Weighing in on this, because this was not the intention of the game from my understanding. Generally I could see building a colony (in almost any colony builder) as an imperialist theme, and most encourage aggressive expansion, but the entire plot of this game is being called in as contractors in an effort to help rebuild a home for displaced refugees. This is after another rebuild effort, in peaceful coalition with the locals who were willing to trade land to the refugees in exchange for helping lost spirits find peace. This (as well as the lack of any aggression or violence) isn't exactly inline with an imperialist approach to setting up a new colony for the purpose of expansion.

I definitely get the concerns. I just want to mention this because obviously the things all mentioned above isn't (and doesn't need to be) explained in short picture book at the beginning of the game, but is through the interactions throughout the game world, and I'd hate to see anyone pass over what is otherwise a very positive, inclusive title that promotes themes like solving problems through trying to help and support each other, because of what might be a misconception.

Fun fact: 'Dwarrows' is what Tolkein belatedly wished he had called his 'dwarves'.

He used 'dwarves' thinking it was the plural of 'dwarf'. It's not. Well, it is NOW because of him, but the proper plural at the time was 'dwarfs'. Dwarrows was an archaic (at the time) but correct term.

He didn't realize 'dwarves' was incorrect until he noticed all the reviews of The Hobbit were spelling it 'dwarfs'.

(This is from one of his letters, quoted in The Annotated Hobbit.)

Later on he retconned the reason, using the intro of one of his later books to say he did it to make his dwarves distinct from 'dwarfs' in fairy-tales.

The word colony implies expansion, if it wasn't territorial expansion it would just be called a new settlement. There was no need to describe it in those terms. Some of the characters and backgrounds also give it a british colonial feel to me. With every other game being explicitly violent colonialism it is at least a step in the right direction, it is just disappointing that developers apparently trying to create a peaceful game would use that framing. Not trying to start a political discussion here, but there are unfortunately way too many Brits and people with British ancestry saying that actual violent real life colonialism wasn't that bad and it feels like it could be a fantasy with a wink to those people. However, considering the other parts of the game that I saw it could also easily just be a severe lack of imagination on the part of the writers and "copy the general theme from these other games but call it peaceful" is as far as the thought process went. It sounds like you are suggesting that the framing might be to set up a "this is how things people could get along" type story. This seems unlikely to me based on what I saw, although I didn't look at any story in the later parts of the game and possibly that is the intent even if they mess up the theme in a number of ways.

Saying all that, I think your main point is just that someone might make incorrect assumption that there is more of a colonial feel than is actually the case from my comment. I get the impression that the game is light on story in general.

Thanks, Clearsong, that is very interesting about the name.