In 2017 Apple one of the world's biggest companies admitted to intentionally slowing down phone batteries. Referred to as "Batterygate" this action opened up a string of lawsuits that Apple were intentionally using 'planned obsolescence' to encourage people to upgrade their phones or fork out to apple for replacement batteries. Apple always denied this by all reports stating it was actioned to preserve the device.
Moving forward 5 years and we have Citizen Sleeper, an indie game made by a one person studio Jump Over the Edge. In this game you play as a Sleeper, an emulated copy of a person with no rights as part of a Essen-Arp Megacorporation contract. Through design without the right treatment your body will decay over time making you reliant on them in a form of indentured servitude. Planned Obsolescence of a copied person. You escape however ending up on the Eye, a self run Space station surviving after the collapse of the Megacorporation Solheim it and many companies were once part of. Somewhat lawless but welcoming, it's a perfect place for a Sleeper trying to survive.
The lore and world created here is a fascinating one. The way the game takes examples of situations like that of Apple as a form of consumer control but exaggerated into the extreme Cyberpunk Megacorp world really stands out. The characters you meet on this independent space station are broken, struggling, running and surviving but are a great cast to interact with as further world building about the outside universe is dribbled to you through these events.
The game actually plays akin to a visual novel mixed with a dice placement tabletop board game with a few light sprinklings of RPG stats on top. Each turn or cycle (as there is no day and night on a space station) you get several dice rolls based on your Sleeper's physical health condition. Each dice can be used towards actions, some immediate some building up charges to complete. Depending on the number result of the roll will depend on it's chance for success with a positive (5-6), neutral (3-4) or negative (1-2) outcome. These numbers can be bolstered with + values depending on the skill involved and you level in it such as 'engineering +1' to increase your chance. All along the station are different locations with different characters and events that can feed you, repair you or push along character quest lines.
How you choose to progress is entirely up to you after the opening couple of quests. It's a fairly open ended adventure with multiple different endings depending on who you interact with and when. This is both a positive and negative in my view having seen them all. Citizen Sleeper despite it's grand ideas for the outside lore of the world feels more like a slice of life story so each character questline is personal and don't interconnect with each other in anyway leaving everything feeling a little directionless. Additionally though your circumstances are in many ways quite dire it never feels that way in the writing which at times is a little too matter a fact. What writing there is though outside of that small caveat is excellent. The characters, their problems and events are all really interesting, I got rather absorbed into their lives and personal struggles which is why I went out of my way to see all the endings on offer.
My only real issue with the game is actually if you are wanting to see all events there is a lot of downtime mechanically. Initially every dice you use has to be really thought out in regards to survival / story progress balance but it soon becomes extremely obsolete meaning you are mostly just burning down clock cycles to get to the next story beat sometimes doing nothing. The thing is I am a board gamer and this reminds me a lot of a game called Alien Frontiers where you place dice for resources to build colonies. What I hope Citizen Sleeper learns from this is to use the full range of numbers for actions rather than high = good and low = bad. Have certain actions only available on a 1 or 2 etc. and smaller ways of knocking them up and down would have made the turn based element more strategic and interactive throughout.
When all is said and done though I had a really good time with this and the fact that it was made by mostly one person is pretty nuts. The wonderful character art, somber music and writing pushing this along make for a wonderful experience and I do look forward to the announced sequel.
+ Fantastic art, music and atmosphere.
+ Citizen Sleepers universe and lore.
+ Mostly excellent writing and characters.
- Dice mechanic could have been more interesting.
- Sleepers personal situation often felt detached from events writing wise.
Moving forward 5 years and we have Citizen Sleeper, an indie game made by a one person studio Jump Over the Edge. In this game you play as a Sleeper, an emulated copy of a person with no rights as part of a Essen-Arp Megacorporation contract. Through design without the right treatment your body will decay over time making you reliant on them in a form of indentured servitude. Planned Obsolescence of a copied person. You escape however ending up on the Eye, a self run Space station surviving after the collapse of the Megacorporation Solheim it and many companies were once part of. Somewhat lawless but welcoming, it's a perfect place for a Sleeper trying to survive.
The lore and world created here is a fascinating one. The way the game takes examples of situations like that of Apple as a form of consumer control but exaggerated into the extreme Cyberpunk Megacorp world really stands out. The characters you meet on this independent space station are broken, struggling, running and surviving but are a great cast to interact with as further world building about the outside universe is dribbled to you through these events.
The game actually plays akin to a visual novel mixed with a dice placement tabletop board game with a few light sprinklings of RPG stats on top. Each turn or cycle (as there is no day and night on a space station) you get several dice rolls based on your Sleeper's physical health condition. Each dice can be used towards actions, some immediate some building up charges to complete. Depending on the number result of the roll will depend on it's chance for success with a positive (5-6), neutral (3-4) or negative (1-2) outcome. These numbers can be bolstered with + values depending on the skill involved and you level in it such as 'engineering +1' to increase your chance. All along the station are different locations with different characters and events that can feed you, repair you or push along character quest lines.
How you choose to progress is entirely up to you after the opening couple of quests. It's a fairly open ended adventure with multiple different endings depending on who you interact with and when. This is both a positive and negative in my view having seen them all. Citizen Sleeper despite it's grand ideas for the outside lore of the world feels more like a slice of life story so each character questline is personal and don't interconnect with each other in anyway leaving everything feeling a little directionless. Additionally though your circumstances are in many ways quite dire it never feels that way in the writing which at times is a little too matter a fact. What writing there is though outside of that small caveat is excellent. The characters, their problems and events are all really interesting, I got rather absorbed into their lives and personal struggles which is why I went out of my way to see all the endings on offer.
My only real issue with the game is actually if you are wanting to see all events there is a lot of downtime mechanically. Initially every dice you use has to be really thought out in regards to survival / story progress balance but it soon becomes extremely obsolete meaning you are mostly just burning down clock cycles to get to the next story beat sometimes doing nothing. The thing is I am a board gamer and this reminds me a lot of a game called Alien Frontiers where you place dice for resources to build colonies. What I hope Citizen Sleeper learns from this is to use the full range of numbers for actions rather than high = good and low = bad. Have certain actions only available on a 1 or 2 etc. and smaller ways of knocking them up and down would have made the turn based element more strategic and interactive throughout.
When all is said and done though I had a really good time with this and the fact that it was made by mostly one person is pretty nuts. The wonderful character art, somber music and writing pushing this along make for a wonderful experience and I do look forward to the announced sequel.
+ Fantastic art, music and atmosphere.
+ Citizen Sleepers universe and lore.
+ Mostly excellent writing and characters.
- Dice mechanic could have been more interesting.
- Sleepers personal situation often felt detached from events writing wise.
We all have to get to know ourselves, Sleeper. To know what it is that drives us. I'm sure you'll decide to act in the manner you know. But you also have to ask yourself why it is so. Don't neglect that.
If you take one thing away from this review let it be this: If you enjoy connecting with a wonderfully diverse set of characters, learning how their experiences shaped them to be who they are and what motivates them to keep going as the world deals them a bad hand, then I can not recommend this to you enough.
As with many games I've tried through Game Pass, I knew very little about Citizen Sleeper. A couple hours in I wasn't sure if I was enjoying it. The gameplay loop was odd, the writing felt a bit verbose, I couldn't exactly keep track of what was happening in the world.
But I stuck with it because it was just giving this vibe, something that was keeping me drawn into this world, and as I kept playing, I became more and more appreciative of everything the game had to offer.
Most of the credit for keeping me entranced probably goes to the music and sound design, which is certainly one of the most immersive I've ever experienced. I would feel a sort of whiplash whenever I took my headphones off to take a break, and be genuinely stunned at the silence of my own room and the sudden realisation that all I was doing was staring at a screen. The ambience here is just mwah.
Eventually I really started to get into the gameplay loop, and at times where it was appropriate, I enjoyed the occasional strategy of trying to finish the routes for characters I was most interested in, but also trying to survive, it was engaging and satisfying! Not to mention the little details describing all the tasks you carry out, which helped those tasks feel just a bit more immersive.
As I mentioned before, the writing could feel a bit verbose and sometimes I couldn't tell what exactly was going on, this actually persisted throughout the playthrough to some degree, I didn't fully get it all, and maybe that's due to my own literacy, I don't know.
What I do know is that despite all this, every conversation felt so deeply personal and every character was so different and brimming with individuality. When it needed to, the writing and the music would perfectly synchronise with the impact of surviving and carrying out tasks for so long, to beautifully craft moments that would move me emotionally. It didn't matter in the slightest that I wasn't fully grasping everything, I felt for everyone, for their past, for their present, and their future.
That is why I love Citizen Sleeper, and that to me is games as an art form.
(Also, Citizen Sleeper is a banger title, knocked it out of the park with that one.)
If you take one thing away from this review let it be this: If you enjoy connecting with a wonderfully diverse set of characters, learning how their experiences shaped them to be who they are and what motivates them to keep going as the world deals them a bad hand, then I can not recommend this to you enough.
As with many games I've tried through Game Pass, I knew very little about Citizen Sleeper. A couple hours in I wasn't sure if I was enjoying it. The gameplay loop was odd, the writing felt a bit verbose, I couldn't exactly keep track of what was happening in the world.
But I stuck with it because it was just giving this vibe, something that was keeping me drawn into this world, and as I kept playing, I became more and more appreciative of everything the game had to offer.
Most of the credit for keeping me entranced probably goes to the music and sound design, which is certainly one of the most immersive I've ever experienced. I would feel a sort of whiplash whenever I took my headphones off to take a break, and be genuinely stunned at the silence of my own room and the sudden realisation that all I was doing was staring at a screen. The ambience here is just mwah.
Eventually I really started to get into the gameplay loop, and at times where it was appropriate, I enjoyed the occasional strategy of trying to finish the routes for characters I was most interested in, but also trying to survive, it was engaging and satisfying! Not to mention the little details describing all the tasks you carry out, which helped those tasks feel just a bit more immersive.
As I mentioned before, the writing could feel a bit verbose and sometimes I couldn't tell what exactly was going on, this actually persisted throughout the playthrough to some degree, I didn't fully get it all, and maybe that's due to my own literacy, I don't know.
What I do know is that despite all this, every conversation felt so deeply personal and every character was so different and brimming with individuality. When it needed to, the writing and the music would perfectly synchronise with the impact of surviving and carrying out tasks for so long, to beautifully craft moments that would move me emotionally. It didn't matter in the slightest that I wasn't fully grasping everything, I felt for everyone, for their past, for their present, and their future.
