This had big shoes to fill as I was coming off of playing Disco Elysium for the first time, and while it doesn't offer the same breadth, it scratched the same itch for piecing together an engaging narrative and unfolding a really interesting world one interaction at a time. It's dystopian, existential, and charmingly anti-capitalist. There's neat conflict between exploring what options you have the dice for vs what threads you want to pursue/what resources you need that I can see being a turn off for some folks but I think makes each playthrough unique and adds some chaos to the mix that keeps it fun. Also, having a few clocks hanging over your head helps keep things tense and makes your choices feel more dire. Art design is endearing, the music is powerful and understated which accents the feelings of isolation and feeling alone, even when surrounded by people. Def not at the level of DE in terms of scope, but its shorter run time has led me to completing it more times. The writing is killer, I do wish it was voice acted tho, but I'm being greedy. Its lovely little game that i enjoyed my time with. Fwiw, I played it on switch and it crashed -a lot- but I never lost progress, just had to start convos over.

Ok so this game is good. Great even! It’s similar to Disco Elysium and Fata Morgana where there isn’t gameplay per se, it’s more of an interactive story. The writing is good, there are cool choices and consequences, etc etc. I’m pissed off about something in particular though

I was like 10 hours in. Did a lot of cool things. I was almost done with the dlc stuff too. Had good friends, finished pretty much most of the quests, and was happy with the outcomes of 80% of them. Anyway, I was doing this quest about spoiler and as I was reading stuff got really fucking weird and I DIED?????? I literally just died I think? The game ended! I had no clue this quest with NO action or danger would just randomly end my game bruh. This actually made me irrationally angry lmfao. Anyway 3 stars. Cool I guess

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
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.

Second, complete, and final ending.

I am deeply moved by the sheer narrative power.

I will pre-order the next one so hard.

One of my favorite games from 2022! Living life in a place you have no knowledge about or money makes the station seem dreadful at first, especially when you're being hunted. Over time you make friends on the station and kinda make a life for yourself even if it's still a struggle to live.

I found the gameplay pretty relaxing with the dice mechanic and not super stressful decisions. The game criticizes capitalism and gig work and I found it to do it well. The added free content is great and adds some nice touches to the story. Which yes there is the underlying story about what you need to do but also if you become close with some people it allows for the story to end with them too. I really loved this game and still go back to it here and there.

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.

[ 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.

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.

The writing and narrative in Citizen Sleeper are both very hit-and-miss: some storylines are written very well (both thematically and in prose quality), while others had my eyes glazed over and clicking blindly just to get through it. Some characters are compelling and relatable; others were just kind of annoying--and I don't mean that about the obviously cruel character, I mean that for characters I think I was supposed to like.

Art style is nice--I liked the art of each of the characters you meet, and felt the stylisation was great. I like the station and the way it's designed both visually and in how you interact with it (the moving 3d models were nice). I think the robot designs were also GREAT, and I enjoyed playing as a robot--even if the 'class' choice at the beginning had 0 outcome on the actual consequences of the game.

I'm less a fan of the actual gameplay. Citizen Sleeper can't seem to decide whether it's a visual novel or an RPG; if it's the former, then I would expect dice rolls to matter far less than they do, and if it's the latter, I expect far more branching narrative and meaningful choice than what I got.

There's also the inventory management, which I personally found OK but I absolutely realise is not to everyone's taste. In early game, resources are super scarce; by late game, collecting items by clicking to different locations was exhausting as I'd already been doing it for three hours, and I already had everything I'd ever need and then some.

I do recommend Citizen Sleeper on the basis of it being an interesting foray into cyberpunk as a genre--but I wouldn't say the writing is stellar or had me emotional in any way. More a fun romp than anything else, and it has the dubious honour of being much better than most of its peers.

I don't think this is for everyone, let me say that right before I get into anything else. It's a mostly visual novel-esque game with lots of choice and a pretty sci-fi world map, but it might not be for you.

If you've seen some of it and you like what you see though, odds are you'll like the game as a whole. A lot of it is down to how much you like the writing and for me personally I adore it. The art style and atmosphere really bring it all together in a way that I just salivate over.

That being said, there's a lot of issues with it, mainly down to the dice choice system either being really mean or really nice, and being incredibly easy to break in half if you even remotely start to get the ball rolling stat wise. It turns from having to completely change your plans for a cycle because you didn't get the numbers you need to "Eh it really doesn't matter that I got all 1s, because a 3 is average success and I have +2 in every stat."

If you enjoy visual novels but wish there was more to do roleplay wise, I'd highly recommend this game to you. It's genuinely fantastic. Especially if you do your first run roleplaying as the Sleeper you play as and developing a personality for them as you progress. It can be really fun seeing all the results that come from it.

Good story, good art, good visuals
I really liked the dice system in this game, no matter your luck or the number in the dice you can always use it for something useful, even a 1 can save you from starving in the right places, while the 5 a 6 always come in handy for some story missions or some actions that you really dont want to screw up
Also while I dont think this game is difficult, you can always feel the fear of not knowing if you will have the resources to survive another day, either money or time, so simple things like finding some scrap or gaining energy while doing certain actions make you feel relieve of knowing you can survive an extra day without having to buy rations or some expensive medicine, even as you upgrade your character and find the best strategy to survive, you can still feel this sensation as you wonder if you will have enought time to find a solution to your problem, or even if the solution you have been spending most of your time is really a good one or you should spend your limited time pursuing another one
If I had to pick one not great thing about the game, I would say that maybe it could really use more places where you could spend money, as sometimes it can be frustrating having to wait 6+ days for a store with an specific item to be available while the clock is ticking, and one time I was starving without any actions left, and despite having the money to afford some food, the only places I could buy from where unavalible for story reasons. Still I feel like those are isolated cases more than a regular problem and should not discourage anyone from playing this amazing game

The writing in this game is among the best in any video game ever. And I'm a sucker for anything involving dice rolls. But I don't know, for all the interesting ideas and decisions that had me hooked at the time, this game really hasn't stuck with me. For all the investment in the characters, I didn't really have an emotional attachment to them or much of a response to their conclusions. Maybe it was my mindframe when I played this: I can see this game having a profound impact on me if I experienced it at the right time. Sadly I didn't.