When Citizen Sleeper launched in 2022, it quickly became apparent to fans that Jump Over the Age and Fellow Traveller's RPG was going to make an impact on the indie scene. Indie games have a reputation for pushing design boundaries, exploring the limits of what games can achieve, and introducing truly innovative systems that can rival their bigger-budget counterparts in interesting ways. Citizen Sleeper's fascinating sci-fi world introduced players to a unique story that played out in a beautifully designed environment, but it was the game's systems that really made an impact.
It's even more impressive to see how Citizen Sleeper's gameplay was able to explore the interconnecting stories, characters, and functions of a space station with such a small development team. Using inspiration from many different sources like the so-called anti-adventure game Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Citizen Sleeper also incorporates elements traditionally associated with tabletop gaming like dice rolls to determine the success of actions, which shows how it perfectly incorporates the gamification of its dice feature.
How Citizen Sleeper's Dice System Works
Gamers control the Sleeper, a robot with the digitized mind of a human who is controlled by the Essen-Arp corporation. After escaping indentured servitude, players arrive at the Eye, a space station where they have to fight to survive and work off their debt in a capitalistic society where multiple characters' stories intersect. Each NPC that players can encounter is written with depth and believable progression, and that provides an amazing accompaniment to Sleeper Citizen's compelling gameplay systems.
At the start of every day in Citizen Sleeper's futuristic dystopian society, gamers roll a number of six-sided dice to determine the success of what they can accomplish. Players choose what they spend these dice on, knowing that for the most part, a higher roll means a better outcome, and a lower one means a slightly less successful outcome. Whether this is salvaging a ship for profitable scrap or trying to steal something to up their odds of survival, using the dice is a game of resource management.
Why This Gameplay System Works So Well For Citizen Sleeper
The way Citizen Sleeper uses die rolls is a great blend of luck and strategy, as although players aren't able to control the numbers they get, they need to decide how best to use them to complete actions or gain rewards. This captures the unpredictability of this challenging space station environment but also puts gamers in the same mindset as the characters as they try their best with what fate has handed them. However, a high number like a six doesn't necessarily mean there's always an ideal outcome, as trying to perform skills outside the protagonist's remit can slightly hinder the result.
Players have to use their dice by the end of the day, even if they roll a bunch of ones and know whatever they choose to spend it on will have a less-than-satisfactory conclusion. But this element of predictable risk and potential failure that comes with lower dice rolls is what makes Citizen Sleeper a video game version of a tabletop RPG, and really elevates this dice-rolling mechanic. Citizen Sleeper encompasses this idea that no matter how hard players try and how much they prepare, there are going to be times when things don't work out the way one wants, and incorporating this into the fabric of the game is a stroke of genius.
Citizen Sleeper is available on PC, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.