This week the final episode of my Let’s Play of Citizen Sleeper went up – and for those who didn’t want to sit through that last video to get my thoughts on the game itself, or want something a little more organized – here you go.

Citizen Sleeper is a slightly different form of a computer RPG. The game puts you in the role of a Sleeper – a cybernetic artificial human that had previously been serving out a term of indentured servitude in a hazardous environment, with the consciousness of an actual human uploaded into their brain while the original human stayed in cold sleep somewhere, working off that human’s debt. Except you escaped, and have now fled to a free space station called the Eye. However, your body is breaking down – by design – and you need to get stabilizer to keep that from happening. So, you work with various people on the station to get the necessary resources to get more stabilizer, while also helping them out with their problems.

The way this works out mechanically is something similar to the resolution mechanics of Forged in the Dark and Powered by the Apocalypse games – you have a 6-sided dice roll, where a 6 is a guaranteed success, 5 is a success with a chance of a more neutral result, 4 and 3 have a lower chance of a success, a greater chance of a neutral result, and a chance of a negative result, 2 has a split between a chance of a neutral result and a negative result, and 1 has just a negative result. Instead of rolling dice for each action, at the start of each in-game day, you get some dice based on how much health you have – where you are in the process of breaking down – and you can assign those to complete objectives for various storylines by filling out their clocks. However, for those with time limits, there will be a clock that advances with each in-game day, so you need to juggle your limited supply of Stabilizer to restore your health so you can have more dice to complete your story goals before time runs out.

That said, by certain points in Citizen Sleeper, it becomes considerably easier to maintain a supply of stabilizer, so the juggling the dice supply aspect of the game becomes less of an issue. As you complete various storylines, you get points that will allow you to level up several different attributes of your character, which can give you a positive modifier on checks related to that attribute, which means you’re more likely to succeed on certain checks, which also helps manage your dice supply, as you can get by with lower die rolls, letting you save your higher rolls for pinch situations. You can also get special abilities, including one which lets you re-roll your whole “hand” of dice, which helps if you’ve only got one “good” roll, or gotten nothing but bad rolls.

In all, it generally makes for a good computer or console game presentation of the Powered by the Apocalypse & Forged in the Dark structure. Any problems with Citizen Sleeper then become less about the concept itself or the core mechanics, and instead problems with the execution – the game runs into issues with communicating at certain points that you’re just going to need to wait to move forward with the plot here. Additionally, the ending where you stay on the station – in the version of the game that I have, isn’t presented as an “ending” – there’s a credit roll if you go through the endings where you depart on the slow boat colony ship, or get absorbed into the station’s agricultural consciousness, but not one for when you just decide to live your life here, particularly if you’ve hit a level of resource equilibrium where running out of stabilizer is no longer an issue. This may have been a deliberate conscious choice by the designers, but it’s kind of crappy. It’s one that presents the idea that staying to become part of a community, becoming part of a group and choosing to live a life other than spending the rest of your days on the run isn’t a satisfying way to live your life. Now, it’s possible that this is a situation where this ending was effectively removed from the game with the incorporation of the DLC, but that’s also kinda crap.

This tonal issue also comes up with the DLC, which adds a larger plot threat of a technologically disruptive wave called the flux spreading out from the core of the system, with the inhabitants of the Eye, along with an upcoming refugee fleet having to find out how to contend with the Flux, determine what’s causing it, and when it turns out to be part of a plot by a corporation to take over the system – how to contend with that plot. Except with how the story plays out in the DLC, it breaks some of how clocks work in Forged in the Dark & Powered by the Apocalypse games – the players get to see all the clocks. They don’t know what they’re all for, but they can see them. Partway through the first chapter, the plot has you helping out with an illicit supply run to a refugee fleet, collecting resources, and preparing the route to the fleet from the Eye. However, partway through the process, someone on the council comes to you and tells you that they’re on to what you’re planning, which causes your two companions to panic and jump the gun. Near that I can tell, this is happening specifically to force along several subsequent plot points to set up the later DLC – which is fine, if the game had surfaced a non-specific clock separate from your planned timeline for the launch to let you know that something else was going on, even if you had no idea what it was. It would given me the idea as a player that something additional was going to happen based on either the actions I was taking, or the passage of time, without explicitly saying what.

Otherwise, the various individual stories in the game are very well told, and the environment of The Eye feels like a well-realized, living breathing place, even if it’s one that as a player I only see at a significant remove from what my character would theoretically be able to see. It’s also done a great job of giving me a better understanding of the Powered by the Apocalypse & Forged in the Dark systems. I still think that as much as the D&D 5e system gets over-applied, PbtA and FitD have the same problems but it’s a really good fit here. It made for a tremendously fun game to play, and I recommend it, and as I mentioned in my Summer Game Fest picks – I am looking forward to picking up the sequel next year.

Citizen Sleeper is (among other places) available through the Humble Store. Buying anything through those links helps to support the site (and also Milk Crate Kitchen PDX).

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