Twenty hours in, we hit our first “true” ending in I Was a Teenage Exocolonist and realized we had missed roughly 26 others, including the one where the player character dates a dog-boy. That is the pull of the game: a coming-of-age life sim on Vertumna where every card-draw check ripples through romances, factions, and which colonists survive the next storm. If you finished it and want something else that respects your time the same way, here are seven I Was a Teenage Exocolonist alternatives worth a run on PC.
Quick comparison
| Game | Best for | Free demo | Price (USD) | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roadwarden | Text-driven RPG with real consequences | Yes | $19.99 | 30+ hour handwritten branching |
| Citizen Sleeper | Sci-fi drift on a broken space station | Yes | $19.99 | Dice-based day cycles |
| Wildermyth | Procedural tabletop-style stories | Yes | $24.99 | Legacy characters carry between campaigns |
| Long Live the Queen | Stat-check royal survival | Yes | $9.99 | Died by poison? Try again with different lessons |
| Cultist Simulator | Card-driven occult puzzle-narrative | Free with DLC caveats | $19.99 | Every rune, dream, and hunger is a card |
| Suzerain | Political simulator as a young president | Yes | $14.99 | Every meeting is a branching dialogue |
| Sunless Sea | Nautical roguelite with legacy | Yes | $18.99 | Death matters; captains inherit lore |
Why players finish Exocolonist and immediately look for more
The game does something rare. It gives you a fixed timeline (age 10 to 20), throws roughly 800 events at you in random order, and asks you to allocate the same limited months across combat, exploration, science, and social skills. Every ending you find opens hints at three more you didn’t. Players on the Exocolonist subreddit and Steam forums keep asking for the same things:
- Card-based skill checks that feel earned, not a pass/fail dialogue tree
- Time as the scarce resource, not gold or XP
- Romances and friendships that end poorly if you neglect them, not “hidden approval” meters
- Multiple endings that require completely different runs, not a menu at the end of act 3
- Prose that respects the player, sitting somewhere between visual novel and full RPG
The seven games below each hit at least three of those. None is a copy. All will keep you up past 2 a.m. arguing with your last save.
Roadwarden – Best overall pick for prose-first players
Roadwarden is a 30-hour illustrated text RPG about a lone rider mapping a hostile peninsula in a low-fantasy world. Every conversation branches on your class (mage, warrior, scholar), your reputation with three villages, and how many in-game days you’ve burned. Like Exocolonist, you cannot see everything in one run, and the endings depend on what deals you close before your contract expires.
Where it falls short: No voice acting, no combat animations, and the writing skews grim. If you liked Exocolonist for the warmth, Roadwarden will feel colder.
Pricing:
- Free demo on Steam covering the first day
- Full game $19.99, no DLC, no microtransactions
- vs Exocolonist: comparable at full price, more replay hours per dollar
Migrating from Exocolonist: No import, but the cognitive muscle is identical. Learn to fail on purpose, then take notes for the next run.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: Best pick if you finished Exocolonist and wanted more branching prose. Skip if you needed the colorful pixel art or the ensemble cast.
Citizen Sleeper – Best for the sci-fi mood
Citizen Sleeper puts you on the Eye, a decaying space station orbiting a dead corporate world. Every in-game day you roll five dice and slot them into actions (work, forage, socialize, hack). Low rolls carry risk; high rolls carry consequence. The narrative branches around your body’s slow deterioration and the small community you either join or exploit.
Where it falls short: Combat is off the table entirely. If you liked Exocolonist’s expedition system where fighting matters, this scratches only the social-check half.
Pricing:
- Free trial via Xbox Game Pass and Netflix mobile bundle
- Standalone $19.99 on Steam and GOG
- vs Exocolonist: same price, roughly 15 hours per playthrough, three DLC episodes free after launch
Migrating from Exocolonist: Similar time-as-resource philosophy. Different theme, same clock in your head.
Bottom line: Best pick if you want the “you cannot save everyone” feeling without the pastoral setting.
Wildermyth – Best for legacy runs across campaigns
Wildermyth is a tabletop-style tactical RPG where your party of farmers becomes legends across a 15-hour campaign. Characters age between chapters, retire, or die permanently. What sets it apart from Exocolonist is the legacy system: heroes you retire in one campaign show up in future campaigns as elders, statues, or ghosts, folded into the procedural story.
Where it falls short: Combat is the core loop, not a subsystem. If you avoided Exocolonist’s expedition cards, Wildermyth’s turn-based grid will be the wrong shape.
Pricing:
- Free demo on Steam
- Base game $24.99, Omenroad DLC $9.99
- vs Exocolonist: pricier at full price, but three full campaigns bundled
Migrating from Exocolonist: Different mechanics, same “one run is never enough” pull.
Bottom line: Best pick if the parts of Exocolonist you loved were the ensemble and the aging cast.
