Generation Exile is the new eco-conscious turn-based strategy sim from Sonderlust Studios, a Canada-based independent developer whose members include Nels Anderson (Mark of the Ninja, Firewatch), Karla Zimonja (Gone Home, Tacoma), and Marri Knadle (Far Cry 5 & 6). A talented gang indeed. The game puts you in charge of a scrappy band of humans living on a colony ship so huge it can harbour mountain ranges and lakes.
The ship puts me heavily in mind of the grandest and most luxurious vessels from Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, except that it’s a polluted and treacherous hexagonal wilderness that is closer in vibe to Scavenger’s Reign. Your job is to emerge from below decks, bolt together an outpost, and restore each sprawling biome before the colony ship completes its journey. Along the way, you’ll have to reckon with personality dynamics and branching dialogue quests redolent of 11-Bit’s management sims, and deal with some kind of marauding “entity” from the Earth you left behind.
