Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper is a cyberpunk RPG from independent one-man studio Jump Over The Age (In Other Waters). After their debut game with artificial intelligence, the team decided to bring us on another trip to the fictional future with Fellow Traveler company. This time we get to an old cyberpunk space station.

Plot

The main character of the game is the Sleeper, a digital personality locked in an artificial body and a former employee of the Essen-Arp corporation. "Former" because the protagonist escaped from the employer and is currently hiding on Erlin's Eye. The station, once a symbol of idealists, has its best days behind it. Anarchist alliances and remnants of factions maintain a semblance of order here.

In this place full of different individuals, the hero hopes to hide from the sight of Erlin's Eye. However, Erlin's Eye will not give up so easily in order to find her property, which she claims to be her employees. As if that weren't enough, Sleeper's employers have ensured that his artificial body won't be able to survive for too long.

So Sleeper must quickly find allies and discover the secrets of Erlin's Eye, a knowledge that may allow the hero to free himself from Essern-Arp's influence once and for all. Above all, however, Sleeper must try to survive the next cycles.

Game mechanics

In terms of game mechanics, Citizen Sleeper draws heavily from tabletop role-playing games. The game is divided into cycles, at the beginning of which we throw dice, and then assign them to a selected action or event ( dice placement; in computer games this solution was used, among others, by Dicey Dungeons). We also have clocks showing the actions of the main character and other residents of the station. The only thing missing is the classic quests: they have been replaced with drives, which also help in developing five skills of our character (Engineer, Interface, Endure, Intuit and Engage).

The main aim of the game is to break free from the influence of the corporation chasing Sleeper, but in each cycle we also have to take care of the character's life. We are looking for a way to earn money and we visit various places on the station such as market, bars, space ports. In these locations we encounter characters, each of which has its own history, goals and skills. It's up to us what we do, who we help and what impact we have on the future of the station in subsequent cycles.

In the meantime, we use Sleeper's hacking skills to gain access to data collected over decades of the station's operation. In this way we discover secrets such as unknown locations, and make our life on the station easier. At the same time, we must constantly repair the protagonist's artificial corporeal shell, which from the beginning is in poor condition and "decays" at an alarming rate.

Technical aspects

Citizen Sleeper has a simple, "sterile" 3D graphics, with a cartoonish portrayal of the characters made by comic book artist Guillaume Singelin (PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The characters talk a lot, but only in writing, as the game does not include dubbing. The game is accompanied by music composed by Amos Roddy, who also created the soundtracks for the studio's first game Jump Over The Age and The Wild at Heart, Some Distant Memory and Cloud Gardens, among others.

Last updated on 02 May 2022