Long Live the Queen – Best for stat-check obsessives
Long Live the Queen is the spiritual grandparent of Exocolonist. You play a 14-year-old princess with 40 weeks to prepare for coronation. Every week you pick two lessons that unlock skills, and every weekend an event checks a stat you did or did not build. Fail a check and you die, usually creatively.
Where it falls short: Older visual novel presentation, no voice acting, and the death-and-restart loop is the entire game rather than a texture on top of it.
Pricing:
- Free demo on Steam
- Full game $9.99
- vs Exocolonist: cheaper, shorter per run (roughly 3 hours), higher restart frequency
Migrating from Exocolonist: If you enjoyed the “wait, THAT month I should have taken combat” moments, this is the pure form of that puzzle.
Bottom line: Best pick if you want the mechanical core of Exocolonist without the romances or the colony.
Cultist Simulator – Best for the weird middle picks
Cultist Simulator is a card-driven narrative puzzle by the writer of Fallen London. There is no map, no dialogue, and no tutorial. You drag cards (hunger, dreams, patrons, ritual tools) onto verbs (work, dream, study) and hope the timers resolve in a way that does not kill you. Every run generates a different esoteric arc.
Where it falls short: The learning curve is famously punishing. You will lose your first several characters before the systems click, which is either exhilarating or maddening depending on your patience.
Pricing:
- Base game $19.99
- Six thematic DLCs at $6.99 each; the base game is complete without them
- vs Exocolonist: similar price, higher difficulty ceiling
Migrating from Exocolonist: The card-as-verb parallel is direct. What Exocolonist smooths over with prose, Cultist Simulator leaves for you to interpret.
Bottom line: Best pick if you want the cards-as-story-atoms system pushed to its extreme.
Suzerain – Best for choice-heavy dialogue fans
Suzerain casts you as Anton Rayne, the newly elected president of a fictional post-Soviet republic in the 1950s. Every cabinet meeting, foreign summit, and constitutional vote is a branching dialogue. Play badly and you resign in disgrace, get overthrown, or fumble a war. Play cleverly and you still make morally awful trades.
Where it falls short: No animation, no combat, no soundtrack you will hum. It is 30 hours of talking, and it earns them.
Pricing:
- Free prologue on Steam
- Base game $14.99; the Rizia DLC adds a second country for $12.99
- vs Exocolonist: cheaper, longer per run, same “what did I miss” itch afterward
Migrating from Exocolonist: Different subject, same pattern of small decisions compounding into a wildly different final chapter.
Bottom line: Best pick if you were the player who kept every character alive by never picking the risky dialogue option.
Sunless Sea – Best for the unconventional final pick
Sunless Sea is the roguelite legacy game from Failbetter Games. You captain a steamship across an underground sea filled with lore, cannibals, and cosmic horror. Each captain dies eventually, and their heir inherits a sliver of the ship, some gold, and a scrap of the map. The prose is the reason to play.
Where it falls short: The pacing is slow on purpose. Fuel management can feel like a chore before the writing kicks in.
Pricing:
- Base game $18.99
- Zubmariner DLC $10.99 adds an underwater arc
- vs Exocolonist: cheaper, higher time investment for a full arc
Migrating from Exocolonist: The legacy system is closer to Exocolonist’s “next generation” endings than anything else on this list.
Bottom line: Best pick if you want to lose yourself in a world for 40 hours and let the story build slowly.
How to choose
- Pick Roadwarden if you want the closest overall replacement and love reading
- Pick Long Live the Queen if the stat-checking scratched the itch and price matters
- Pick Suzerain if you replayed Exocolonist just to see different dialogue outcomes
- Pick Citizen Sleeper if you were there for the mood and the vulnerability
- Pick Wildermyth if the ensemble was your favourite part
- Stay on Exocolonist if you have not hit the “Perfectionist” ending or found every romance yet, since the game is still deeper than most of these on the completion axis
FAQ
What is the best I Was a Teenage Exocolonist alternative? Roadwarden. It shares the same “consequences that compound over an in-game clock” pattern and the writing is strong enough to carry runs where combat is minimal.
Is there a free I Was a Teenage Exocolonist alternative? None of the listed games are fully free, but Citizen Sleeper is on Xbox Game Pass and the Netflix bundle. Roadwarden, Wildermyth, Long Live the Queen, and Suzerain all have free demos on Steam that cover several hours.
Which alternative has the most endings? Long Live the Queen has roughly 40 documented death and ending states, and Wildermyth’s procedural campaigns effectively generate infinite endings. Exocolonist itself has 29.
Do any run on Steam Deck? Roadwarden, Citizen Sleeper, Long Live the Queen, Cultist Simulator, and Suzerain all have Verified or Playable status on Steam Deck. Wildermyth and Sunless Sea are Playable with some tweaks.
Is Cultist Simulator too hard for Exocolonist fans? It is harder mechanically, but the community wiki and in-game “Book of Hours” mode ease the learning curve. If you enjoyed Exocolonist’s card-based puzzle logic, the mental leap is smaller than it looks.
