I Was a Teenage Exocolonist News

Join 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.

[h3]🎈 Exocolonist just turned one! 🎈[/h3]

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!!! 🎉



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 ːnyaaː

🚀 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!

[h3]🎨 Show off Your Talent[/h3]

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!
  

[h3]🎙 Exclusive Creator's Corner Q&A[/h3]

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.
  

[h3]✨ More Surprises in Store![/h3]
Stay tuned to our socials for community-led special streams on Twitch & Steam and other surprises.

Let’s make this anniversary a blast! 🚀🥳🌌

- Sarah ːnyaaː

I 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".



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 ːnyaaː

Would 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.



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 ːnyaaː