Welcome to Erlin’s Eye, a space station on which thousands of people are doing their best to survive on the edge of ‘an interstellar capitalist society’. Times are absolutely brutal on a good day, and even more so for you, the protagonist in this particular story. One which is as yet unwritten, your choices shaping the narrative, and in turn, defining your future – which may or may not be a thing, come next cycle, depending on… well, many things. For you are Citizen Sleeper.
Exactly what I mean by that last bit is that, as the developer puts it, you are “a digitised human consciousness in an artificial body”, and given the whole capitalism aspect, it’s hardly all that surprising how some big-shot corporation – Essen-Arp – wants you back. Or part of you, I believe. This is without a doubt where your troubles begin, for reasons fairly obvious. Best make with the niceness and build friendships or at the very least, connections. Because you’re going to need them, as each dice roll only provides so much.
Run down, chaotic, unruly, and alive—it was founded by idealists in the shadow of a corporate collapse. Now it is held together by anarchic alliances, ramshackle factions and a shared desire to be free from the gravity of corporate control.
Yes, dice roll, for what is an RPG without such? Gotta have a little randomness, you know, and the way Citizen Sleeper handles this particular aspect is undeniably better than most I’ve come across thus far. No, you don’t have to roll for initiative, to see if you managed to dodge an incoming attack, managed to convince a grumpy alien that you’re telling the truth or similar genre classics. Instead, each cycle begins with a roll, its outcome used/spent on actions across the station. Of your choosing. So it’s not entirely random. Which is good.
Given how much there is to do each cycle, deciding what – or who – to ignore probably won’t always be easy. Play smart, even if not always safe, and hopefully, things will work out somehow. Then again, maybe they won’t. One bad decision just might snowball into a big problem over time, if Citizen Sleeper is anything like your typical sci-fi affair in that regard. Only one way to find out, and seeing how the game is available on this neat little thing called Game Pass… might as well, you know?
Citizen Sleeper is available on Steam, GOG.com, Humble Store, Epic Game Store, Switch, and Xbox One/Series X|S, for $19.99.
