Exploring a capitalist wasteland one kindness at a time
I'm a lover of roleplaying games—especially ones that give you a chance to live a life and inhabit a personality. Sure, linear stories with lots of action are fine, but for me the real joy is in finding something where you feel like the world is alive, lives are precious, and decisions mean something. In other words, I don't have time for games where I'm asked to shoot a hundred goons in the face and then care about the big bad's moral quandary—the moral contradictions are just too jarring.
I had not come across Fellow Traveller as a publisher before, and the only reason I got into Citizen Sleeper 2 (having not played the first) was because it was included in my Playstation subscription. I say this to give you context for what comes next.
Citizen Sleeper 2 is about a character, a Sleeper, whom you play. The entire story is narrated in the second person. It’s set in a small part of a solar system not our own, which is now several decades if not longer after the collapse of a grand empire. That empire, a corporate behemoth that spanned multiple star systems, is gone, and in its wake so is interstellar travel.
All that’s left to the people living on the shore as the tide went out to never come back is an asteroid-filled star system in which they cling to the vestiges of what came before and try to make a life while they can. It’s clear that corporations still exist in this world—they occupy the fertile and rich inner system, but this game takes place entirely within an asteroid belt at the edge of their reach while they fight one another. The people here expect the war to reach them eventually but hope it won’t. In the end there’s nothing they can do about it, so they carry on with their lives.
You, as a Sleeper without a name, are an artificial being—a body made to house a partial personality someone sold to the corporation who made you so that the body you’re in could work as a slave.
The story starts with you on the run from your current master, who is quickly established as a pretty evil dude. From there you have a reasonably free hand on where you go and who you talk to within the scope of the game.
This isn’t an open-world RPG. In many ways it’s more of an interactive story with RPG elements. That’s an important distinction to make because the game has a story to tell, and although your choices make for a unique experience, the scope here is small.
Small is not an insult; it’s to set your expectations. I want to call out Disco Elysium as a companion game in its vibes. Not that you can die of a heart attack during character creation or be a destitute drunk; those are surface ornaments. Where the two games are similar and why Citizen Sleeper 2 works so well for me is that they’re concerned with telling a story and allowing you just enough freedom to build that tale yourself.
I would encourage you to experiment with its mechanics, because it doesn’t explain them beyond the most cursory help screens. I started this three times before I worked out how to navigate the systems in such a way that I didn’t choose myself into a frustrating dead end early in the game.
A lot of the game’s story is delivered one of two ways, through a series of dice rolls or through text that arrives in response to conversations and choices you make as a Sleeper.
This means there’s a lot of text on the screen. That wasn’t a problem for me because the narrative is well written, the text meaningful, and the game deeply immersive, but be warned: this isn’t an RPG where you’re moving people around the screen and getting into fights. All that could lead to a mediocre game that covers a lot of the ground anyone who’s been around the block is going to be familiar with. However, in an example of taking something familiar and executing it brilliantly, Citizen Sleeper 2 takes its elements and delivers a banger: a story involving the development of self, the essential nature of collective action, the plight of slaves and refugees, the need (or otherwise) to determine your own fate and how to build community when everything is objectively getting worse.
There are a good number of side characters, including some that arrive and depart after a couple of missions. Not everyone can be pulled together, but at the same time, there are only a few places where I think you can rupture your relationship with them once they’re on board. I note, though that your companions interact with you but not really with one another, and even then you can't just initiate conversations—the game dishes them out in response to events.
Citizen Sleeper does a good job of hiding the seams of the story, but they do occasionally show through—most often when you’ve botched a job or chosen a route that should break a relationship but doesn’t. I don’t mind this too much, because I found the process of exploration and of helping people to be extremely emotionally rewarding.
Most of all, just like Disco Elysium, Citizen Sleeper 2 doesn’t change the world—morally ambiguous people continue on after you’re done; others rise and some fall. The Sleeper’s arc feels complete but not finished, and the same is true of those around them. I like this kind of story because it remembers well that it’s never the case that the world revolves around an individual, no matter what we are told.
Citizen Sleeper 2 is a deeply satisfying storytelling experience and roleplaying game. I felt love and sadness, urges towards kindness, and anger throughout. The game made me feel things. On top of that, it managed to make the stakes feel pressing and urgent, both via its mechanics that don’t let you sleep on making choices and also through its story.
It's not a game that wants you to rush, whether that’s in the delivery of a lot of text or in giving you free time on different stations to just potter about making friends and earning credits. Indeed, it rewards such patience.
The influences here are clear enough: from Saga, Descender, Cyberpunk and Bladerunner to Firefly and Silent Running. Citizen Sleeper 2 feels like the kind of thoughtful RPG you’re delighted to discover after playing D&D your entire life.
A last word on the characters. Each character gets some time to develop and interact with you as the Sleeper. Some are looking at their identities, some are trying to establish themselves. Some are on their own quests and some just want connection. Each of them feels like they matter, and it’s your intersection with their values and desires that brings the best out of the game.
Highlights:
- Miners unionising to defeat exploitative bosses
- All kinds of different intelligences
- Loneliness at the end of the universe
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10, a patient piece of storytelling that takes the familiar and executes it almost perfectly.
STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos and BFA finalist, he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.
