Citizen Sleeper

Citizen sleeper is a beautiful and concise tabletop-inspired CRPG in the same vein as Disco Elysium, but with an interesting cyberpunk setting and a set of survival mechanics that keep narrative and gameplay tension high. You play an escapee android on the run from their corporation and wind up on a large space station with a city-sized population of characters and cultures. Survival is the main goal as you scrounge for a serum to keep your body from rejecting itself that only the company you’re running from produces. In your quest to survive you encounter a host of interesting characters from different backgrounds, all with their own drives and goals and this is where the world-building occurs in Citizen Sleeper. Underpinned by a hauntingly beautiful ambient electronic OST, Citizen Sleeper beautifully touches on themes of AI, self-actualization, what it means to be human and the constant tug-of-war between corporations and workers without ever feeling too preachy. All this is told via interesting characterization and atmospheric moments rather than bloated exposition.

mann i wish i liked this one more.

the core dice-based gameplay system feels very engaging and tense until you realize that the game has no real timers except for very obvious moments (with a lot of time to complete them, and no reason NOT to focus purely on those objectives). it makes the second half of the game feel more like mindless cleanup of quests rather than a climax, especially when there are so many story threads going on at different stages.

the dice start to feel less like a mechanic and more like an awkward means to an end, having to manage them to get to the next scene rather than for survival. by the end of the game, i just had copious amounts of money and resources and nothing to do with it, with my final quest just being me completing what i needed to do in two cycles and then sleeping in my bed for the following six waiting for a timer to tick down.

the writing is... well, it's alright! it seems pretty typical for this kind of cyberpunk setting. a lot of well-meaning and generally likable characters, but i think i'll struggle to remember any of them in a few days... they just start to boil down to the archetypes they represent (rude and sarcastic bounty hunter with a drinking problem, single dad with a perfect child who's just trying his best, etc.)

the little stories you go through feel similar, they're things i've seen before and they're done here just fine, though they all end up feeling a bit disconnected from each other (even when characters from one are referenced in another). i don't think the writing is particularly bad anywhere, but.. i just can't find any reason why i would want to learn more about this world and these characters compared to any other science fiction story.

and the small stuff? it's fine too!.. the music has its moments, sometimes it fades in right when it needs to, and sometimes it's a bit out of place. the art style wasn't quite for me but i think the characters were all designed and rendered with a lot of detail–i liked the look of the player character in particular. the ui all looks very pretty, as does the "eye" hub world you move along, though it can get pretty cumbersome when you have twenty or more little icons and most of them are just for useless small jobs to get money without progressing questlines.

everything's fine, it's just...

i dunno. as of writing, this is my GOTY mostly because i didn't play many games this year and those that i did aren't worthy of that spot either. it's really not bad, like, 6/10 is a positive score, but... god, it's just not special, you know?

anyways, i'll forget this game in a week. might forget this review too!

Old school adventure games and visual novels for the most part are videogame genres that struggle to hold my attention for too long. The gameplay itself tends to be very static, and that combined with the usual long playtimes, I must say that its a genre were i havent found many titles to love. Citizen Sleeper is not a game in those genres, but it does feel like its core owes a lot to those genre. What distinguished it is a cycle mechanic, that essencially acts like a day/ night cycle, in which every new day you are given 1 to 5 dice rolls (according to our overall condition), that you use to beat the game properly. In comes what the games is genious, since there is a clear element of survival, in which you must juggle the very limited dice rolls and figure if you are going to progress one of the multiple open quest lines, get money, get energy or improve your condition.

Early on the struggle is real, its only through ending certain quest lines that things get gradually easier. When it comes to that point however the rotine of the game has already set in, and I must say that its really satisfying to just handle its survival mechanics, considering how rought the early game feels.

On top of that, the game has a great cyberpunk universe, great visuals, a lot of likeable and diverse NPCs, interesting quest lines, and ultimatly a huge amount of possible endings. Another gem for 2022