That is why I love Citizen Sleeper, and that to me is games as an art form.
(Also, Citizen Sleeper is a banger title, knocked it out of the park with that one.)
✅ Main quests that go somewhere
✅ Actions that actually have consequence
✅ Builds that completely change how you approach the game
✅ Side content that feels relevant
✅ Non time wasting mechanics that always put you on the edge of your seat
Disco Elysium does it all everyone. I must be a Citizen the way I Sleeper in this tech demo.
✅ Actions that actually have consequence
✅ Builds that completely change how you approach the game
✅ Side content that feels relevant
✅ Non time wasting mechanics that always put you on the edge of your seat
Disco Elysium does it all everyone. I must be a Citizen the way I Sleeper in this tech demo.
It's a testament to how much I like Citizen Sleeper that I'm giving it four stars despite having the absolute worst copy-editing I've ever seen in a professionally-released video game. It is strewn with typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and a thoroughgoing lack of understanding of the typographical conventions of written English. It is embarrassing, particularly in a game whose focal point is its writing.
All that said... it's still a good game. It walks in the footsteps of similar "modular narrative" games like 80 Days and Sunless Skies in using a light resource-management system to drive the player to allocate their time between many different bite-sized threads of plot, creating an individual route through the game's story. This is one of my absolute favorite microgenres but a difficult one to get right, and I'm thrilled with any game that can pull it off competently.
Citizen Sleeper isn't as successful at this as its forebears, though. By the end of the game you have enough resources to do almost everything the game has on offer, and there turn out to be minimal ways that plots can differ from playthrough to playthrough. Starting a new save feels more onerous than exciting, knowing that so much of it will be clicking through the same dialog rather than forging new paths.
I often finish modular narrative games with a sense that the system on which its built still has untapped potential. The calculus of quests taking inputs and producing outputs while clocks tick down cycle after cycle is simple but expressive—it could give rise to such an intricate web of interlocking threads. Is it too much to hope for that, with the groundwork now laid down, another game could be created on top of it... this time with an editing pass?
All that said... it's still a good game. It walks in the footsteps of similar "modular narrative" games like 80 Days and Sunless Skies in using a light resource-management system to drive the player to allocate their time between many different bite-sized threads of plot, creating an individual route through the game's story. This is one of my absolute favorite microgenres but a difficult one to get right, and I'm thrilled with any game that can pull it off competently.
Citizen Sleeper isn't as successful at this as its forebears, though. By the end of the game you have enough resources to do almost everything the game has on offer, and there turn out to be minimal ways that plots can differ from playthrough to playthrough. Starting a new save feels more onerous than exciting, knowing that so much of it will be clicking through the same dialog rather than forging new paths.
I often finish modular narrative games with a sense that the system on which its built still has untapped potential. The calculus of quests taking inputs and producing outputs while clocks tick down cycle after cycle is simple but expressive—it could give rise to such an intricate web of interlocking threads. Is it too much to hope for that, with the groundwork now laid down, another game could be created on top of it... this time with an editing pass?
Citizen Sleeper is my GOTY so far. I am extremely surprised by how this game has consumed me with it’s world, it’s characters and the overall atmosphere. I’ve not played ‘in other waters’, but I’m in love with it’s soundtrack. So it’s no surprise that Amos Roddy (yet again) delivers one of the best soundtracks to a game you will hear this year, giving off huge Nils Frahm vibes and perfectly underlining the melancholy of this space station. I didn’t even know about citizen sleeper until I saw it on the Xbox game pass, so I went in basically blind and got out a fan.
I’ve always said that I wanted more good sci-fi point and click games and this delivers on that front and on many more. It’s gameplay loop is rather unique, mixing big chunks of well written text, with table-top rpg like actions using dices and a round-based structure. It makes the station explorable in addictive ways, where dangers wait to be avoided, stories wait to be heard, where meaningful interactions happen and decisions matter.
Great little stories are told here and there, but the overarching goal I had set my eyes on, led me to a conclusion that literally left me in tears.
I’ve always said that I wanted more good sci-fi point and click games and this delivers on that front and on many more. It’s gameplay loop is rather unique, mixing big chunks of well written text, with table-top rpg like actions using dices and a round-based structure. It makes the station explorable in addictive ways, where dangers wait to be avoided, stories wait to be heard, where meaningful interactions happen and decisions matter.
Great little stories are told here and there, but the overarching goal I had set my eyes on, led me to a conclusion that literally left me in tears.
Sheu mynds on than that even a comet
is rived by the weyght o whit hid passes,
an whan hid's fired ootower the starns,
the starns is tirled by thir awn wheel,
an that wheel tirled in anither wheel,
til ivry escaep is anither orbit,
an ivry orbit anither still,
an ivry still aye makkan the promiese
that wi a tirl thoo'll win tae free.
-Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles
I thought of Giles' novel in verse often while playing this. It's an easy contender for my best book of 2022 and, like this game, I reached a point where I wished it would never end.
is rived by the weyght o whit hid passes,
an whan hid's fired ootower the starns,
the starns is tirled by thir awn wheel,
an that wheel tirled in anither wheel,
til ivry escaep is anither orbit,
an ivry orbit anither still,
an ivry still aye makkan the promiese
that wi a tirl thoo'll win tae free.
-Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles
I thought of Giles' novel in verse often while playing this. It's an easy contender for my best book of 2022 and, like this game, I reached a point where I wished it would never end.
Tried so hard to enjoy this
twice now, yet can't seem to quell
disinterest creeping in:
mechanics blast the story pacing to hell.
Beautiful design and prose
still keep me wishing I could
feel what others feel. Instead,
outside looking in through branches, forlorn woods.
twice now, yet can't seem to quell
disinterest creeping in:
mechanics blast the story pacing to hell.
Beautiful design and prose
still keep me wishing I could
feel what others feel. Instead,
outside looking in through branches, forlorn woods.
Despite being a game about precarity and stress, I finished the game with like 1000 cryo, three skills at +2 and with like 7 stabilizers and 30 pieces of scrap.
v
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I think it says alot when a game makes you accidentally play for like 4 more hours than you were planning to without even realizing it.
v
------Things I Like
- The near-dystopian (and I use this term cautiously) “cyberpunk” setting. Its well thought out, its pretty to look at, it explores some not-entirely rote themes. Its good.
- The time management design is mostly thoughtful (but not for all parts of the game, and while it makes the game good I could probably never love being stressed about time)
v
------Things I Hate
- The pacing really drops off in the second half of the base game, and is the primary reason why I became brokenly wealthy with resources - which feels like a problem in a game about timers and restraints. For about 6 (or more possibly) hours of my playtime I had 5 dice permanently available for every cycle. God Mode is fun for about 20 minutes, challenges are fun for longer and this feels like a progression leak in the game.
v
------Things I Love
- The Dice/Skill system makes RNG alot more entertaining than games in the same format. You have up to 5 dice so you can choose which dice you want to apply to which checks which allows you to control your risk more directly on more serious actions. Luck systems where strategy helps you gain some agency over your outcomes create a good balance I think.
- The vibe. Moody music playing while looking at lush character portraits while some fairly engaging moments play out makes Citizen Sleeper a very captivating and enthralling experience that I would recommend on presentation alone to some people.
- There are some really touching moments, and I think the game really understands why people care about people and writes to that very well. Ill try to keep this spoiler vague and brief but theres nothing quite like leaving L&m and M&n& as they board a craft without you.
- Hunter, Killer, Navigator, and Gardener are all patently sick as hell and thats notable all on its own.
v
------Things I Wanted To Love
- I think the writing is good, but an issue arises when a game is 13 hours long and consists primarily of reading: you lose alot of energy when all situations sort of draw on the same emotion. I think theres only so long I can feel sad and sympathy and grief and tensity before the Sad/Sympathy/Grief/Tensity Well runs dry and Im left with a tedious feeling. (I also personally dont need elaborate descriptions of settings that are just, like, a room with wires that Im never going to return to. I dont need to know everything, just the interesting or pertinent things)
- I wasnt sold on the Sleeper concept. It wants me to care alot about being a clone or company property or being a robot and yet none of these things really impacted John Sleepers ability to care about other people - and it sure as shit isnt something that I, John Human Gamer, could possibly relate to my life in any real way. It wanted me to care but it never felt real so I didnt care - and if it wanted me to care it should have never let me take the tracker off. Being hounded as property for the whole game might have sold me more on the notion.
v
v
v
v
v
I think it says alot when a game makes you accidentally play for like 4 more hours than you were planning to without even realizing it.
v
------Things I Like
- The near-dystopian (and I use this term cautiously) “cyberpunk” setting. Its well thought out, its pretty to look at, it explores some not-entirely rote themes. Its good.
- The time management design is mostly thoughtful (but not for all parts of the game, and while it makes the game good I could probably never love being stressed about time)
v
------Things I Hate
- The pacing really drops off in the second half of the base game, and is the primary reason why I became brokenly wealthy with resources - which feels like a problem in a game about timers and restraints. For about 6 (or more possibly) hours of my playtime I had 5 dice permanently available for every cycle. God Mode is fun for about 20 minutes, challenges are fun for longer and this feels like a progression leak in the game.
v
------Things I Love
- The Dice/Skill system makes RNG alot more entertaining than games in the same format. You have up to 5 dice so you can choose which dice you want to apply to which checks which allows you to control your risk more directly on more serious actions. Luck systems where strategy helps you gain some agency over your outcomes create a good balance I think.
- The vibe. Moody music playing while looking at lush character portraits while some fairly engaging moments play out makes Citizen Sleeper a very captivating and enthralling experience that I would recommend on presentation alone to some people.
- There are some really touching moments, and I think the game really understands why people care about people and writes to that very well. Ill try to keep this spoiler vague and brief but theres nothing quite like leaving L&m and M&n& as they board a craft without you.
- Hunter, Killer, Navigator, and Gardener are all patently sick as hell and thats notable all on its own.
v
------Things I Wanted To Love
- I think the writing is good, but an issue arises when a game is 13 hours long and consists primarily of reading: you lose alot of energy when all situations sort of draw on the same emotion. I think theres only so long I can feel sad and sympathy and grief and tensity before the Sad/Sympathy/Grief/Tensity Well runs dry and Im left with a tedious feeling. (I also personally dont need elaborate descriptions of settings that are just, like, a room with wires that Im never going to return to. I dont need to know everything, just the interesting or pertinent things)
- I wasnt sold on the Sleeper concept. It wants me to care alot about being a clone or company property or being a robot and yet none of these things really impacted John Sleepers ability to care about other people - and it sure as shit isnt something that I, John Human Gamer, could possibly relate to my life in any real way. It wanted me to care but it never felt real so I didnt care - and if it wanted me to care it should have never let me take the tracker off. Being hounded as property for the whole game might have sold me more on the notion.
