CITIZEN SLEEPER was a game that left a positive imprint in my mind. It had many fine ingredients to make a tasty dish, starting with compelling world-building and mixing in some stellar characters with real personalities. But as much as I enjoyed it, it struggled, for me, on a pretty fundamental level - being a game. This might sound like a hefty accusation, for plenty of visual novels tend to be rather light on 'gaming' components. More focused on driving a story to its conclusion, and that's fair, hah, game. However, In the case of this title, it was also sold to me on the prospect of being a 'real dice game', a proper tabletop roleplay experience put into the medium of a video game. And I found it lacking...
However, CITIZEN SLEEPER 2 promised to fix that issue and make the game more of a game! The demo I played some time ago proved that firmly, and I was quite excited to once again dive into the cold void of the stellar stations, derelict corporate constructs, and peculiar characters, down on their luck.
And so, we jump into the familiar shoes of a Sleeper. What is a sleeper? Yes, what, because Who is already asking the question that the story itself tries to tackle... We are an emulated personality, a construct of a person injected into an artificial frame. An advanced, synthetic body of carbon, steel, and vinyl, a complex simulacrum of a human entity. And yet, despite the complexity of our being, we are still a bit alien to living beings of flesh and blood. Digitized eyes stare coldly with inner light shining through. Our facial features are doll-like and do not convey emotions well. Your very artifice makes you a stranger. An outcast, of sorts, in a sea of outcasts.
This is the first narrative core of the experience, an exploration of self - who are you, what makes you a being? Can you be considered human, if all that is human in you is the mind? And even that can be put to question, as there is no living brain there, but an emulation of an existing person, locked somewhere in a corporate pod to work off their debts via an emulation that is you. What even happened to that person, once you broke free? You have other problems. There is a crimelord after you. You forgot most of your past in a botched attempt at a restart. Your apparent buddy tugs you along to your ship to escape and so begins a daring adventure full of fright and looking over your shoulder as you traverse the Belt. A loose collection of stations, colonies, and organized pockets of civilization set aside by the megacorporations... For now, they have other, bigger issues. Like war, for example.
Of course, I don't want to spoil the entire story, as it is the core of the experience. This time around it is bigger than ever, as you have relative freedom to move between locations in your very own, in-system starship - the not-so-mighty Rig. Your goal? Freedom. But what this freedom will be, how it will come to you? Is quite in your hands - as well as aid from the various companions you might take along on your journey. And they come with their own stories, each a complex entity of needs, wants, dreams and weighted down by the burden of their pasts. Each comes with their own storyline to complete and the best part is, that the outcome isn't exactly set in stone - you might succeed, and you might fail. The dice and your decision might decide the fate of the people close to you.
Let's talk about the dice then! As in the previous installment, each of your days - a cycle - gives you a certain number of randomly rolled dice to work with. You will use those to perform actions in locations, the success of which depends on your Sleeper skillset. Some will be rudimentary, others - pretty rough. Proper use of your dice here will be crucial. In addition, depending on the class you picked, you'll have additional Push skills that can impact your rolls or dice in some way, aiding you when needed. The cost? Stress. See, the botched reset and some other factors left your cybernetic body in a bit of a sorry state. In short - slowly but surely you're falling apart. The more stress you put on your frame, the easier it damages, busting down your dice, and introducing nasty glitches into your system, further decreasing your chances at success. You will need resources - often hard to get by resources! - to make hasty, temporal fixes to your crumbling body.
The system works well, but it's not that different from the original game, so what else changed to make it feel more like a game? Might be a peculiar question, but again - the previous installment, for me, quickly ran out of steam when it came to dice usage, as with just a few level-ups and upgrades the dice and their values became an afterthought. Here however there's a brilliant new system in place to keep them relevant for much longer - Contracts.
Contracts are time-sensitive missions in which you must watch over multiple things to not let everything fall apart. You and your chosen crew member contribute dice to solve various situations as fast as possible, not only pressed by time but also by heftier punishment for failed rolls. Bad roll? Alarm level rise, crisis enfolds, adding more stress both directly to you, as well as to the unfolding scenario, with more fires to put out. Do you take too long? Supplies ran out, and now you and your team work on an empty stomach, making everything even worse. The Contracts are a much-welcome addition that makes all other mechanics gel together and have a tangible sense behind them. Stress, broken dice, and rolling high finally matters, as these scenarios often are pretty demanding - can't just skim by them without a thought. They do add just enough pressure to keep you on your toes.
Nonetheless, something in the game still managed to snap a little. During the entire playthrough, I used the Push ability one time. You could say that it was my choice, but the fact is I never felt a need to use it. If you follow side stories and complete your drives diligently, you will have enough upgrades to trivialize the content - with +1 and +2 to most skills, most rolls become less a check of your luck, and more simple banks to feed your dice into. Perhaps on higher difficulty this changes, but on the regular one it became a trifle to play through pretty early on in the experience. Fortunately this time around the Contracts and varied, rich narrative managed to keep me hooked - and the challenge, while no longer stemming from the dice, at least still had a spot to shine with resource management!
Fuel, supplies, cryos, and other bits and bobs were constantly dwindling, and it was a bit of a balancing act to get everything in good motion, to keep the crew fed and the ship operational. Not exactly a thrilling way of offering up some difficulty, but at least it kept relevant into the late game, to keep me use my dice to scrounge up key resources every now and then.
The most important part of the game though, is its story, which should keep you well engaged. The best part of it is the humanity behind the characters. You will not find here any abundance of simple cliches. People here feel real, as real as it gets - flawed, rich in their backstories, with something to tell. With different wants and goals, that never just neatly align with your own. You might be a protagonist, but you're not a hero of a journey where everyone else acts as props towards your fulfillment. And therefore, it is a riveting read, an experience - to meet them, to hear them out, to let their narrative mingle with yours, even if for a time. It's a whole set of themes to delve into - about rebellion, about peace. About forming a new life on ashes of past errors. About corporate indifference in a world where individuals might matter little, and yet, can still leave an impact where least expected. About kinship, about betrayal. It's a rich tapestry of experiences, and with this game, you'll be able to brush your fingertips over the fabric of it to feel its weave and texture.
So yeah. I can recommend CITIZEN SLEEPER 2 - it was a blast that occupied a good week of evenings to burn through, a constantly riveting narrative that took me across a tiny morsel of the cold space to meet the warmth of kinship and communities struggling to make their way in the uncaring cosmos.
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