Can you end the cycle?
Live the life of an escaped worker, washed-up on a lawless station at the edge of an interstellar society. Inspired by the flexibility and freedom of Tabletop RPGs, explore the station, choose your friends, escape your past and change your future.
Citizen Sleeper is a game that is actually quite tough to put into words. You make key decisions like in a visual novel, but you have free rein of a space station while using randomly determined dice to improve your chances for certain events with good rolls helping you progress, while bad rolls will drain your energy which you also need to maintain throughout your playthrough.
The story itself is superb from start to finish and I’m glad to hear that story DLC is incoming as the premise itself is excellent and staying in that universe for a bit longer is a big plus. The choices you can make can affect everyone onboard in a lot of ways, but ultimately you are just trying to survive and perhaps even get escape the spaceship known as Erlin’s Eye.
Each day you get a daily quota of dice, and you will need to rest up after using them all as you will be out of potential choices to do, whether that be working a shift in a bar or working with a number of characters that will help you out, or those who are hunting you. There are also a number of different endings you can choose for your character but achieving them all in one playthrough is tricky unless you are following some kind of guide.
Ultimately though this is a game that deserves to be played through more than once anyway. There is a lot of depth to be found here with not just your own character’s thoughts, but also the many people you discover onboard Erlin’s Eye. The writing is just incredible, and each character is memorable from start to finish.
Visually, the game doesn’t look like much but don’t let that deceive you. The art style for the characters are well done and while the interface and the ship itself look simple, there’s a lot of depth to be found here under the surface.
The Verdict
Clever writing, a superb setting, tough choices and memorable characters add to this digital tabletop experience to create one hell of a game that deserves your attention. Simply put, start downloading it now.