Citizen Sleeper

Genre: Visual Novel / RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Citizen Sleeper: Helion Collection, along with Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector.)

Citizen Sleeper, released on PC, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a game with gameplay that sits somewhere in the crux between Visual Novel, RPG, and Graphic Adventure. Taking place in a dystopian future, Citizen Sleeper puts players in the role of a titular Sleeper, a digitized consciousness in an artificial humanoid body. Condemned to a life of corporate servitude, the game starts with players arriving at the space station Erlin’s Eye, having just escaped from slavery and scrounging for a means to survive against the ticking clock of a body designed to fail without the proprietary drugs the company uses to keep its sleepers alive… and dependent.

As you can probably tell from that opening paragraph, Citizen Sleeper is a game that takes place in a world rich with lore and atmosphere. Most of this is conveyed through text – the majority of your interactions with the game will be text-based. You will spend lengthy amount of time in this game reading through paragraphs of florid prose describing your surroundings, the various characters you encounter, as well as your own physical and mental state, such as they are. In other words, if reading isn’t your jam, this probably will not be a game for you. However, if you can appreciate good writing, this game has it in spades. With very little visual content to fill in the gaps, much of the presentation here absolutely depends on the game’s writing, and that writing is thankfully very much up to the task.

Having said that, this is cold in its atmosphere. The people you encounter tend to be beaten down by a cruel and uncaring existence, and they tend to treat your character with a somewhat dismissive attitude, even when they are sympathetic to your plight, especially considering your very existence as a runaway Sleeper means that your impending death is more or less a certainty.

This coldness is reflected in the rest of the game’s minimalist presentation, which shows a section of the space station rendered in 3D, with hand-drawn portraits of the game’s characters superimposed over things when they speak. These visuals are backed by a minimalist synthesized soundtrack that highlights the loneliness and isolation that permeates this game.

The gameplay itself is pretty unique, and probably the closest thing I can point to as a reference point is Disco Elysium. As with that game, players will have a character who has a stat sheet of different specialties that will determine their success with what they attempt to do in the game, with mechanics that feel very similar to tabletop RPGs.

In fact, to that end, the game determines your success in part based on dice rolls. Every “cycle” (day) will have your character rolling a number of dice based on your current “condition” (health), and the results of these dice rolls will be your resources to use for that day – if a task is absolutely vital, players can assign a high dice roll to that task to guarantee success, saving low rolls for less critical tasks or using them for hacking, which calls for specific numbered-dice to succeed. Once a player runs out of dice, they’re more or less tapped-out for that day and must sleep to gain access to more actions, with multiple story elements progressing with each passing day. As such, survival is a matter of balancing out how you use your dice rolls while keeping an eye on your declining health, and being mindful of impending events and deadlines, all while devoting at least a bit of time to exploring and learning more about your surroundings, potential threats, and your own state of being.

It’s a unique experience, and it won’t be for everyone. Whether it’s the heavy dependence on text, or the cold and impersonal presentation, there’s a lot here that’s bound to be a turnoff to some players. However, for those who can appreciate Citizen Sleeper’s skillful storytelling, its well-crafted worldbuilding, and its task-focused menu-based gameplay, this game will undoubtedly prove delightful and refreshing. Which are you? Take a moment and ask yourself how you feel about the game’s dystopian setting, and how you feel about the more storytelling-focused parts of tabletop RPGs. If the combination of the two excites you, this is definitely a game you’ll want to check out.

tl;dr – Citizen Sleeper is a game that combines elements of Visual Novels, Graphic Adventure games, and tabletop RPGs, telling a story set on a space station in a dystopian future and putting players in the role of a Sleeper, an artificial person trying to survive after running away from their corporate masters. This game’s presentation is cold and detached, and the majority of your interaction with its world will be through text (and through dice rolls). However, if you’re not turned off by these elements, you’ll find this game to have an interesting story with rich worldbuilding, and fairly unique gameplay. This is not a game for everyone, but I suspect those who like this game will really like it.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2022 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel

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