EDIT: Spoilers are now open! Talk away!

Prior message:

Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our tenth game is Citizen Sleeper. The target completion date is June 27, 2022.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after June 27, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Citizen Sleeper?

Citizen Sleeper ins a visual novel set on an independent space station where you play a software clone of a human being in an artificial body. It has some light tabletop RPG elements and some of the strongest writing I've ever seen in a game. Highly recommended by me, personally!

How long is Citizen Sleeper?

How long to beat lists it as 5.5 hours long.

Hooray! I liked this game so much I completed two playthroughs. Looking forward to seeing what other people think of it.

Oh it’s only 5.5 hours long? Ya I’ll definitely be playing this one then considering I got a 6 hour flight on Friday. I presume it’s on Steam so I can play during the trip. I hope 😬

I just started playing this on Switch, but the map controls are a bit puzzling. Is there a better way to just cycle through the nodes? It seems to have to get a node into the frame with the analog stick, and can only then move to it with the d-pad, but then the analog stick often doesn't let me move far enough and sometimes I have to rotate the map to get a node into a visible corner of frame. It all feels really awkward, am I missing something?

No spoilers: this is the sort of narrative-driven game I like more than most as an old man (41.) As I’ve gotten older, story in games has become more and more important to me over gameplay. Citizen Sleeper is not much for gameplay, more progress bar management and not too hard to meet, though I got a hell of a lot of good dice dices (wish it translated to actual gambling dice like it did here.)

I finished hitting all the goals I wanted and neglecting the plots I didn’t want to pursue. I had my pick of the litter for what ending I wanted. It is a well constructed setting with a lot of good human stories on the path to getting to the ending. It likely isn’t for everyone due to being essentially a visual novel but with some rng, but it was better written than most. As the waypoint folks have said, 2022 has been a good year for narrative in games. Between this and Norco, I’ve been rather happy with the year despite not much outside of Elden Ring for tentpole games.

@warpr: you’re not alone on this issue. If there’s anything I actively dislike about the game, it’s how it controls. I definitely did a cycle of dpad movements trying to navigate to the specific pin I wanted at least once per day, and I found the map navigation awkward (if presented in a super cool way).

Played this in one sitting. Frickin' amazing. It's easy to say "oh another cyberpunk adjacent thing" but the indie scene has been killing it in this regard.

Great writing, and the player verbs/structure of time, while simple, dovetail with the narrative beautifully.

I did all the quests and made a point to stay on the Eye in all cases. That resonated the most with me given the stories and themes that came before. It was hard saying bye to Mina tho : (

It's so good!!! I will have to try to set a reminder to come back and talk about this in a couple weeks XD

Oh, guess I need to sit down and finish that thing seeing as I am about past half way through I think judging on how long the game is.

I played this when it launched, but I may do a second playthrough, so I can participate in the discussion. It's my GOTY so far.

great little game , currently at #2 on my goty list for the year , i'll save the talk for when its time but needless to say not many games make me tear up.

I gave my thoughts on this game previously so I don't have much to add.

I am very much looking forward to see what others have to say about it. I think I probably underrated it a little in my writeup and should have given it 4.5 out of 5 but I was too focused on the mechanical flaws and not enough on everything the game gets right. I notice others had some issues with navigating the map and such and I agree but the truth is that those things are more minor inconveniences than anything else.

Somehow this game didn't click with me.

At the start, it seems the most important quest is disabling your tracker, so I wanted to focus on that. However, there are some other scary things counting down when you start the game, so I focused on getting food and stabilizers. By the time I wanted to pick up that thread again of disabling the tracker it didn't seem to matter anymore, because the main person tracking me was already dead.

Throughout this game I never felt I had much agency. I did not figure out how to disable the tracker or help Feng, I never figured out how to help Sabine or Lem & Mina. With no idea how to make progress on about four quests, I eventually left the station with Bliss? (the person up in the tower working with Moritz) -- as that seemed to be the only option for me to finish the game.

@warpr: I was in a similar spot and if you keep going you can still complete the story lines. I really enjoyed the game though. If you didn't enjoy your time then best to move on I guess.

I don't know how to keep going, I have no idea where to find any of that data. I wonder if I somehow missed an area? I remember something needing a key to unlock, but I never found that key either, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I'll probably not go back to it. There's too many other videogames which need playing! :)

Now that spoilers are open: man, I loved the writing in this game so much. I was very invested in getting Lem & Mina off the station, and I did enough work to go with them. It’s still pretty depressing as an ending but it was the ending I needed. My second playthrough ended with me turning down the invitation of a godlike being to become immortal, choosing to hold onto the physical frame and spend time with the friends I’d made on the station. Also melancholic, also satisfying.

Oddly I think when the game really cemented its place as one of my recent favorites was concluding the Ethan storyline. Without spoiling too much, the fact that there was no redemptive turn impressed me. There’s often a big temptation to make a character like Ethan likeable, or have a secret heart of gold, or something like that. I could see someone completing the storyline and coming away dissatisfied, but I loved how it went.

