I covered this game as part of my coverage of the Xbox Game Pass for May 2022

Resource management in spacceeeeee…

Citizen Sleeper starts with the player waking up on a distant space station. His body is failing him, he’s starving and needs money and rest. From there, players must spend their days trying to satisfy all their needs and wants. Each day involves the player getting action dice, and applying those dice to different jobs to accomplish goals.

Citizen Sleeper reminds me of Norco and Disco Elysium as it’s a completely story-driven game. Players will meet many different characters, and through them will get different opportunities and challenges. The writing is good and kept me engaged, and the first hour of this game is intense as the player struggles to meet the right people to earn the right resources. However after that opening hour, players start getting entirely too many resources and easily will have run of the space station by the end. Even when a big bad danger arrives, it feels like Citizen Sleeper is afraid to give players a bad ending, which is appreciated after four hours invested and an aggressive autosave, but also removes any desire to replay the game and try to get a different or better story.

Pick this up if you like a strong narrative. This is very much about the story, and while there will be a decent amount of time while the player has to chase resources, and the dice component is rather important, the majority of the experience is meeting people and learning about their struggles.

If you want to see the video this was taken of, or more from me on the Xbox Game Pass, check out: https://youtu.be/62CjXwS1zQg