Wants to handle Blade Runner / Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep style questioning, while also drawing parallels to The Queer Experience. Everyone wants to know what it's like to be you, because you're not normal. Has queer characters in spades. Substitutes jaded Eastern European leftism for youthful, cautious optimism.
Suffers from the limitations of the scope, it can feel like the Big Defining Moments for culture on the station just kind of... don't have anything change. The struggle part quickly fades past a certain point, and it turns into a more regular-feeling VN after that point. Doesn't inter-weave as much as it feels like it should.
Suffers from the limitations of the scope, it can feel like the Big Defining Moments for culture on the station just kind of... don't have anything change. The struggle part quickly fades past a certain point, and it turns into a more regular-feeling VN after that point. Doesn't inter-weave as much as it feels like it should.
i played this game for five hours straight and got so immersed that i was literally throwing stressful dice rolls in my dreams that night
Citizen Sleeper te coloca na pele de um sleeper, um humano que teve sua mente digitalizada e colocada num robô pra ser controlado por uma mega corporação interespacial. O jogo inicia quando seu personagem consegue escapar em um cargueiro, chegando a uma estação espacial esquecida nos confins da galáxia, The Eye, onde vc deve sobreviver e lutar por liberdade.
Um jogo que entrega um texto primoroso, que aborda muito bem temas como liberdade, felicidade e autoconhecimento, sendo ambientado num mundo em ruina, o jogo trabalha de maneira exemplar como cada personagem vive e lida com os problemas ao redor, personagens esses que são incríveis, cada um tendo sua própria historia, personalidade, rotina, sonhos e ver como nós podemos impactar a jornada de cada um com nossas decisões é o que torna a experiência de Citizen Sleeper especial.
Um jogo que entrega um texto primoroso, que aborda muito bem temas como liberdade, felicidade e autoconhecimento, sendo ambientado num mundo em ruina, o jogo trabalha de maneira exemplar como cada personagem vive e lida com os problemas ao redor, personagens esses que são incríveis, cada um tendo sua própria historia, personalidade, rotina, sonhos e ver como nós podemos impactar a jornada de cada um com nossas decisões é o que torna a experiência de Citizen Sleeper especial.
i played this in a single 11-hour session, tied up every loose end i possibly could. i love this game dearly, and recommend it wholeheartedly. the systems design and narrative are both great, and they weave into each other seamlessly. this is a really special work of art.
[ played via steam deck ]
So, I've had a load of games I've wanted to get through in the beginning of 2024. I've played a pretty good spread of genres and qualities and got hit with both a blessing and curse: a two-day long, still ongoing power outage. I got sick of playing the things I've been getting through so I took a break with this one. Sitting in the pitch dark, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I... enjoyed my time with it, I think? Although I felt very underwhelmed once I realize how shallow the world, the systems, and the characters were.
It's weird to say, and it sounds a bit pretentious, but have you ever played a game and been struck by the realization that you are not the target audience? Not because the game doesn't appeal to you in themes or genre, but because it feels like its targeting players unfamiliar with what its trying to be? Thats what Citizen Sleeper has felt like to me. I don't like saying it, but it's true, and it boggles my mind ever so slightly because resource management simulators in the way CS presents itself are not new-gamer familiar. Despite this, you are given very long, hand hold-y dumping menus the first time you interact with people, with systems that seem to serve no.. real purpose? After only an hour or two, I had gamed the system well enough to not feel any of its difficulty. Despite the many paths in its story, I never felt pressured or had the fear I couldn't feasibly complete the content available to me. I don't think every game HAS to be difficult or lock me out of content and require many playthroughs (i honestly hate it when games do this), but CS's world would have been the most perfecf place for this and it rarely comes up. You can encounter different endings, yes, but it is entirely possible to accidentally stumble into every piece of content even if you don't fully understand the systems. I was very confused on the condition/energy system for a solid 2+ hours and still managed to complete every time gated prompt with ease thanks to the generous leveling systems and time windows.
In fact, the entire class system is pointless. All it did was ensure that when I finished the game, the stat I had a debuff for was the only one that ended at a +2 bonus rather than a +3. If the stats were fixed or more scarce or even impacted by the choices you made in the story, it would have felt more rewarding to pick and choose what risks you made. Instead, I just chose "what do I have perks for", which often was a +1 or +2 to a critical dice roll, with the option to reroll my dice if they were low costs. There was consistently no stakes present, and the one part of the game (the 3 part DLC? after stories) that stressed how intense and difficult the window of time would be... I completed it in half the allotted time.
I am not a game designer. I don't have a perfect recommendation on how to fix this in a neat way, but removing the outright stat bonuses to dice and only having perks or only providing bonuses as a result of your choices would help increase the pressure and difficulty a little bit, while still feeling satisfying and not changing the core mechanics so much. There were other issues I had with balancing (by the end of the game I had an overflow of 700 coins, and could effectively buy any of the balancing resources necessary without thinking), but this was probably the most game-breaking. It removed any hint of strategy I faced, and I felt really disappointed by this aspect of the game. I hoped that the story and overall world-building would suffice in picking up this slack, but...
The premise at CS's core was great. I loved the idea of our emulated Sleeper robot self finding their place, seeking refuge and their place in the world. It was fun to meet characters and find new places constantly that made the Eye feel alive, but unfortunately the writing, aside from a few select characters, felt so bland. It is well written for the most part in its prose and when it has things it wants to say, but the actual time we spend with most characters to get to know them is short.
One character I really liked was Tala, a bartender who you meet after facing discrimination for being a Sleeper, and eventually befriend and work for. Unfortunately, you talk to her for a few minutes, do some fetch-dice-quests, and then suddenly you speak in another visual novel-esque sequence and you are already good friends. None of the build up is actually there, on screen, and while I still liked the relationship the MC and Tala have and the things I learn about her, it still feels like I'm not even experiencing this in my own story. It happens without me, and this occurs multiple times with other NPCs. The after stories fix this and is genuinely the better part of Citizen Sleeper's entire campaign, but it happens so late. You're given brief impressions of characters and asked to invest in them, and you do and you can, but I wish that 75% of them had been expanded on whatsoever. Feng was wonderful, as well as Peake and Riko, but they are also the few characters who have long and sprawling storylines that interweave with the Eye's political turmoil and each other's struggles at least tangentially.
Even the big political factions are only brief mentions with little impact on the story until the absolute end (and it still feels tacked on). You can choose to provide intel and complete stories where you side with conflicting political factions and rise in their ranks but it never reflects elsewhere.
Citizen Sleeper takes itself seriously, but feels too shy to commit fully to anything. It doesnt want to give you complex narratives, maybe because it doesn't have faith that the dice mechanics are capable of supplementing the decision-making systems, I dont know. But there is a really strong foundation that it fails to capitalize on. I think it's a good game regardless, but that almost makes it worse because I can see so clearly how it could have been great.
I still recommend you pick it up as I enjoyed my time with it, but I dont know... I see they're making a sequel and I hope that when they do, they aren't afraid to be more in-depth with the mechanics and storytelling at hand.
So, I've had a load of games I've wanted to get through in the beginning of 2024. I've played a pretty good spread of genres and qualities and got hit with both a blessing and curse: a two-day long, still ongoing power outage. I got sick of playing the things I've been getting through so I took a break with this one. Sitting in the pitch dark, I wasn't sure what to expect, but I... enjoyed my time with it, I think? Although I felt very underwhelmed once I realize how shallow the world, the systems, and the characters were.
It's weird to say, and it sounds a bit pretentious, but have you ever played a game and been struck by the realization that you are not the target audience? Not because the game doesn't appeal to you in themes or genre, but because it feels like its targeting players unfamiliar with what its trying to be? Thats what Citizen Sleeper has felt like to me. I don't like saying it, but it's true, and it boggles my mind ever so slightly because resource management simulators in the way CS presents itself are not new-gamer familiar. Despite this, you are given very long, hand hold-y dumping menus the first time you interact with people, with systems that seem to serve no.. real purpose? After only an hour or two, I had gamed the system well enough to not feel any of its difficulty. Despite the many paths in its story, I never felt pressured or had the fear I couldn't feasibly complete the content available to me. I don't think every game HAS to be difficult or lock me out of content and require many playthroughs (i honestly hate it when games do this), but CS's world would have been the most perfecf place for this and it rarely comes up. You can encounter different endings, yes, but it is entirely possible to accidentally stumble into every piece of content even if you don't fully understand the systems. I was very confused on the condition/energy system for a solid 2+ hours and still managed to complete every time gated prompt with ease thanks to the generous leveling systems and time windows.
In fact, the entire class system is pointless. All it did was ensure that when I finished the game, the stat I had a debuff for was the only one that ended at a +2 bonus rather than a +3. If the stats were fixed or more scarce or even impacted by the choices you made in the story, it would have felt more rewarding to pick and choose what risks you made. Instead, I just chose "what do I have perks for", which often was a +1 or +2 to a critical dice roll, with the option to reroll my dice if they were low costs. There was consistently no stakes present, and the one part of the game (the 3 part DLC? after stories) that stressed how intense and difficult the window of time would be... I completed it in half the allotted time.
I am not a game designer. I don't have a perfect recommendation on how to fix this in a neat way, but removing the outright stat bonuses to dice and only having perks or only providing bonuses as a result of your choices would help increase the pressure and difficulty a little bit, while still feeling satisfying and not changing the core mechanics so much. There were other issues I had with balancing (by the end of the game I had an overflow of 700 coins, and could effectively buy any of the balancing resources necessary without thinking), but this was probably the most game-breaking. It removed any hint of strategy I faced, and I felt really disappointed by this aspect of the game. I hoped that the story and overall world-building would suffice in picking up this slack, but...
The premise at CS's core was great. I loved the idea of our emulated Sleeper robot self finding their place, seeking refuge and their place in the world. It was fun to meet characters and find new places constantly that made the Eye feel alive, but unfortunately the writing, aside from a few select characters, felt so bland. It is well written for the most part in its prose and when it has things it wants to say, but the actual time we spend with most characters to get to know them is short.
