Often we are faced with a choice – to let go or to hang on. The ‘what’ always changes, but it could be anything – places, people, relationships, opportunities. You have to decide what matters to you and what you want your future to look like. Welcome to Citizen Sleeper, from Jump Over the Age and Fellow Traveller Games. 

Citizen Sleeper is a narrative RPG that takes place on the Eye of Erlin, an old station in the crosshairs of the system. You’re an android that’s escaped your corporate masters, but can you escape the planned obsolescence that’s wrecking your body? 

The Ghost in the Shell

More specifically, you’re an android called a Sleeper. You’re not just an AI, you’re an emulated consciousness. Your original self incurred a debt, and allowed their brain to be scanned and put into a robot to work off the debt while your true body lays in cryo sleep. Of course, who wants to work in a sci-fi debtor prison for the rest of their unnatural life? You escaped, and you wake on the station of Erlin’s Eye. 

Freedom is within your grasp, but there are two things keeping you from breathing easy. One, the tracker reporting your position to your captors, and two, the steady decay of your body as it starts to reject your synthetic organs. The only thing that can stop that decay is something called stabilizer, and getting ahold of some is priority number one.

There are a number of places to explore on the Eye, and a number of characters to meet and interact with. It will be up to you who to trust and ally with, but some of them are essential to your survival. Others? Perhaps they’ll become good friends, connections that pull you away from or back to the Eye. Citizen Sleeper has a number of endings, all centered around that dynamic. The ultimate ending, however? That is only achievable in the free extended content that came after the initial launch of Citizen Sleeper. Stay on the Eye till the end, and see the events that lead into Citizen Sleeper 2.

A Game of Chance

Choices are abundant, and it can be difficult to determine where to prioritize your time and effort.  There is often a clock counting down, giving you only so much time to complete a task or forcing you to wait between events. This is even further complicated by luck and your deteriorating body. 

The Citizen Sleeper series was inspired by dice-rolling TTRPGs, and you have a total of six dice to play with. At the beginning of the day, the cycle, you roll the dice to determine how successfully you can complete your tasks that day. Each dice represents a potential action, and your stats can modify the number to determine whether the result is positive, negative, or neutral. Each cycle or negative result, however, can run down your Condition. As your Condition deteriorates, you lose access to your dice until you completely break down. That death is a game over, so make sure you’re applying your Stabilizer regularly.

You have three classes to choose from as a Sleeper – the diligent Mechanist, the precise Operator, or the stead-fast Extractor. Each has their strengths and weaknesses, with a starting preference for one of the five Skills – Engineer, Interface, Endure, Intuit, or Engage. Depending on your class, one of these skills is also disadvantaged. However, you can overcome this by completing Drives, earning upgrade points, and spending them on your abilities. There are unique perks in every ability tree as well, that can significantly help your gameplay. The system developed by Jump Over the Age for this game is robust and well-rounded. I can easily see them spinning the system off into a true table-top system.

The Eye’s the Limit

The graphics are fairly simple, but beautifully done. The action takes place overlooking a skillfully rendered 3D model of Erlin’s Eye, that you can maneuver through by scrolling. Most areas are off limits to you at first. You either have to pay chits to open access or spend dice exploring a new region.  

When taking actions and moving the story along, text comes up on the right side of your screen. Along with that are gorgeous hand-drawn images when you’re speaking with characters. Jump Over the Age has their own style, and each character design is unique, stand-out and memorable from the rest. A few have alternate character images, representing a significant shift in themselves, or in your relationship to them as the player.  

The music is minimal, unobtrusive, but beautiful and very effective when put to use. It is often overlaid with the soundscape of the station you’re docked at, which is quite convincing. If the strategy was immersion, then the developers were very successful. It’s easy to feel yourself sucked into the hum and rhythm of space life, and therefore the story and consequences of your actions. The music that plays over the end credits of each ending is also just gorgeous and haunting.

Overall

Citizen Sleeper is a stellar game that has quickly become one of my favorites, even more than the sequel. I played the sequel first, and it excited me so much I had to get the original right after. Unlike Citizen Sleeper 2, however, I am deeply satisfied with the story and my ending here. I played Citizen Sleeper for days, exploring different paths and stories until I reached the end that I thought best represented what I wanted for my character. Given that Jump Over the Age included three additional episodes of content for free before Citizen Sleeper officially ended, however, I’m very excited to see what they decide to do to finish out the sequel’s story.

I hope that Jump Over the Age continues to develop this franchise. Whether that means another entry in the series or putting their own fully fleshed TTRPG system on the market, the developers are sure to find success. There are so many stories left to be told in this universe, and I want to see them all! Perhaps, one day, we might even get to meet each other on the Eye.