, but I don't actually pick it in this run, partly so I can get negative Helped Tangent and partly because sleeping with Tangent simply does not offer Sol any mechanical benefit. You do get a solid card from it, "Releasing Endorphins," but honestly, at this point improving my deck further would be a purely academic exercise. I am already getting Super Goals on every check without trying even a little. I don't need to Release Endorphins by having sex, I can just enjoy the high of being a god who decides who lives and who dies and who's decided to improve the world simply because she can.

That, and Tangent's currently my patient.

In Dragon Age terms, Helping Tangent is like Hardening Leliana. Conversely, what we're doing here is like Softening Shrek.