One character I really liked was Tala, a bartender who you meet after facing discrimination for being a Sleeper, and eventually befriend and work for. Unfortunately, you talk to her for a few minutes, do some fetch-dice-quests, and then suddenly you speak in another visual novel-esque sequence and you are already good friends. None of the build up is actually there, on screen, and while I still liked the relationship the MC and Tala have and the things I learn about her, it still feels like I'm not even experiencing this in my own story. It happens without me, and this occurs multiple times with other NPCs. The after stories fix this and is genuinely the better part of Citizen Sleeper's entire campaign, but it happens so late. You're given brief impressions of characters and asked to invest in them, and you do and you can, but I wish that 75% of them had been expanded on whatsoever. Feng was wonderful, as well as Peake and Riko, but they are also the few characters who have long and sprawling storylines that interweave with the Eye's political turmoil and each other's struggles at least tangentially.
Even the big political factions are only brief mentions with little impact on the story until the absolute end (and it still feels tacked on). You can choose to provide intel and complete stories where you side with conflicting political factions and rise in their ranks but it never reflects elsewhere.
Citizen Sleeper takes itself seriously, but feels too shy to commit fully to anything. It doesnt want to give you complex narratives, maybe because it doesn't have faith that the dice mechanics are capable of supplementing the decision-making systems, I dont know. But there is a really strong foundation that it fails to capitalize on. I think it's a good game regardless, but that almost makes it worse because I can see so clearly how it could have been great.
I still recommend you pick it up as I enjoyed my time with it, but I dont know... I see they're making a sequel and I hope that when they do, they aren't afraid to be more in-depth with the mechanics and storytelling at hand.
Disco Elysium in space
Beaten: May 17 2022
Time: 4.5 hrs
Platform: Xbox Series X
I'm tempted to call this a miniature sci-fi Disco Elysium, and honestly if that sounds like it's up your alley I think you should drop everything and play this right now. If you haven't dropped your phone on the floor to buy this game yet, let me continue:
It's so much more than a mini Disco Elysium on a space ship, even if it would so obviously not exist without that game. However, where DE is still mostly a cRPG mechanically, Citizen Sleeper feels almost like a board game. You get a number of dice per turn and you can spend them in any of the adventure game/visual novel-like points of contact for varying degrees of success. It honestly feels right out of the XCOM board game I used to play in high school, just with loads more writing (and much more forgiving difficulty, that board game was HARD).
Narratively it does what a lot of its ilk do, lobbing criticisms at our real life through vignettes and short stories while you essentially search for a way out of your situation. The moment to moment writing is great, gorgeous and descriptive and fun as hell.
My only real issue with the game is that I never felt it take a point of view I hadn't seen before. The games I feel it invites comparison to, the Disco Elysiums and Norcos of the world, all have this sharp blade of emotional criticism they will slide between your ribs without you noticing, until they pull it out and surprise! it's notched at the top. Sleeper by comparison keeps its blade sharp, but never drives it in, with things almost feeling like they went too well.
Maybe that's the consequence of the difficulty curve and the mechanics. It never felt like failing a check was something I wanted to see the outcome of, never like I had to use a low die roll on a task and accept the consequences (mostly because of the hacking system, which makes use of low rolls). It's interesting and fun as a game, but it all feels more dreary than emotional.
That's not to say I didn't feel anything playing it, there were loads of vignettes that were rather meaningful to me, and the ending I got was great!! Satisfying in all the coolest ways. But I didn't cry like in Norco, and I didn't feel like the game had called me out on the way I carry myself like Disco.
It's just a really good and fun game/novel, and there's nothing wrong with that, or even anything wrong with this game. I just wish I could call it a favorite instead of "really great".
but yeah still play it obviously
Time: 4.5 hrs
Platform: Xbox Series X
I'm tempted to call this a miniature sci-fi Disco Elysium, and honestly if that sounds like it's up your alley I think you should drop everything and play this right now. If you haven't dropped your phone on the floor to buy this game yet, let me continue:
It's so much more than a mini Disco Elysium on a space ship, even if it would so obviously not exist without that game. However, where DE is still mostly a cRPG mechanically, Citizen Sleeper feels almost like a board game. You get a number of dice per turn and you can spend them in any of the adventure game/visual novel-like points of contact for varying degrees of success. It honestly feels right out of the XCOM board game I used to play in high school, just with loads more writing (and much more forgiving difficulty, that board game was HARD).
Narratively it does what a lot of its ilk do, lobbing criticisms at our real life through vignettes and short stories while you essentially search for a way out of your situation. The moment to moment writing is great, gorgeous and descriptive and fun as hell.
My only real issue with the game is that I never felt it take a point of view I hadn't seen before. The games I feel it invites comparison to, the Disco Elysiums and Norcos of the world, all have this sharp blade of emotional criticism they will slide between your ribs without you noticing, until they pull it out and surprise! it's notched at the top. Sleeper by comparison keeps its blade sharp, but never drives it in, with things almost feeling like they went too well.
Maybe that's the consequence of the difficulty curve and the mechanics. It never felt like failing a check was something I wanted to see the outcome of, never like I had to use a low die roll on a task and accept the consequences (mostly because of the hacking system, which makes use of low rolls). It's interesting and fun as a game, but it all feels more dreary than emotional.
That's not to say I didn't feel anything playing it, there were loads of vignettes that were rather meaningful to me, and the ending I got was great!! Satisfying in all the coolest ways. But I didn't cry like in Norco, and I didn't feel like the game had called me out on the way I carry myself like Disco.
It's just a really good and fun game/novel, and there's nothing wrong with that, or even anything wrong with this game. I just wish I could call it a favorite instead of "really great".
but yeah still play it obviously
I will not mention Disco Elysium in this post.
Citizen Sleeper is a narrative-adventure game much heavier in the way of narrative than adventure. From the outset, you're given a handful of six-sided dice per day and told that you're allowed to spend them however you want in order to find your place onboard this ringworld station. Your start is going to be appropriately alien and confused, with you getting lost, and making mistakes, and taking hits to your very limited resources. As time marches on and more of the station opens itself up to you, you'll be given the opportunity to spend your dice on an ever-growing list of activities under the threat of time pressure. You can only do so much, the game warns, and your time is the most valuable resource of all.
This isn't true. You can do everything in one playthrough without any real challenge.
In fact, there's so much to do that your struggle is mostly going to be figuring out how to spend your off-days, when all of the NPCs who can progress the story wind up gating you behind a timer of arbitrary length before you can speak with them again. To be frank, I can barely remember most of their names. They all fit a bit too neatly into their archetypes — Good Dad with Cute Daughter, Hackerman, Gold-Hearted Gang Member — and you can kind of see where all of these people are going to end up hours before they actually get there. The story as a whole is too obvious for its own good.
This is a world where that which is moral is that which is correct. It’s a curious little foible I’ve noticed in a lot of these smaller-scale games with gestures towards socialist thought; pragmatism is dedicated exclusively towards villains, and idealism is dedicated exclusively towards the (virtuous) player character and their (morally unobjectionable) allies. You get a bounty hunter set upon you in the early stages of the game, and his entire deal is that he’s willing to not turn you in so long as you keep paying his bar tab. I was ready to dig in, pay up, and take the hits at the cost of buying my own freedom. However, you only need to pay once, because he gets so shitfaced after the first time you pay him off that he drops his gun the next time you see him.
You can give it back to him.
You can give the guy who has a price on your head his own gun back, and you suffer literally zero penalty for this because the bartender stole his bullets while neither of you were looking. He then gets kicked out and completely ceases to be a problem. In terms of pragmatism, giving a bounty hunter who’s coming after you a gun is a miraculously fucking stupid idea. But if you look at it idealistically, you’re refusing to point the gun at him because you’re not going to do violence unto violence, or something. The same thing happens again with the Killer AI; killing it results in your friend NeoVEND dying with it, while binding it eternally in a hellish loop from which it can never escape is the more difficult and thus more “moral” option, so NeoVEND gets to live.
There’s a long, long questline of exposing corruption on the station in the interest of getting your tracker disabled, and it seemed like the closest thing to a core path that the game was offering. There’s a timer constantly ticking down to warn of hunters being set upon you, with the final and most dangerous one taking something like 24 cycles to complete; an in-game “day” is counted as one cycle, so this is an absurd amount of time. I managed to get the tracker disabled with about 16 cycles to spare. And just like that, my body was no longer considered the property of my owners. They wouldn’t come looking for me, anymore. I was free. I could live out the rest of my days onboard this station in my little apartment that I made, hanging out with my stray cat and moving crates all day to buy fungus bowls and stabilizer shots while helping out at the greenhouse commune.
I was satisfied with that, but the game told me that I wasn’t. If I wanted to see credits, I was going to have to either figure out a way to leave the station right now, figure out a way to leave the station eventually, or destroy my body to live in the cloud. The credits rolled for every time I insisted on sticking around — three times in total, four with the DLC — and it wasn't hard to get the feeling that I was overstaying my welcome.
Uh. Why?
No, seriously, why? The Eye is a decent place with good people who I just sunk tons of time and resources into helping. Why leave? Why even think about leaving? Where am I gonna go? A different station, somewhere else, to do it all over again from scratch? Why should I forsake my body and go full computer when we’ve made the point time and again that Sleepers aren’t just programs, and are in fact the sum of their parts, tangible or otherwise? I know that the game needs to end, because a story can’t go on forever, but why like this?
I suppose this was a common complaint, because the DLC addresses the problem by tossing in what you could charitably call an actual endgame scenario, and what you could less charitably call rocks fall, everyone dies. I'm not sure how many people here have ever read a fanfiction as it's being published — don't be shy, I know it's a lot of you — and the conceit of the expansion has that same essence of someone on AO3 writing their responses to reader comments directly into the story. There's no impetus to ever actually want to leave the Eye? Add one in ex post facto! There are far worse things you can do with your narrative, but there's something about saving your actual ending for extra content that betrays some development struggles.
Speaking of, Fellow Traveller needed to get Gareth an editor. I know it's the absolute peak of being a Melvin to complain about a game having typos, but there are a lot of them in here. Like, grammar and spelling mistakes which are consistently wrong. Count the number of times that quotation marks close without punctuation at the end. Characters will use homonyms rather than the words they're actually shooting for to amusing effect, as seen in the phrase "make hole". It's sloppy. I get that writing this many words is hard, and it's just as hard to leaf back through it all to make changes, but I've seen way more people complaining about this than I haven't. Very few people care about spelling mistakes as much as I do, so imagine how rough it must be for them to notice.
