Citizen Sleeper caused significant waves across the gaming industry when it debuted in the spring of 2022. Jump Over The Age's Blade Runner-inspired RPG managed to bring high-concept, text-based role-playing to a mainstream audience, blending striking visuals with meaningful, thoughtful storytelling.
Citizen Sleeper has players take on the role of a Sleeper, a synthetic human who must work off the debt of an actual human being. To pay their dues to large mega-corporations, humans in Citizen Sleeper can transfer their consciousness into their Sleeper, lying in stasis while the automaton performs the strenuous labor instead. The innovative sci-fi RPG has won acclaim for being challenging and provocative and raising questions about capitalism, humanity, and even the nature of consciousness, but there are still areas that audiences will feel could have been improved upon even further.
10 Love: Citizen Sleeper Gives Players Proper Choice
One of the true hallmarks of any RPG worth its salt is the ability for the player to shape the world as much as the world shapes the player. In Citizen Sleeper, player choice is paramount and has genuine consequences for the experience the game ultimately becomes. Interactions with other characters, the choice of skill allotment, and choosing certain actions will potentially shape the game's branching narrative structure.
All of this has a profound impact on whichever of the game’s nine endings one will ultimately experience, leading to one person’s experience being totally different from someone else's. This is a game in which the choices one makes feel as though they have a real consequence, and that’s something that’s so incredibly important in the world of RPGs.
9 Dislike: Short Shrift
It’s usually a good sign for a game that players consider it to be far too short rather than complaining that it drags on for too long. After all, it’s better to leave audiences wanting more than it is to render them sick and tired of your finished product.
This is, sadly, the problem that Citizen Sleeper runs into in that it does end up being rather on the short side. According to HowLongtoBeat, the game's average completionist time comes in at just under 10 hours, while rushing will decrease this to around nine. For players wanting this to be a long-term love affair, it can be a frustratingly brief encounter. That said, Citizen Sleeper’s replay value does mean that it’s perfectly possible to run through dozens of times in order to get value for money and explore the many branching narrative pathways on offer.
8 Love: Good Story, Even Better Writing
Proper storytelling and engaging writing go hand in hand, and so it’s no surprise to see that Jump Over The Age’s acclaimed role player manages to excel in both these coexisting areas. In fact, so good is Citizen Sleeper’s writing that many have compared its quality of text to that of the acclaimed Disco Elysium, a game that is often regarded as one of the best-written RPGs of its generation, perhaps of all time.
What makes the game’s writing so good is not only does it feel like it has weight and meaning, but it also reads like something from a novel, the descriptors of the characters' appearances, motivations, and desires truly feeling like something from a classic sci-fi saga.
7 Dislike: This All Feels Awfully Familiar
The story in Citizen Sleeper is undeniably brilliant, but just on occasion one does sense that things have slipped slightly into the realm of the generic. There’s nothing wrong with taking influences from the sci-fi greats, but the premise of Citizen Sleeper isn’t quite as unique as it first appears.
The idea of a sci-fi dystopia within the realm of the RPG isn’t exactly a revolutionary one. Games such as Anshar Studios’ Gamedec, Bloober Team’s Observer, Neon Giant's The Ascent, or even the seminal RPG System Shock 2 have all played around with similar ideas regarding class struggle, capitalist dystopia, and the nature of the mind and reality. For players who love these themes, Citizen Sleeper is definitely a sure bet, but there’s just a chance others may find themselves fatigued by these well-established ideas.
6 Love: Beautiful World Building
Even Citizen Sleeper’s cover and promotion art hint at a title that takes a great deal of care to get its aesthetic tone just right, so it’s no surprise that the game itself won over players and critics for its intimately crafted and hugely immersive world, benefiting from a rich color palette and a unique visual style.
Taking clear influences from the sweeping, cinematic vistas of movies such as Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, not to mention iconic anime like Cowboy Bebop, Citizen Sleeper manages to blend striking sci-fi scale with more mundane, mechanical elements to create a truly unique visual experience.
5 Dislike: Textual Errors Spell Trouble
The writing in Citizen Sleeper really is excellent, a treasure trove of sparkling dialogue and exposition that never feels like a chore to get through. In terms of tone, feel, and pacing, the game’s writing feels worthy of the best RPGs around.
Sadly, there is the occasional textual error that has the capacity to just let things down. It only happens infrequently and there’s little chance that it will destroy the immersion, but in-text mistakes can be hard to ignore. On top of this, some of the game’s contemporary reviews pointed out the ambiguity of certain action choices, meaning that players can be liable to make a decision thinking based on the expectation of one outcome, only to receive an entirely different, and undesired one in its place.
4 Love: Replay Value
Not only should great RPGs offer players the choice of how they want to journey through the particular world that has been crafted by the developers, but they should also offer the chance to go back again and again and provide a brand-new experience.
This is something that Citizen Sleeper does exceedingly well. Nine endings to choose from means that there are always new ways for the story to conclude, while the randomized dice rolls, combined with a person’s own free choices relating to actions, skill points, dialogue, and playstyle, mean that every playthrough is different from the one that preceded it.
3 Dislike: Not All Endings Are Born Equal
The risk with multi-ending RPGs is that some endings are simply better than others, and there’s no guarantee of ending up at the most desired endpoint. Sometimes players end up with a happy resolution, other times things end in disaster and disarray.
Without giving anything away, some of these finales are slightly more interesting than others, and while it should be up to the player whether they choose to opt for a bad, good or chaotic finish to the whole experience, some endings do feel more rewarding than others.
2 Love: Zen And The Art Of Cyberpunk
For a game primarily concerned with synthetic beings taking on all the hardships of their actual human counterparts, there’s a real genuine warmth and sweet sincerity about Citizen Sleeper that distinguishes it from other games of its type.
Yes, the dystopian setting, coupled with a distinctly cynical outlook, doesn't make for the cheeriest of backdrops, but there’s always a sense that the game has a real sense of heart and warmth amid the drudgery of the sleeper’s working routine or the endless grimness of a broken society. Thanks to some beautiful writing, wonderful character interactions, and the occasional glimpse of humanity in an inhuman world, Citizen Sleeper has its heart firmly in the right place.
1 Dislike: Dice Rolls Aren’t For Everyone
A day-to-day action format is used in Citizen Sleeper, so role-players can select how they wish to use their time by rolling various six-sided dice. The points from these rolls can then be spent on actions and rewards, depending on the outcomes.
For the most part, this system is implemented pretty well, giving the game an element of randomization that feels as organic and unpredictable as the real world has a habit of being. That said, it won’t be for everyone, and for those role players who have an aversion to putting their fate in the hands of chance, this may prove a trying aspect.