It’s an enchanting genre that I don’t see come up as often as it should. I would say my preference is towards exocolonist as it’s more forgiving, and the subsystem breaks up what might otherwise become monotonous.
A few of the things I like about the genre is the tangible growth and the impact your skills have on the story at large. Like the skill dialogues in fallout, but with more impact.
I also like the romance options and slow burn in exocolonist
For long live the queen at least, this is a whole sub genre of visual novels called stat-raisers. LLTQ was inspired by series princess maker. Princess maker 2 is available on steam and is probably the most popular one. As for games like exocolonist check out the rpg/vn hybrids made by Winter Wolves, she’s made a whole bunch of them and is in the process of running a kickstarter for a sequel to one of them.
Consider joining m/Otomegames, which full disclosure I run. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with otome games but it’s a genre of visual novels targeted towards women. The romance in games coming out of Japan tend to be exclusively girlxboy, but ones made in the west tend to let you pick your gender and allow both straight and lgbt romances. Most of them are straight visual novels without the stat-raising or RPG elements. Thus, the content on m/Otomegames will be mostly tangential, but both games you mentioned are considered otome adjacent, and I include games like them on my bi-weekly news round up.
I’ll check it out! I’m a guy but I’ll be damned if I’m not a sucker for a cute wlw love story