But I did still like Citizen Sleeper, and maybe that's why I'm being harsh on it. There is something here that I think could have been outstanding, but it's a little half-baked. The DLC doesn't seem to have helped it much, if at all; when you're loaded to the gills with chits and meds and scrap, the game devolves into just slotting dice into the square hole until text appears. It drags. Ironically enough, for something that's "tabletop-inspired", this would probably work a bit better with a human GM and players at a table, rather than between one person and a computer that has no sense of whether or not its wasting your time. At least your game master has to keep to a human schedule and will thus hurry you along to the juicy bits.
The Sleeper is no Harry DuBois, but at least they're not Kay from fucking Norco.
Citizen Sleeper is a narrative-adventure game much heavier in the way of narrative than adventure. From the outset, you're given a handful of six-sided dice per day and told that you're allowed to spend them however you want in order to find your place onboard this ringworld station. Your start is going to be appropriately alien and confused, with you getting lost, and making mistakes, and taking hits to your very limited resources. As time marches on and more of the station opens itself up to you, you'll be given the opportunity to spend your dice on an ever-growing list of activities under the threat of time pressure. You can only do so much, the game warns, and your time is the most valuable resource of all.
This isn't true. You can do everything in one playthrough without any real challenge.
In fact, there's so much to do that your struggle is mostly going to be figuring out how to spend your off-days, when all of the NPCs who can progress the story wind up gating you behind a timer of arbitrary length before you can speak with them again. To be frank, I can barely remember most of their names. They all fit a bit too neatly into their archetypes — Good Dad with Cute Daughter, Hackerman, Gold-Hearted Gang Member — and you can kind of see where all of these people are going to end up hours before they actually get there. The story as a whole is too obvious for its own good.
This is a world where that which is moral is that which is correct. It’s a curious little foible I’ve noticed in a lot of these smaller-scale games with gestures towards socialist thought; pragmatism is dedicated exclusively towards villains, and idealism is dedicated exclusively towards the (virtuous) player character and their (morally unobjectionable) allies. You get a bounty hunter set upon you in the early stages of the game, and his entire deal is that he’s willing to not turn you in so long as you keep paying his bar tab. I was ready to dig in, pay up, and take the hits at the cost of buying my own freedom. However, you only need to pay once, because he gets so shitfaced after the first time you pay him off that he drops his gun the next time you see him.
You can give it back to him.
You can give the guy who has a price on your head his own gun back, and you suffer literally zero penalty for this because the bartender stole his bullets while neither of you were looking. He then gets kicked out and completely ceases to be a problem. In terms of pragmatism, giving a bounty hunter who’s coming after you a gun is a miraculously fucking stupid idea. But if you look at it idealistically, you’re refusing to point the gun at him because you’re not going to do violence unto violence, or something. The same thing happens again with the Killer AI; killing it results in your friend NeoVEND dying with it, while binding it eternally in a hellish loop from which it can never escape is the more difficult and thus more “moral” option, so NeoVEND gets to live.
There’s a long, long questline of exposing corruption on the station in the interest of getting your tracker disabled, and it seemed like the closest thing to a core path that the game was offering. There’s a timer constantly ticking down to warn of hunters being set upon you, with the final and most dangerous one taking something like 24 cycles to complete; an in-game “day” is counted as one cycle, so this is an absurd amount of time. I managed to get the tracker disabled with about 16 cycles to spare. And just like that, my body was no longer considered the property of my owners. They wouldn’t come looking for me, anymore. I was free. I could live out the rest of my days onboard this station in my little apartment that I made, hanging out with my stray cat and moving crates all day to buy fungus bowls and stabilizer shots while helping out at the greenhouse commune.
I was satisfied with that, but the game told me that I wasn’t. If I wanted to see credits, I was going to have to either figure out a way to leave the station right now, figure out a way to leave the station eventually, or destroy my body to live in the cloud. The credits rolled for every time I insisted on sticking around — three times in total, four with the DLC — and it wasn't hard to get the feeling that I was overstaying my welcome.
Uh. Why?
No, seriously, why? The Eye is a decent place with good people who I just sunk tons of time and resources into helping. Why leave? Why even think about leaving? Where am I gonna go? A different station, somewhere else, to do it all over again from scratch? Why should I forsake my body and go full computer when we’ve made the point time and again that Sleepers aren’t just programs, and are in fact the sum of their parts, tangible or otherwise? I know that the game needs to end, because a story can’t go on forever, but why like this?
I suppose this was a common complaint, because the DLC addresses the problem by tossing in what you could charitably call an actual endgame scenario, and what you could less charitably call rocks fall, everyone dies. I'm not sure how many people here have ever read a fanfiction as it's being published — don't be shy, I know it's a lot of you — and the conceit of the expansion has that same essence of someone on AO3 writing their responses to reader comments directly into the story. There's no impetus to ever actually want to leave the Eye? Add one in ex post facto! There are far worse things you can do with your narrative, but there's something about saving your actual ending for extra content that betrays some development struggles.
Speaking of, Fellow Traveller needed to get Gareth an editor. I know it's the absolute peak of being a Melvin to complain about a game having typos, but there are a lot of them in here. Like, grammar and spelling mistakes which are consistently wrong. Count the number of times that quotation marks close without punctuation at the end. Characters will use homonyms rather than the words they're actually shooting for to amusing effect, as seen in the phrase "make hole". It's sloppy. I get that writing this many words is hard, and it's just as hard to leaf back through it all to make changes, but I've seen way more people complaining about this than I haven't. Very few people care about spelling mistakes as much as I do, so imagine how rough it must be for them to notice.
But I did still like Citizen Sleeper, and maybe that's why I'm being harsh on it. There is something here that I think could have been outstanding, but it's a little half-baked. The DLC doesn't seem to have helped it much, if at all; when you're loaded to the gills with chits and meds and scrap, the game devolves into just slotting dice into the square hole until text appears. It drags. Ironically enough, for something that's "tabletop-inspired", this would probably work a bit better with a human GM and players at a table, rather than between one person and a computer that has no sense of whether or not its wasting your time. At least your game master has to keep to a human schedule and will thus hurry you along to the juicy bits.
The Sleeper is no Harry DuBois, but at least they're not Kay from fucking Norco.
absolutely whips. incredible design, sound, art, worldbuilding, pacing, and length.
a game that asks the question of what community is to you: is it the body you occupy, is it the world around you? is it your friends you help or simply every life you touch? do the people you love in far away places form that community as well, even those you are incapable of remembering? all of these questions balance on a knife's edge in a world that hates you, one that actively plans for and expects your death. they Necessitate it. in a life and a world where control is so nested in corporations who will never see consequences for their actions or remember that you exist, waking up feels like protest, choosing your own life is the new punk.
a game that asks the question of what community is to you: is it the body you occupy, is it the world around you? is it your friends you help or simply every life you touch? do the people you love in far away places form that community as well, even those you are incapable of remembering? all of these questions balance on a knife's edge in a world that hates you, one that actively plans for and expects your death. they Necessitate it. in a life and a world where control is so nested in corporations who will never see consequences for their actions or remember that you exist, waking up feels like protest, choosing your own life is the new punk.
"To be human and to be humane are two very different things."-Some 15 year old on Tiktok, probably.
Before I start this review, I'd like to give a massive thanks to @duhnuhnuh for gifting me a copy of this game. They have a steam giveaway list on their profile, so check that out!
Citizen sleeper is a game about obsolescence. This is made clear when you start the game, your robotic body already failing due to built in corporate dependency, washed up on an old space station that frankly, kinda sucks. A story about people who've either achieved their goals or become complacent. It's a cyberpunk setting, so implants, corrupt mercs, and lower city crime gangs abound here, but all with such stellar execution.
Once you finish the tutorial, you're pretty much free to explore the city at your leisure. You talk to people and take on odd jobs to get by and expand your scope of the city, in a day to day system similar to something like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, only your body can shut down if you don't take enough drugs. Standard stuff.
But the sandbox element is a great draw. It's not super limiting and anything that does have a deadline is pretty generous, the only limit is needing a specific dice which rng could just not give you (Feng bro I'm so sorry) The implant system is generally a genius mechanic, beautifully blending gameplay and narrative together. Do you use another for more desperate attempts at the dice, or do you wait until your robotic body is barely functional? Choice is yours.
But above all that, Citizen sleeper is a game about people. People stuck in the same situation as you just trying to get by. People like Tala and Emphis just trying to make the best of their situation, people like Sabine and Feng trying to change the system entirely, and people like Lem just working for themselves. I straight up cannot think of a bad character in this game.
The next thing I gotta praise is the atmosphere in general. Even at the start when you're trying to get your bearings, the world's beautiful setting and sound design keep you invested, as well as the general mystery of what's the next thing out there. If I fill this meter, what do I get? What, or who, is there for me? I gotta buy access to the next part of the ship? Sure thing, who's there? It's just such a brilliant setting.
If there's one thing I think should be looked into for the next game, I think more variance in sprites should be nice. Character sprites only change after a dramatic turning point in their plotlines, so just a few different emotion sprites would add greatly to the immersion.
So overall, it's just a masterpiece of an experience that left me engaged throughout, and a game you just need to play. I only got one of eight possible endings, so I'll definitely be returning at some point.
Before I start this review, I'd like to give a massive thanks to @duhnuhnuh for gifting me a copy of this game. They have a steam giveaway list on their profile, so check that out!
Citizen sleeper is a game about obsolescence. This is made clear when you start the game, your robotic body already failing due to built in corporate dependency, washed up on an old space station that frankly, kinda sucks. A story about people who've either achieved their goals or become complacent. It's a cyberpunk setting, so implants, corrupt mercs, and lower city crime gangs abound here, but all with such stellar execution.
Once you finish the tutorial, you're pretty much free to explore the city at your leisure. You talk to people and take on odd jobs to get by and expand your scope of the city, in a day to day system similar to something like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, only your body can shut down if you don't take enough drugs. Standard stuff.
But the sandbox element is a great draw. It's not super limiting and anything that does have a deadline is pretty generous, the only limit is needing a specific dice which rng could just not give you (Feng bro I'm so sorry) The implant system is generally a genius mechanic, beautifully blending gameplay and narrative together. Do you use another for more desperate attempts at the dice, or do you wait until your robotic body is barely functional? Choice is yours.
