In Citizen Sleeper you wake up on a space station called The Eye. You are confused and are suffering some sort of amnesia, but you’ve just managed to escape the clutches of the evil corporation Essen-Arp. Now it’s up to you to avoid getting caught again and to escape their grasp forever.
Citizen Sleeper is a resource management game. When you wake up you have very few resources and all that you have is used just to survive, and they isn’t enough for even that. Through choices and progress you will gather more resources and life starts to become comfortable. Your way of being will be challenged by other citizens of the space station that wants to hurt you, but with cunning, luck and a few friends you will get to the end.
The game is turn based. At the start of each turn you get dices which represents moves you can make, and once all your dices are spent you can’t do anything else, you advance to the next turn (or cycle as the game calls it). Events will happen, some are between cycles and you wake up to get confronted by them, and others happen after a timeout. Some tasks need to be completed within a couple of cycles, and your imminent death is always hanging over you just a few cycles away.
The story is told by dialogue with the other citizens on the space station. It is a lot of text you need to read through and honestly, my TV is not the best place for reading. I have problems with my eyes, and I feel strained pretty quick.
The graphics are pretty simple, but I like the art style. It is kind of cyberpunkish. The music is what sells the whole package. It’s very smoothly bopping along in the background and makes a ton of difference for the ambience.
The writing is good, the characters are fun, if not very deep. I enjoy exploring the space station, but the game gets repetitive very quick, and by the end I was just going cycle after cycle trying to get a randomized item to appear, and that was not very fun. I think the gameplay could’ve had some more elements to make it a bit more interesting.
I rate this game as GOOD.
Replay 