• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
  

  9.9 hours playtime

  27/30 Achievementos

I have beaten this game, Citizen Sleeper 2. It was good, I give it a 8 out of a 10 and I would recommend.

This is a space adventure, played via RNG dice rolls. We wake up as a “Sleeper”, or a humanoid robot, and immediately escape a bad man on his bad space station by stealing a space ship with the help of a friend. We have no memories of what happened before we woke up, and from this point onward the bad man is trying to catch us. Our overarching goal is to be free.

The game is played in “cycles”, every cycle we are given five dice with a random value from 1 to 6, which represents a success of an action. 6 die is 100% positive, 1 die is 50% negative 50% neutral, etc. Dice are used in most actions in the game which will provide rewards/money/resources or move the plot forward, or penalise the player by reducing the time they have, the resources, or potentially failing missions. There are various modifiers and risk categories, some actions will provide great rewards at the risk of great penalties, some will be much safer and care little for high value dice.

This represents the bulk of gameplay - deciding which dice to slot into which actions to minimise penalties and maximise rewards. I found it very enjoyable, there were few times when I was frustrated by RNG. It’s easy to understand and figure out the correct strategies, which do change occasionally. On contracts we also get two cremates with their own dice and skills, which extends the possible strategies.

Throughout the story, we encounter named characters which will either hand out contracts for us to complete, or have their own side-plots allowing them to join our crew. These are all well written, and also succinct which I appreciate. Some games, like Pillars of Eternity if I recall correctly, throw walls of text at me which screams “this is an important character, you have to appreciate their backstory”. In Citizen Sleeper, we get a good glimpse of what kind of person they are, and usually by observing what they do rather than through long expository dialogue. Enough to understand them and their intentions. The same can be said about the writing overall - it’s good, it’s not pompous, and doesn’t try to cram a novel’s worth of content into a ~10 hour video game. It explains what it needs to and doesn’t waste time on lore that ultimately doesn’t matter. There is lore out there, there are events, factions, hundreds years of history and what not, but none of that is important to the Sleeper who just wants to escape and survive.

This is entering mild spoiler territory. In some games which portray themselves as having a deep or emotional story, I think more popular in the last 5-10 years than ever, there is a common trope of “good, but actually bad”. You try to do a good thing for a seemingly good NPC, but actually they’re a bad NPC and they abuse your kindness. You’re presented with a probably good and a definitely bad choice, but actually they both have bad outcomes because “lesser evil”. This trope of “no good outcome”, only less worse. Sometimes this is great, sometimes it’s a bit too much and feels artificial (eg. Banishers, in my opinion). In Citizen Sleeper 2, that doesn’t exist as far as I can tell. When you choose a good option or try to help, the outcome is good. No betrayal out of nowhere, or people being shitty and abusing the player’s choices, good is good. Sometimes the good option doesn’t work out, but I don’t feel penalised, it feels like a natural consequence of the story and not the writer’s slapping me for being nice. I really liked that, if I had to summarise the overall plot, characters, and interactions with the world in one word, it would be “hopeful”.