But above all that, Citizen sleeper is a game about people. People stuck in the same situation as you just trying to get by. People like Tala and Emphis just trying to make the best of their situation, people like Sabine and Feng trying to change the system entirely, and people like Lem just working for themselves. I straight up cannot think of a bad character in this game.
The next thing I gotta praise is the atmosphere in general. Even at the start when you're trying to get your bearings, the world's beautiful setting and sound design keep you invested, as well as the general mystery of what's the next thing out there. If I fill this meter, what do I get? What, or who, is there for me? I gotta buy access to the next part of the ship? Sure thing, who's there? It's just such a brilliant setting.
If there's one thing I think should be looked into for the next game, I think more variance in sprites should be nice. Character sprites only change after a dramatic turning point in their plotlines, so just a few different emotion sprites would add greatly to the immersion.
So overall, it's just a masterpiece of an experience that left me engaged throughout, and a game you just need to play. I only got one of eight possible endings, so I'll definitely be returning at some point.
when i read Neuromancer back in 2011 i think i was never able to quite picture whatever William Gibson was trying to describe. there's a thing with sci-fi text based works where everything is described by comparing it to a familiar object, connected to another familiar object and somehow you should be able to imagine the whole picture going by that. well i can't, i don't think it's a particular lack of imagination, i think it might be the exact opposite really, because i'm sure whatever i'm imagining has nothing to do with what was described. this is not frustrating in any way though, i think it just makes my experience with this type of work a tad more abstract. citizen sleeper is already inherently abstract, so in some level i imagine i was supposed to imagine whatever i wanted, however i wanted.
it's a good game about befriending people, listening to stories, hating capitalism and corporations, accepting physicality and transience. or at least that's how i played it. i don't think the game gives you too many options to branch out, but i still think each individual input can make this experience a whole lot different. i'm eager to know how many people were experiencing money issues while Ethan forced you to pay their tab, or unlocked places and or situations far earlier than the game expected you too. it's just fun, short and sweet, i enjoyed my time with it even though for a while i didn't think i would.
it's a good game about befriending people, listening to stories, hating capitalism and corporations, accepting physicality and transience. or at least that's how i played it. i don't think the game gives you too many options to branch out, but i still think each individual input can make this experience a whole lot different. i'm eager to know how many people were experiencing money issues while Ethan forced you to pay their tab, or unlocked places and or situations far earlier than the game expected you too. it's just fun, short and sweet, i enjoyed my time with it even though for a while i didn't think i would.
post-disco elysium UI design is already cementing into cliche w this & norco. this has the roughest on-the-ground writing of all 3 (feels like under-edited/sloppy short stories split apart w arbitrary dialogue options) BUT the mechanics are pleasantly gummy and the background noise (lore, worldbuilding, etc) is put together well.
Citizen Sleeper revolves around playing as a Sleeper, those who gave their lives to work for corporations by becoming synthetic copies of their original selves. You decided to escape from those you worked for and need to pick yourself up from the bottom, trying to survive and build a new life as you hide out on a rundown but lively space station called Erlin’s Eye. All the while you’re constantly being tracked and your body is rapidly deteriorating
The gameplay is part narrative RPG akin to Disco Elysium (where actions are determined by dice rolls) and part resource management. With each limited cycle, much of the game is spent scrambling to find ways to make money to survive, exploring the various parts of the ship and meeting new people with their own drives to pursue. While also learning more about the station and the world itself through the game’s descriptive dialogue
Eventually it becomes much more manageable as you upgrade your character and gather various rewards from those you meet with regularly. Though you’ll start to exhaust most of what the game has to offer and still need to wait for events to trigger or items to appear after multiple cycles, which did get a little tedious. By the end though, Erlin’s Eye actually started to feel like home for the small amount of time you’ll spend on it
The gameplay is part narrative RPG akin to Disco Elysium (where actions are determined by dice rolls) and part resource management. With each limited cycle, much of the game is spent scrambling to find ways to make money to survive, exploring the various parts of the ship and meeting new people with their own drives to pursue. While also learning more about the station and the world itself through the game’s descriptive dialogue
Eventually it becomes much more manageable as you upgrade your character and gather various rewards from those you meet with regularly. Though you’ll start to exhaust most of what the game has to offer and still need to wait for events to trigger or items to appear after multiple cycles, which did get a little tedious. By the end though, Erlin’s Eye actually started to feel like home for the small amount of time you’ll spend on it
A text-based game with fantastic writing that utilizes engaging tabletop roleplaying mechanics to keep you hooked on the gameplay loop.
Text-based games are honestly hard for me. I struggle to focus and often even fall asleep while playing them. I was dragging my feet on starting Citizen Sleeper and the intro of the game did not help that. The game opens up with walls of text introducing both the story and an overwhelming amount of gameplay information. The tutorial literally just dumps about 6 screens of text on you that showcase every mechanic you'll see for the whole game, and then it kicks you off the ledge and says "Good luck!" It's a lot to take in out of the gate. Annoyingly, once you hit "OK" to clear the tutorial page away, none of that information is ever available to view again in-game. Wild choice.
That said, once I got my feet wet and the gameplay started to click, I was hooked. The loop of assigning my dice to progress clocks while managing my Sleeper's resources cycle-after-cycle was far more engaging than I expected. It became addicting to the point where we'd say "Ok just one more cycle. One more cycle. Just one more cycle" as the rad soundtrack lulls us into a zen state, until suddenly it's 9pm and we haven't eaten dinner yet.
Beyond the gameplay loop, the story was incredible and had me itching to learn more about the characters and the world they inhabit. I became invested in the lives of everyone on The Eye. I wanted to help them not just because it helped me level up; I genuinely wanted to improve the lives of these people because I cared about them.
Citizen Sleeper not only utilizes tabletop roleplaying game mechanics in an interesting way to tell a story, but it integrates all those systems into the game in a way that feels essential. The gameplay loop hooked me in and the writing kept me coming back. Never thought I, a person who typically hates reading games, would love this game as much as I do but I adored every minute of it.
+ Incredible story, world, and characters
+ Engaging gameplay loop
+ Rad soundtrack with great vibes
+ Fantastic art and character designs
- Overwhelming tutorial with walls of text that you can never look at again
- Navigating the space station with a controller was a pain
Text-based games are honestly hard for me. I struggle to focus and often even fall asleep while playing them. I was dragging my feet on starting Citizen Sleeper and the intro of the game did not help that. The game opens up with walls of text introducing both the story and an overwhelming amount of gameplay information. The tutorial literally just dumps about 6 screens of text on you that showcase every mechanic you'll see for the whole game, and then it kicks you off the ledge and says "Good luck!" It's a lot to take in out of the gate. Annoyingly, once you hit "OK" to clear the tutorial page away, none of that information is ever available to view again in-game. Wild choice.
That said, once I got my feet wet and the gameplay started to click, I was hooked. The loop of assigning my dice to progress clocks while managing my Sleeper's resources cycle-after-cycle was far more engaging than I expected. It became addicting to the point where we'd say "Ok just one more cycle. One more cycle. Just one more cycle" as the rad soundtrack lulls us into a zen state, until suddenly it's 9pm and we haven't eaten dinner yet.
Beyond the gameplay loop, the story was incredible and had me itching to learn more about the characters and the world they inhabit. I became invested in the lives of everyone on The Eye. I wanted to help them not just because it helped me level up; I genuinely wanted to improve the lives of these people because I cared about them.
Citizen Sleeper not only utilizes tabletop roleplaying game mechanics in an interesting way to tell a story, but it integrates all those systems into the game in a way that feels essential. The gameplay loop hooked me in and the writing kept me coming back. Never thought I, a person who typically hates reading games, would love this game as much as I do but I adored every minute of it.
+ Incredible story, world, and characters
+ Engaging gameplay loop
+ Rad soundtrack with great vibes
+ Fantastic art and character designs
- Overwhelming tutorial with walls of text that you can never look at again
- Navigating the space station with a controller was a pain
The 2022 Indie darling Citizen Sleeper slowly but steadily crept into just about everyone’s year end list of favourite games it is hard to find a single video or article that isn’t glowing praise for the game. If you are into Indie story heavy games, chances are you have at least heard of it . And this positive reception genuinely confuses me.
I found Citizen Sleeper lacking in just about all aspects from its storytelling, general quality of the prose, the soundscape and the gameplay department.
The game dragged me in with it’s setting and art-style at first, a cyberpunk game set in space is right up my alley and I was enjoying the game quite a bit at the start. Its a very bleak game, with themes of debt slavery and you being the property of a corporation looking for freedom, themes I find myself interested in. And the game starts harshly, you are dying you need to scrape by enough nutrition to just barely sustain yourself. But that’s just at the start, survival wasn't a problem after just a bit, I never really was in danger and these elements of the game just became a tedious chore, rather than an engaging part of the whole.
So a lot of the game’s appeal now lies on the game’s ability to make the narrative engaging which is hard to do when the game doesn't even let you have an actual full-fledged conversation with characters, it breaks up the dialogue constantly by these characters sending you constantly on fetch quests which would be fine if the conversations can continue within a few minutes. It cant. So the game has a mechanic where events occur every few cycles, which means quests drag cause you do one part -> wait 4 cycles for it to continue->Do another part -> wait for another 4 cycle for it to continue. It breaks and the flow of the quest’s story as I have jump between and do multiple quests just to pass the time for the quests I actually want to do to be done. It’s very annoying.
But getting through these tedious quests didn't feel that rewarding either cause I never felt that the characters were that well written. There isn’t really much depth in the conversations, all of it feels disconnected from one another and simplistic. They lack a certain human charm to them. The game tries to invoke feelings of warmth, hope and belief, but it needed a stronger climax to the quests (writing wise cause story wise they are about what can be expected from the game) and characters whose thoughts, inner workings explored more. I don’t dislike the characters I am just consistently underwhelmed, for some I liked the focus on the sentience aspect(easily the best part of the game for me), but I don’t think it did much with any other of its themes. Fengs quest left me wanting more, same for the Yatagan questioned. I liked the characters a bit but I couldn’t find myself getting attached to any of them by the end. I felt like half the time I was just collecting mushrooms for 3 different quests. There’s not much engaging about any of it.
And all the time the game is failing with it’s complex prose. Which while it can describe a scene, it fails to actually describe being in that scene, a part of the world. It doesn't induce any emotions in me. A game doesn't need to have that as it can use its visuals and soundscape to ground the player in the world but the soundscapes in this game are lacking as well, would have loved if it matched the environment a bustling city sound at low end or something like metal works when working on ships but its strangely empty other than the music, the music is pretty good though. The art is great but I wanted to see more there’ not much of it, just some more detailed backgrounds would also have helped a lot.
