All too often cyberpunk is a misunderstood genre, even by those who tell stories within it. Alongside the neon lights and noir-esque plots, many creators focus on fancy technology and visual excitement rather than the gritty, human impact of what a world like that could cause. That's certainly not the case with Citizen Sleeper, a narrative RPG from developer Jump Over The Age.
In Citizen Sleeper, the player is cast as a sleeper - an android who has been given a digitized human consciousness, and is now on the run from the Essen-Arp corporation that owns its existence. This sleeper ends up on Erlin’s Eye, a worn out space station on the edge of civilization, and must try to find a way to stay alive and keep their journey going. However, Essen-Arp want their property back, and it's only a matter of time before the corporation finds this escapee.
Thematically, Citizen Sleeper is extremely strong, and understands cyberpunk better than most other games available. Essen-Arp is a stand-in for rampant, unrestricted capitalism, and the corporation essentially feels like the natural end point of Elon Musk’s Mars indentured servitude made real. People sign off their consciousness to Essen-Arp for cash due to limited life options, and then this consciousness is used as a slave by the corporation using sleeper bodies, in a horrifying betrayal of human rights using technology as its means to do so.
Citizen Sleeper goes deeper than this, though, looking at a dark picture of what the future may hold in the stars. The existential crisis of the sleepers, feeling human while being a copy of a copy, feels reminiscent of the philosophical questions of transhumanism at the heart of Soma, and the game excels when this is discussed. Meanwhile, the exploitation of workers trapped in the stars is also explored through the characters the sleeper meets along the way, giving Citizen Sleeper hints of The Expanse for good measure.
This isn't just a game of essays and ideology dumps, though, as thankfully Citizen Sleeper explores all of these themes through well-crafted story and character moments. It's a game about the inhumanity of humans and the humanity of a supposed robot, whether through a friendship with a father and his adopted daughter or the corruption of a Blade Runner-esque bounty hunter looking to turn the player in. There's an emotional core to Citizen Sleeper that breaks through the surface of its minimalist aesthetic choices.
It's not just the visuals that are straightforward yet effective, either, as the gameplay also falls into this camp. Citizen Sleeper is a game controlled by random dice rolls, and at peak performance the player gets five of these rolls per day to use towards tasks on Erlin's Eye, such as making money through helping with shipbuilding or completing tasks for the game's varied collection of characters. It has a similar feel to Out There, with a few hints of Disco Elysium when a player's choice kicks off a wider internal monologue.
Citizen Sleeper does well to create a palpable sense of tension, too. The player is an outcast on the verge of breaking down, and must maintain their robot body as well as eat to stave off starvation, bringing survival mechanics into play. The day cycle system that the game uses adds an extra level of time constraint here too, bringing with it a sense of Pathologic but feeling nowhere near as punishing.
Citizen Sleeper does have some limitations, though. Players expecting something a little more dynamic may find its visuals jarring, as the player will be spending a lot of the time staring at the space station itself or looking at lovingly created character art. More frustrating is the unexpected outcome of some player choices, such as propelling a plot point forward cutting off food supply from an easy source for a few cycles, or a sudden time constraint meaning the player has to drop one plot thread over another. However, at least this adds to the replayability factor of the game - and replaying Citizen Sleeper is something that players will want to do.
Overall, Citizen Sleeper is fantastic. It's a deep and well-crafted narrative experience with a fascinating setting, and is filled with plenty of challenging questions for players to ponder over. This is a game that gets cyberpunk right.
Citizen Sleeper releases 5 May 2022 for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Screen Rant was provided with a PC code for the purposes of this review.
Citizen Sleeper
- Released
- May 5, 2022
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