This game is currently second only to Elden Ring on my GOTY list, and it’s much closer to that than it is to #3 (Hardspace: Shipbreaker). Very pleased with how this game turned out.

@warpr: Ah, did you ever find the digital world with the nodes, "behind" the real world? On an Xbox controller, it was the Y button (the top face button) IIRC. If you need keys or data, you would have to hack various nodes there to get it. And some missions take place on that board. Not 100% sure that was the issue, but maybe?

______

One of my favorite games of the year. Either this or Tunic. Maybe this. Loved the writing and the atmosphere of this. It was tense in the beginning, and that really helped to drive forward the plot, but you eventually settle into a rhythm where I was never really pressured at all (though, I may have had a helpful glitch and also did a bit of save scumming early on XD) anymore. Some people didn't like this tonal shift and the relaxing of tension, but I LOVED it. It kinda felt like a reward for getting through that sketchy bit, like the character had earned a breather from their hard work and that they had something to actually work TOWARDS.

I enjoyed all of the endings, though I didn't go back to see all three Lem and Mina endings (I should have gone with a different one). One of the best bits is that as long as it's not that one, you can continue on from last save after hitting an ending and keep progressing the other threads until you're all done.

My one complaint at the endings is that there's no "I'm going to stay here with my friends ending". There's no end card for all of that, despite not only creating a life for yourself, but potentially being on the path to a significant system-wide social power shifts that might allow you to create an escaped sleeper utopia - and.. also mushrooms and beer and mushroom beer purveyor. But.. you don't get an ending for that XD.

The mechanics and gameplay were simple and straightforward and satisfying. The upgrades end up making the end game fairly easy (the one to use scrap to repair your condition by 2 is incredible). And once again, the characters and scenarios were well-written and interesting and unique, even the ones you really only see briefly.

@cyrribrae said:

Yep, that's it. I looked at some youtube stuff after my previous comment, and I never noticed or found that. Presumably the game told me about that at one point, but it didn't register. If I had known about that during my playthrough, I probably would've had a better experience >_<

@warpr:Haha probably. Honestly, color me shocked you saw an ending without ever engaging with that mechanic at all hahaha. That's unfortunate, but yea, the UI for it is kinda not obvious. You are likely not the only person who made that mistake. Kinda cool that you could do what you did, but definitely a suboptimal experience.

Well, maybe give it another try in a year or so lol. There are some very cool stories that are behind all of those mechanics. I especially liked the Vend and Hunter stories.

a bit late to the thread , i really liked this game tho , currently its sitting at # 2 in my goty list, second to rogue legacy 2. the mechanics in this game were great tho as tense as the early parts of it where i was never really in any trouble much , i always made sure to top off if i only had 3 die to roll. the story took some turns , i was sad at first with the first guy saying i couldn't work for him after what seemed like i pushed too hard , but i had to find out what happened with the other ship n sleeper, at that point i cared more about that n nothing about myself , human past self. over time i came to really like most of the characters. that said through it all i always felt lem and mina were sorta forced on me, i didn't mind knowing them so much as i didn't feel connected to mina in the way it wanted me to i think.. my first ending i came up against was should i stay in the machine garden thing or go back to my sleeper body? , i had unfinished business so i went back . my true end was getting off the ship n leaving , i didn't know what i was going to do till the very end , do i leave with lem and mina? i didn't really want to , i was pretty content if not happy on the ship at that point , i didn't have much unfinished business left just the stuff with bliss, and feeding the cat. bliss i didn't meet till the very end tho and with only a couble ticks left on the final clock n sorta thought whatever good enough, i ended up feeling guilted a bit and hopping on that ship with them like the other guy who wanted me to be a spy of sorts wanted. then the ending hit me ...hard. reading the time pass as expected in a journey that long and lem passing with it n mina remaining showed me that despite how much i felt like they were pushed upon me i actually did connect to them since i randomly started tearing up at that ending. i didn't know exactly what to feel by it but it was sad none the less. after sitting with it i ended up loading up to the previous point where it lets you , i checked the other end to that then i finished the stuff i'd missed which at that point wasn't much n seen the rest , i can imagine a world where had i not seen the one ending i would have been happy with the others , but since i did nothing else was as impactful to me and so thats my true ending despite seeing the others. my time with the game was over a 2 sitting period , it was a bleak time with alot of curious ups and downs with a tearful sad ending with a hopeful promise of a future. and the fact that it made me feel emotions unlike most games pushed it to 2 in my list of games so far , weather it stays is anyones guess but that fact that its beating 11 other games bodes well for it for the year so far. i'm definitely curious as to how dlc is going to work for this game, i don't think i'd want to jump in n play the same sleeper again so i'm going to have to look into how thats being handled cause the one thing i learned that suprised me in this is i really liked this clock dice game mechanic that i'd only heard of listening to friends at the table aside from this .

I'm very late to this party, but it's a solid game. My biggest complaint is not seeing the resolutions of a couple story threads because time ran out, but that's pretty minor considering the game's overall length.

The first free DLC is out, Episode Flux. It has a 12 cycle countdown, and you'll need most (if not all) of your dice to get everything done. It's a dense epilogue that likely segues into the future DLC.