The dice roll gameplay is not interesting or challenging so when a lot of it I felt was just grinding away cycles passing, and with minimal engagement I was done with the game. I got an ending and don’t see myself ever going back for more.
I found Citizen Sleeper lacking in just about all aspects from its storytelling, general quality of the prose, the soundscape and the gameplay department.
The game dragged me in with it’s setting and art-style at first, a cyberpunk game set in space is right up my alley and I was enjoying the game quite a bit at the start. Its a very bleak game, with themes of debt slavery and you being the property of a corporation looking for freedom, themes I find myself interested in. And the game starts harshly, you are dying you need to scrape by enough nutrition to just barely sustain yourself. But that’s just at the start, survival wasn't a problem after just a bit, I never really was in danger and these elements of the game just became a tedious chore, rather than an engaging part of the whole.
So a lot of the game’s appeal now lies on the game’s ability to make the narrative engaging which is hard to do when the game doesn't even let you have an actual full-fledged conversation with characters, it breaks up the dialogue constantly by these characters sending you constantly on fetch quests which would be fine if the conversations can continue within a few minutes. It cant. So the game has a mechanic where events occur every few cycles, which means quests drag cause you do one part -> wait 4 cycles for it to continue->Do another part -> wait for another 4 cycle for it to continue. It breaks and the flow of the quest’s story as I have jump between and do multiple quests just to pass the time for the quests I actually want to do to be done. It’s very annoying.
But getting through these tedious quests didn't feel that rewarding either cause I never felt that the characters were that well written. There isn’t really much depth in the conversations, all of it feels disconnected from one another and simplistic. They lack a certain human charm to them. The game tries to invoke feelings of warmth, hope and belief, but it needed a stronger climax to the quests (writing wise cause story wise they are about what can be expected from the game) and characters whose thoughts, inner workings explored more. I don’t dislike the characters I am just consistently underwhelmed, for some I liked the focus on the sentience aspect(easily the best part of the game for me), but I don’t think it did much with any other of its themes. Fengs quest left me wanting more, same for the Yatagan questioned. I liked the characters a bit but I couldn’t find myself getting attached to any of them by the end. I felt like half the time I was just collecting mushrooms for 3 different quests. There’s not much engaging about any of it.
And all the time the game is failing with it’s complex prose. Which while it can describe a scene, it fails to actually describe being in that scene, a part of the world. It doesn't induce any emotions in me. A game doesn't need to have that as it can use its visuals and soundscape to ground the player in the world but the soundscapes in this game are lacking as well, would have loved if it matched the environment a bustling city sound at low end or something like metal works when working on ships but its strangely empty other than the music, the music is pretty good though. The art is great but I wanted to see more there’ not much of it, just some more detailed backgrounds would also have helped a lot.
The dice roll gameplay is not interesting or challenging so when a lot of it I felt was just grinding away cycles passing, and with minimal engagement I was done with the game. I got an ending and don’t see myself ever going back for more.
Citizen Sleeper took me by surprise. I hadn’t even heard about this game until I saw it pop up in some lists prior to its release. Even closer to its release, I played Jump Over The Age (the team behind Citizen Sleeper) their previous release ‘In Other Waters’ and liked it a lot, so getting Citizen Sleeper was a no-brainer at that point. The game grabbed my attention all the way through with its simple yet captivating TTRPG gameplay mechanics, all the unique characters and their fascinating stories, and the beautiful art that portrays those characters.
At the start of the game it can be a bit overwhelming with all the information it throws at you, explaining how all its systems and the resource management work. But once the game settles and you start to learn about the world and its characters, it becomes hard to put down.
All the characters have their own unique stories that stand on their own and sometimes intertwine with each other but ultimately their purpose is to grow your own character. It all flows so well and the game is filled with amazing moments that made me happy, sad, and angry. The characters are so well written with their own motivations and relationships and it made me want to explore all their stories.
(Slight spoilers ahead)
The more critical questlines all have their own ending for the game, which usually is a decision between leaving the Eye or staying behind. My only complaint with the game is within those decisions. There isn’t really an ending for when you choose to stay, or the equivalent of that decision, in each questline. You can keep going through cycles and doing tasks, but without a purpose. It would’ve been nice to get some sort of ending for this with some explanation about what happened to the characters that left. It’s a minor complaint because everything else ties up nicely and maybe this is just me being greedy and wanting even more from the game. I’m sure I’ll be visiting this game again in the near future!
Jump Over The Age has won me over with both of their games now and proven they put out the slickest looking games with some of the best narratives and so instantly becoming one of my favourite developers out there. If you’re a fan of narrative focussed games do yourself a favour and try this game, and while you’re at it also give In Other Waters a shot.
Beaten: 14/05/2022
Platform: Nintendo Switch
At the start of the game it can be a bit overwhelming with all the information it throws at you, explaining how all its systems and the resource management work. But once the game settles and you start to learn about the world and its characters, it becomes hard to put down.
All the characters have their own unique stories that stand on their own and sometimes intertwine with each other but ultimately their purpose is to grow your own character. It all flows so well and the game is filled with amazing moments that made me happy, sad, and angry. The characters are so well written with their own motivations and relationships and it made me want to explore all their stories.
(Slight spoilers ahead)
The more critical questlines all have their own ending for the game, which usually is a decision between leaving the Eye or staying behind. My only complaint with the game is within those decisions. There isn’t really an ending for when you choose to stay, or the equivalent of that decision, in each questline. You can keep going through cycles and doing tasks, but without a purpose. It would’ve been nice to get some sort of ending for this with some explanation about what happened to the characters that left. It’s a minor complaint because everything else ties up nicely and maybe this is just me being greedy and wanting even more from the game. I’m sure I’ll be visiting this game again in the near future!
Jump Over The Age has won me over with both of their games now and proven they put out the slickest looking games with some of the best narratives and so instantly becoming one of my favourite developers out there. If you’re a fan of narrative focussed games do yourself a favour and try this game, and while you’re at it also give In Other Waters a shot.
Beaten: 14/05/2022
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Você é um sleeper: uma mente humana emulada em um corpo mecânico, uma venda de direitos autorais da caixola do seu eu original que nasce sumariamente para servir uma corporação. Citizen Sleeper recontextualiza o personagem blank-slate diretamente através desta ótica: sua interface com o mundo são as suas ações; suas conquistas no Eye vem através do mesmo meio para o qual você foi criado - servitude. Porém, agora seu mestre não é apenas a corporação que rastreia a sua propriedade perdida, mas também os elementos - fome, sono, saúde, dinheiro, tempo. Citizen Sleeper, em seu melhor momento, é sobre sobreviver e triunfar, das maneiras minúsculas em que um pode, sobre a opressão do capitalismo tardio. É sobre vender o almoço pra comprar a janta, sobre quase se matar de trabalhar pra conseguir garantir um futuro um pouco melhor para uma criança, ou para uma comunidade, ou para a bartender bonitinha que te deu o seu primeiro sorriso, e se definir como alguém além de sua subserviência ao capital - flores que se espreitam e brotam pelas frestas do metal gelado, apesar de tudo. O começo do jogo te captura nessa peleja diária, uma série de ampulhetas descendo paulatinamente, e todo o tempo do mundo não parece o suficiente para garantir o seu e o de quem te acolheu - um sistema simplérrimo que não passa de um d6 e quatro atributos regendo uma orquestra delicada com muita precisão.
Infelizmente, não tarda muito até tudo descompassar. A tensão opressora do jogo dá caminho à uma monotonia entediante (ainda um bom comentário, mesmo se não intencional) e as curtinhas histórias se revelam mais pelo que elas são: o que antes parecia um ecossistema vivo é na verdade uma série de one-shots lineares, que nunca se converge, e a falha absoluta nunca foi uma realidade - de alguma maneira, você vai conseguir dar um jeito em quase tudo que aparece pra você, seus atributos e perks já robustos o suficiente para carregar toda a estação nas costas.
Também não ajuda que cinco dos dez finais do jogo não são definitivos: embora narrativamente representem um ponto final nessa história e os créditos rolem, o jogo não faz o suficiente para satisfazer o jogador com a conclusão que ele atingiu e torna fácil demais voltar para concluir tudo. Diria que até espera isso do jogador, com o DLC que contém o ‘true ending’ - que, apesar da sequência final bonita, exacerba todos os defeitos do late game - fazendo muito mais sentido se você tiver concluído todo o resto do jogo, e, ainda assim, acho que entrega um final menos interessante e impactante do que o do jogo base. Não diria que Citizen Sleeper peca pelo excesso, e sim o contrário: a carne do jogo, que deveriam ser os diálogos, completamente lineares; seu Sleeper, sua condição e seus recursos jamais sendo afetados por algo que ele decide ou diz durante eles. O jogo não conseguiria incorporar bem finais mais definitivos de fato sem dar uma capacidade de expressão satisfatória para o jogador.
O elefante na sala é óbvio: Citizen Sleeper nasceu e vive sob a sombra de Disco Elysium. Evitar comparações é impossível, e é um embate duro para qualquer um que queira brotar de um jogo um em um milhão como ele. Ainda que Citizen Sleeper tenha uma escrita cativante pela eficiência em que consegue puxar emoções de clichés sci-fi, não só lhe faltou um pingo de excelência, quanto também precisa desesperadamente de um revisor - não faço ideia como não corrigiram a gama enorme de erros ortográficos e pontuação bizarríssima que detona com a prosa do jogo. As palavras podem ser bonitas, mas o ritmo é constantemente falho, o que deixa um gosto ruim na boca. Ainda assim, Citizen Sleeper sabe, ainda que por pouco tempo, brilhar excelentemente, e representar muito bem esta narrativa através de suas mecânicas. Fico interessado na continuação.
Infelizmente, não tarda muito até tudo descompassar. A tensão opressora do jogo dá caminho à uma monotonia entediante (ainda um bom comentário, mesmo se não intencional) e as curtinhas histórias se revelam mais pelo que elas são: o que antes parecia um ecossistema vivo é na verdade uma série de one-shots lineares, que nunca se converge, e a falha absoluta nunca foi uma realidade - de alguma maneira, você vai conseguir dar um jeito em quase tudo que aparece pra você, seus atributos e perks já robustos o suficiente para carregar toda a estação nas costas.
