Released in 2022, the original Citizen Sleeper was like nothing I’d ever played. Part visual novel, part RPG, part sci-fi life sim, it did things on a narrative level that genuinely wowed me – even if closer inspection after the credits rolled began to reveal where the joins were. I didn’t look too hard, though. I didn’t want to spot the seams – and I didn’t want to go back and replay its story for a different ending because, perhaps uniquely for a choices-driven game, I simply didn’t want to know. I landed a good ending and I was happy. In the sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, I unfortunately had to start again with different choices, but we’ll come to why I did and why it matters in due course.
First, some background. As in the first game, you play a Sleeper, a machine downloaded with an emulation of a person. The person is… somewhere, back on Earth maybe or somewhere else in the galaxy, and as an android with a very human consciousness, the Sleeper itself is contracted to work for Essen-Arp, a galaxy-spanning megacorporation with limitless funds and zero morals. So far, so dystopian sci-fi, I guess. In fact, the themes explored in this series are nothing new: what it means to be human, whether a machine can love or truly integrate into a corporeal society, corporate oppression and the little guy scraping a living in the arse-end of space. The themes explored in the first game are further probed here, though the effect feels a little less poignant.
Which is no one’s fault, of course. To an extent, you know what to expect in a sequel, although Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector does its best to subvert those expectations. For a start, it’s a b igger game in every conceivable way, and ups the stakes from minute one. Where the first game began with a pretty subdued pace and never really increased the tempo, Starward Vector begins with you already on the run and in deep shit. It’s easy to assume this Sleeper escaped at the same time and from the same place as the Sleeper in the previous game, but you won’t receive answers either way until much, much later.
The story opens with you and your companion Serafin escaping Laine, a sociopathic menace who pursues you for much of the game. Prior to these events, Laine disabled the planned obsolescence clock that made the protagonist of the first game reliant on a special stabiliser. But why he did it, what he wanted you for, and why it feels like your mind is slowly unravelling are questions for later. Alongside Serafin you escape in the Rig, your clunky, patchwork spaceship, heading for the Belt, a ring of asteroids and space stations where you might raise the funds and crew to finally free yourselves for good.
Each day, called a Cycle, you’ll be assigned a set number of dice with which to complete tasks in the current location. Presented as a scrollable map, these locations still manage to exude atmosphere and personality, while one of the triumphs of Gareth Damian Martin’s writing is that they’re able to convey such emotion and complexity through nothing but text and hand-drawn art. Fans of comics and graphic novels might not find this such a feat, but in a video game it’s an incredibly difficult thing.
Two things propel the story: what you can do, and what you must do, and both are decided by the dice. You’ll begin by picking a class from three archetypes: Machinist, Operator, and Extractor, each with different strengths and weaknesses among the five primary proficiencies. Engineer, Engage, Intuit, Interface, and Endurance. The class choice determines how these proficiencies modify your dice rolls. One will grant +1 to connected tasks, one will grant -1, two will be neutral, and one will always grant -2. Complaints that you could level up enough to break the first game by maxing out all the attributes have been addressed here by making the -2 attribute impossible to improve.
Each cycle you’ll head out into the current area and click on various nodes to advance the story or side stories. Some of these nodes will be merchants, or restaurants; others will be jobs you can repeat for money or other resources. Some, however, will be connected to their own clock, and only by succeeding at the connected dice rolls will you fill that clock and advance the side story – or Drive – connected to it.
This allows Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector to essentially lead you through various stories at once, some more connected than others. Your ultimate goal may well be to escape Laine – who will constantly pursue you but who can be delayed by staying mobile and travelling between hubs – but how you get there will have multiple tangential paths dependant on your choices and, more often than not, the luck of the dice. And not just yours either. Much of the game revolves around gathering a crew and completing contracts around the belt, all of which have multiple objectives, and hazards.
For example, you may need to salvage a derelict deep space drone, and you’ll take other characters with you to help out. Each has their own proficiencies and dice, but you’ll need to manage their stress levels by not forcing them to attempt jobs they’re not good at. Contracts require fuel and supplies, as they take several cycles, and failure can be incredibly costly for a number of reasons. Choices you make could lead to catastrophe, extending the job or throwing up obstacles and dangers you’ll need to overcome. One bad job is all it takes to leave you in a hole you can’t get out of. You can use the Push ability to modify your dice or your crew’s (which is determined by your class), but this costs stress and is really better avoided for the most part.
My first playthrough was genuinely hard work. I felt the dice were stacked against me, and the class I chose (Extractor) seemed to make so many tasks impossible to complete. As a result my Sleeper’s stress was constantly high, which meant heading out on contracts with my steadily-growing ragtag crew often ended in failure, leaving me penniless and stressed, sometimes starving. Eventually it went so badly that Laine caught up with, further compounding my troubles. If there was a way out of it, I couldn’t find it, and this in itself left me feeling a little sour towards Starward Vector for a while.
The first game had some tough choices, but I never felt punished for taking chances or making hard decisions. In Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector I did, and it took away some of the sense of atmosphere and wonder when I was just constantly being battered by poor luck, and it simply wasn’t giving me a way out of it.
Beginning again with a different class and a renewed respect for the fact that this game wasn’t going to baby me, I had a much better experience, but I also learned a lesson I’ll impart to you for free: don’t go into this game expecting to be able to glide through it like you probably did its predecessor. Failing dice rolls and increasing your stress will lead to broken dice that you must repair with rare or expensive resources, while after a certain point in the story your dice will often become glitched. This means they now have an 80% chance to fail a roll no matter your proficiency. For me it often made the game feel oppressive and unfair, but maybe that’s intentional.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector sets out its stall early and reminds you at every opportunity that the galaxy in which you live has nothing but contempt for you. Hounded from place to place by Laine, taken advantage of or double crossed by many people you meet, and always aware that you’re running out of time, money (called Cryo), or fuel to get around the Belt, you and Serafin are in a constant state of danger, and it’s a change of pace that I can’t help but respect.
It helps that it’s a beautifully written as the previous title. Gareth Damian Martin is incredibly talented, managing to avoid melodrama and cliché to create compelling, unpredictable characters with their own drives, ambitions, qualities, and, crucially, flaws. As before, it has the power to suddenly stun you, to keep you on tenterhooks, and deeply move you when it needs to. The strength and clarity of the prose coupled with the constant sense that just one failure could damn you and the people you care about is a potent mix.
Although, it’s not all doom and gloom. Starward Vector also has characters you’ll grow to love, small story beats that make you smile, and the capacity to make you feel an overwhelming sense of hope at unexpected moments. It’s true that it didn’t blow me away like the first game did, but it’s a testament to it that even when I was really struggling against some of the mechanics, I didn’t want to walk away. I wanted to always see the next screen, to spend more time in this universe, and learn more about these characters and their place in the galaxy. It’s also gorgeous, which helps, with stunning art and a wonderful use of bright colours against the dark backdrop of eternity.
So Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is beautiful, but no cake-walk. It will challenge you, with sudden decisions, genuinely difficult dice rolls, and the inability to just save-scum your choices. You’ll fail things and roll with the consequences, which in turn has the power to change how you approach the game. Sometimes you may just find that the easy route is more attractive, even if it ultimately dooms the people around you. This, like the first title, is a special game, one that will shape itself around your decisions and map your fate by chance as much as choice. It may test you, it may frustrate you, but my advice is to stick with it, because until you reach a fail state there’s always a way to keep going, keep exploring, and keep surviving in the harsh, unforgiving vacuum of space.
Reviewed on PC.
