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.

rebiew of Magenta Horizon (act 1)

I should preface this with saying that even though I have finished this game on its intended difficulty you should keep in mind that at the time of writing this, I have not yet played the two of the biggest listed inspirations for it, (Devil May Cry games and Hollow Knight) so take some of what I say with a pinch of salt

Magenta Horizon is like if banging your head against a wall repeatedly was somehow made satisfying, it's a tough game even on its standard difficulty which becomes apparent pretty quickly but I like that the game sets those expectations right off the bat, instead of having crazy difficulty spikes show up out of nowhere (which may be the experience for some but in my opinion it mostly wasn't)

the actual combat system offers a good amount of freedom, with flexible combos, many approaches to different enemy types that each offer unique challenges of their own, for example even the first enemy type you meet can prove to be disruptive in the later stages

MH is confident in its enemy design not only gameplay-wise but visually too, with every little creature looking weirder and more hellish than the last, which surely serves to create a memorable experience when coupled with the general aesthetic of the game (which I believe was inspired by the works of Tim Burton) that succeeds in creating a somewhat bleak, purgatory-like place filled with character, and if the later levels are anything to come by it looks like the atmosphere of the game will only get more interesting from here

the soundtrack to this afterlife is quite good with many solid tracks to its name, and all in all the sound design of it does its job pretty well I'd say

I haven't found a good way to mention the story and the world building but it is definitely intriguing in places, and even though there aren't many answers given to us just yet the main characters are charming enough for the time being and I'm interested to learn more about them

Magenta Horizon is a passion project made by one person and it shows that in the best possible ways, it's frankly impressive how good this game is already all things considered, I can't think of any major issues I have with it at the moment, pretty much all I have is praise so I apologise if this review is a bit boring to read because of that, but I do legitimately really like this game and want to see more of it, and I hope it becomes successful cause it damn sure deserves it

definitely keeping my eye on this

I will put 3 on this because I made this game so giving this a huge score is cheating. Also, the game development is not finished and I'm not fully satisfied with this yet.

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2022-04-21
Gotta update half-star up, because this game is getting closer to my ideal with enough dev works.

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2023-02-20

Magenta is an uncertain color. It’s a color spectrum beyond the visible purple, and since our eyes can’t receive it, we just replaced it with the average of red and purple and call it that way. It’s a recent day I found out that my second favorite color (the first being deep blue) has that story behind it, but knowing the story made me think of a thread for the conceptual work; the land of uncertainty.

When I was making that concept work, I was miserable, as my main job wasn’t satisfying at all and my side projects were ruined by a chain of misfortunes and my terrible choices. Chaotic overthinking was devouring my life, and my failure as a game dev cast a shadow over my confidence.

One thing good about being an artist is that there’s a way to express negative emotions via mediums, and it can be a catalyst for personal growth or even a pride of conqueror.
At that moment, I wanted to express the feeling of navigating through the uncertainty, organizing the chaotic situations with improvised methods, and the frenetic flow of my train of thought.
And I had to do it all alone because only I can make this work to be true, only I would take the burden of work, and only I wanted to conquer it.

So that’s how the concept of Magenta Horizon was born and the world was set in the afterlife. It’s a good place to start the concept work as the purple spectrum has some connotation with death in many cultures, but also there is an excuse to draw tons of grotesque monstrosity -my go-to drawing subjects-.
Personally, I’m not spiritual at all, but the afterlife setting can be a canvas for the world of aimless chaos, especially if the world after death is only a purgatory full of demons, and no heaven or hell exists. It’s a story about a little reaper from a human-led soul sanctum, and she has to find the meaning of her existence in this barren land. Even though in a literal sense, I didn’t suffer as much as the protagonist of this scenario, I tried to reflect my own experience in the story about tidying up the uncertainty and overcoming the odds.

Also, I wanted this setting to be expressed via my favorite genre of video game - Combo-action games. Not many games can provide the feeling of conquering and mastering hectic situations like the Devil May Cry series or the 3D Ninja Gaiden series do. Enemies come from below to rip and tear you apart. At first, you will feel panic. The erratic movement of foes doesn’t make sense at all and your options are too broad and vague to fully utilize at first. But you get a grip one by one. Each erratic chess piece reveals its pattern one by one, and you start to punish them accordingly. And then, you start to play with them, making your own comfort zone in the most stressful situation. Failures will be there, but that’s okay. You still learn from it. And after all that, the mountain of enemies is no more, chaos is calmed down, and the game pats your back with a good score.
That’s the feeling of conquering Magenta I wanted to capture.

This work might not be the most intuitive thing you will ever find in the market.
The tutorials are rough, the visuals and music are both noisy, and the obstacles don’t wait for their turns and rush at you. It will be an intimidating experience for most people.
But if you are ready to accept and embrace the premise I’m pitching, I urge you to try it out.
"Soar over purgatory and reap all the foes."
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2023-05-31

4/5. I'm getting there.

This game has no right being this stupidly fun, fully destructible environments implemented in a rather clever way using special effects and not actual debris, and this game a great stress reliever.

just smash a persons head with a sledge hammar or ram into a building and watch it collapse.

I wish that there's longer and bigger buildings though and for the building to actually respawn without the need of mods of the reconstructor gun.

I highly recommend this game