Também não ajuda que cinco dos dez finais do jogo não são definitivos: embora narrativamente representem um ponto final nessa história e os créditos rolem, o jogo não faz o suficiente para satisfazer o jogador com a conclusão que ele atingiu e torna fácil demais voltar para concluir tudo. Diria que até espera isso do jogador, com o DLC que contém o ‘true ending’ - que, apesar da sequência final bonita, exacerba todos os defeitos do late game - fazendo muito mais sentido se você tiver concluído todo o resto do jogo, e, ainda assim, acho que entrega um final menos interessante e impactante do que o do jogo base. Não diria que Citizen Sleeper peca pelo excesso, e sim o contrário: a carne do jogo, que deveriam ser os diálogos, completamente lineares; seu Sleeper, sua condição e seus recursos jamais sendo afetados por algo que ele decide ou diz durante eles. O jogo não conseguiria incorporar bem finais mais definitivos de fato sem dar uma capacidade de expressão satisfatória para o jogador.
O elefante na sala é óbvio: Citizen Sleeper nasceu e vive sob a sombra de Disco Elysium. Evitar comparações é impossível, e é um embate duro para qualquer um que queira brotar de um jogo um em um milhão como ele. Ainda que Citizen Sleeper tenha uma escrita cativante pela eficiência em que consegue puxar emoções de clichés sci-fi, não só lhe faltou um pingo de excelência, quanto também precisa desesperadamente de um revisor - não faço ideia como não corrigiram a gama enorme de erros ortográficos e pontuação bizarríssima que detona com a prosa do jogo. As palavras podem ser bonitas, mas o ritmo é constantemente falho, o que deixa um gosto ruim na boca. Ainda assim, Citizen Sleeper sabe, ainda que por pouco tempo, brilhar excelentemente, e representar muito bem esta narrativa através de suas mecânicas. Fico interessado na continuação.
Sad to say Citizen Sleeper is a pretty neat little experiment that I only wished I could’ve loved more than I should. I really vibe with the visual look, music, it's more hands on approach to cyberpunk themes and concepts, and the Disco Elysium approach to the gameplay lacking conventional combat in favor of story exploration and dice roll mechanics. The game is also fairly non-linear, allowing you to basically pick and choose whatever quest lines or stories to follow in the Erlin’s Eye and pretty much make up your own personal main story to progress through. But once you’ve cracked down on how the cycle progression and dice rolls work in the game it just starts to feel very dragged out because you’re basically clicking and waiting for the real interesting stuff to happen occasionally. Everything in between those parts to do with waiting and resource management just doesn’t feel engaging because there really isn’t too much to it gameplay-wise and story-wise nothing is really going on yet. This didn’t tarnish the experience dramatically because of how short the game is, and if you’re willing to get pass that easy enough this should click with you more, but I would’ve liked to see this concept a bit more fleshed out to live up to its full potential.
This one's been getting a ton of praise for its writing and strong, political narrative. I found that praise to be justified. At times, I found how effectively the game presented its space-faring capitalist dystopia to be so biting that it shook me to my core, and made me want to put the controller down. And I can't say enough good things about the other aspects of the production - the artwork, and the synthwave-inspired soundtrack. All of this perfectly sets the ambience for the kind of stories Citizen Sleeper is going to tell.
But as a game? I can't really say that I had a lot of fun, and I'm not sure why. I read a lot. I love Persona. I've never played a tabletop game, but I'm interested in them. Still, something about the whole package failed to click until way too late, and I spent most of my playthrough just kind of doing random things without much deliberation. Though, I think the game would greatly reward that second, more informed playthrough.
But as a game? I can't really say that I had a lot of fun, and I'm not sure why. I read a lot. I love Persona. I've never played a tabletop game, but I'm interested in them. Still, something about the whole package failed to click until way too late, and I spent most of my playthrough just kind of doing random things without much deliberation. Though, I think the game would greatly reward that second, more informed playthrough.
It makes me sad to see games like Citizen Sleeper because even though I'm aware of the fact that making a game is VERY hard, it just feels like games like these have huge potential still buried. First things first, it has amazing worldbuilding, and I love how cozy (for the lack of a better word) The Eye feels: A space station on the fringes of an interstellar civilization where greedy corporations exploit everything and everyone; born from the failures of that hypercapitalistic society. I found writing to be sometimes confusing or forced (for example when it describes MC's feelings, but we'll get to that), but still very much enjoyed it. However, I think the game has a big identity problem, and it affects everything. So let me say it out loud: THIS GAME IS NOT AN RPG. It isn't a bad thing in itself, of course, I loved the developers' previous game, In Other Waters, and it was a linear adventure with minimalistic gameplay.
The problems I had with CS comes mainly from its structure. It tries to be an RPG by giving you the choice on how to proceed, what to do and how to distribute your skills, with a system of using pre-determined dice rolls to interact with things and fix your decaying cyborg body. Problem is, after you get the hang of this dice system, everything becomes easy to achieve and when you get enough money to sustain yourself (which happens after 1 hour or so), you are able to do anything you want to do, and my biggest problem with the game shows itself: there are no consequences at all. No consequences if you do something, no consequences if you choose to not do something, and it's not just in the actions; it also doesn't matter what you choose in narrative parts either. Most of the time there are 2 choices with one of them being "stay silent" anyway.
Unfortunately, there are also almost no connections between storylines, so the game is more like a collection of short, self-contained and linear stories rather than a game where your choices changes things. Some of these stories are way too short to care about the characters, some of them just begin to unravel and ends. I think my favorite storyline is Lem and Mina's, which is the only one (other than the DLC storyline) that truly feels finished. Endings were also unsatisfying for me, I think there are 3 endings in the game in total, and they all felt abrupt. The ending decisions are also the only true decisions in the game, where you decide if you want to end the game at that point or not. So, it was quite unsatisfying.
In the end, I can't recommend the game if you expect a narrative heavy RPG (yes, like Disco Elysium, there, I said it). However, if you are interested in the setting and the stories it offers, give it a shot, and also definitely check out In Other Waters, I think they did a better, more focused game on that one. Still, I'm eager to see what Jump Over The Age will develop next, I know they have fascinating worlds to tell yet.
The problems I had with CS comes mainly from its structure. It tries to be an RPG by giving you the choice on how to proceed, what to do and how to distribute your skills, with a system of using pre-determined dice rolls to interact with things and fix your decaying cyborg body. Problem is, after you get the hang of this dice system, everything becomes easy to achieve and when you get enough money to sustain yourself (which happens after 1 hour or so), you are able to do anything you want to do, and my biggest problem with the game shows itself: there are no consequences at all. No consequences if you do something, no consequences if you choose to not do something, and it's not just in the actions; it also doesn't matter what you choose in narrative parts either. Most of the time there are 2 choices with one of them being "stay silent" anyway.
Unfortunately, there are also almost no connections between storylines, so the game is more like a collection of short, self-contained and linear stories rather than a game where your choices changes things. Some of these stories are way too short to care about the characters, some of them just begin to unravel and ends. I think my favorite storyline is Lem and Mina's, which is the only one (other than the DLC storyline) that truly feels finished. Endings were also unsatisfying for me, I think there are 3 endings in the game in total, and they all felt abrupt. The ending decisions are also the only true decisions in the game, where you decide if you want to end the game at that point or not. So, it was quite unsatisfying.
In the end, I can't recommend the game if you expect a narrative heavy RPG (yes, like Disco Elysium, there, I said it). However, if you are interested in the setting and the stories it offers, give it a shot, and also definitely check out In Other Waters, I think they did a better, more focused game on that one. Still, I'm eager to see what Jump Over The Age will develop next, I know they have fascinating worlds to tell yet.
played it for 6 hours straight. beautiful game and story with an utterly addictive gameplay loop.
God damn it. One of the worst experiences to have with a video game is gradually feeling the opposite of it "clicking together". The first few hours of this are downright enchanting, the elaborate prose gets you sucked so easily into the world of this rundown space colony and you get the genuine impression that your build and choices matter in the long run. You're managing the limited time you have the best you can, juggling between progressing quests and keeping yourself alive, start thinking about future runs even before finishing your first one and all of it is a great time.
That is until about halfway through, when the smoke-and-mirrors falls apart and it becomes evident that the questlines never intersect in any meaningful manner, none of your choices matter save for binary selections for the endings, and the tension built up by an in-game death timer actually means fuck all. Which is a damn shame because there's some really nice writing and worldbuilding here - save for the occasional script clunkiness due to it being a small production, the storylines are consistently engaging, character motivations are layered and they do a really good job of conveying how much of a shithole the Eye is. And for a while, the gameplay systems were pulling their weight here too, making you feel like just another cog in the machine; until you hit the point in your playthrough when you're a jack of all trades with an entire savings account at your disposal, and all of the world interaction slowly turns to tedium due to the ultimately meaningless timegate system. I understand the intention was to give the player some room to work on different quests simultaneously as they wait for their primary one to open up, but the closer you get to endgame, the less content there is to warrant these kinds of restrictions.
Regardless of the meandering gameloop and the incredibly annoying illusion of choice, this was honestly still a good way to spend some 10-ish hours. The writing really brings the setting to life and it was fun seeing these characters evolve and fulfill their goals in a cruel world that doesn't welcome them. I just wish it wasn't constantly being betrayed by the gameplay.
That is until about halfway through, when the smoke-and-mirrors falls apart and it becomes evident that the questlines never intersect in any meaningful manner, none of your choices matter save for binary selections for the endings, and the tension built up by an in-game death timer actually means fuck all. Which is a damn shame because there's some really nice writing and worldbuilding here - save for the occasional script clunkiness due to it being a small production, the storylines are consistently engaging, character motivations are layered and they do a really good job of conveying how much of a shithole the Eye is. And for a while, the gameplay systems were pulling their weight here too, making you feel like just another cog in the machine; until you hit the point in your playthrough when you're a jack of all trades with an entire savings account at your disposal, and all of the world interaction slowly turns to tedium due to the ultimately meaningless timegate system. I understand the intention was to give the player some room to work on different quests simultaneously as they wait for their primary one to open up, but the closer you get to endgame, the less content there is to warrant these kinds of restrictions.
Regardless of the meandering gameloop and the incredibly annoying illusion of choice, this was honestly still a good way to spend some 10-ish hours. The writing really brings the setting to life and it was fun seeing these characters evolve and fulfill their goals in a cruel world that doesn't welcome them. I just wish it wasn't constantly being betrayed by the gameplay.