Back in 2022 there was a solo developer that attempted to bring the freedom and flexibility of tabletop RPGs to the video game industry. The game Citizen Sleeper was a great success and highly rated by many critics in the industry. Now, the developer at Jump Over the Age is back at it. Let’s jump into this highly anticipated sequel and see if Citizen Sleeper 2 can improve on an already incredible foundation.
In this review I will be covering the following topics.
Story
Citizen Sleeper 2 takes place in the Starward Belt. Made up of a handful of makeshift space stations that people call their home. The Belt is on the outskirts of space where people are just trying to survive. Life is rough and most are doing their best just trying to make ends meet.
You are a sleeper, which is an emulation of a human mind put inside of a synthetic body. You have managed to escape the corporation that owned you, but your mind was wiped during the process. Now, you and your friend Sarafin are on the run. You need to keep moving from station to station to avoid detection. However, fuel is not cheap, and neither are supplies. How you choose to get by is entirely up to you.
Gameplay
Unlike most RPGs on PC right now, Citizen Sleeper 2 has no combat system. Instead, the game is strictly story-driven based on dice and dialog. The choices you make and the dice you roll can drastically affect how the story plays out. This can create some very tense moments at times. Let’s start digging into some of the different components that make up the game without giving too much of the story away.
Sleeper
At the start of the game, there are three classes of sleepers to choose from. You can be a machinist, an operator, or an extractor. Machinists are very skilled engineers. Operators are experts in working with computer systems. Extractors are built for resource extraction in hard vacuum environments.
Each class has a unique push ability that allows them to manipulate the dice at the cost of stress. These push abilities can be improved upon as the character levels up. Each class starts with one skill in which they excel and one locked. The skills in Citizen Sleeper 2 include Engineering, Interfaces, Endurance, Intuition, and Engagement. As the character levels, each of those skills can be improved to add +1 or +2 to your dice.
Your character will level up throughout the game as you complete quests. Also known as drives. Minor drives will give you one point, while major drives will give you two. Leveling up isn’t cheap, though. It costs two points to level your push ability and four points to level one of your skills.
Dice
Speaking of dice, most of the interfaces in the game are going to require dice or money to interact with. The dice system in Citizen Sleeper 2 has a few different components to it. First of all, there are five dice randomly rolled at the beginning of each day or cycle. These dice range in value from 1-6. There are a couple of different things that can negatively affect these dice, such as stress, damage, and glitches.
Stress can be accumulated a couple different ways. One of the most common ways to gain stress is if your character is starving. Starving is a result of your sleeper not having enough energy. So, make sure that they are eating regularly. If you can afford it, that is. Using your push ability while on contracts to manipulate dice is another way to gain stress. Each time you use the ability, you will gain one point of stress. Lastly, you can gain stress as a result of a negative dice outcome. So, try not to use those low-dice numbers unless you really have to.
Every two points of stress will cause your dice to take damage when a certain number is rolled. For example, the first two points will cause damage for every #1 rolled. At four points, the #1 and #2 rolled will cause the dice to take damage, and so on. Each die can take three points of damage before it is destroyed. Once it is destroyed, you will need to use components to repair the die.
Depending on the quality of the components, you could acquire some glitches in the dice system. This means you might get a glitched die when rolling new dice. In order to explain a glitched die, we first need to understand how the dice work when you use them. When performing a task, you will use one of your dice. Using a die with the #6 will always result in a positive outcome. A #5 will have a 50% positive outcome chance and a 50% neutral outcome chance. Dice that are a #4 or #3 have a 25% positive, 50% neutral and 25% negative outcome change. Lastly, #2 and #1 dice have a 50% neutral and 50% negative outcome change. If you have a glitched die, it has a 20% neutral and 80% negative outcome chance. That was a lot to say that glitched dice are bad, and you should probably avoid using them whenever possible. 
You don’t have to use all of your dice every day. Sometimes, it is better to just leave the lower numbers or glitched dice to be rerolled at the beginning of the next cycle. Figuring out how to effectively use your lower-numbered dice can make a big difference in certain situations. Make sure you don’t rule them out without checking all your options first.
The Rig
The Rig is the ship you escaped in and the one you now call home. It has seen better days and could use some upgrades. Throughout the story you will slowly upgrade the ship in the form of unlocked locations on the ship. You start off with the bunk and the galley.
The bunks are a place where your character can take a moment of rest and reduce some of their stress. The galley is where you can go to eat and restore some energy. You will have to use ship rations, though, so it is usually a better idea to eat at a station if you can afford it. Some of the spots on the Rig that you will unlock during the story are the workshop and the engine room. The workshop is where you will go to repair broken dice. The engine room unlocks when you are ready to upgrade the engine for long-distance travel. 
You’ll need to manage resources on the ship, such as fuel and rations. These will be required for travel and contract carrying. Something that we will discuss shortly. As mentioned before, rations can be used when you are not on a contract if you need a quick energy boost.
The Crew
The Starward Belt in Citizen Sleeper 2 is no easy place to get by, especially for two people who are on the run. A few extra hands might make things easier to get by, but it’s never easy to know who you can trust. There are a handful of colorful characters that you will meet throughout the Belt. Some of them can join your crew as a permanent resident on your ship and some might just join you for a single contract or two. It all depends on your interaction with each of them. They all have their own stories and their own troubles to deal with. 
Do you welcome every person you meet with open arms? Possibly putting yourself in even more danger? Perhaps you close yourself off and keep everyone at a distance, but that might narrow your options and make it harder to complete future contracts. Each character is full of life and has their own worries and problems. It’s up to you to figure out who you can trust and who can help you the most.
Citizen Sleeper 2 gives you the freedom to choose who you want to work with and who you don’t. There are no clear black-and-white options. You have to listen to what the person is telling you and make your best guess at what the right choice is when it matters. There is no right or wrong answer. You just have to work with the hand you pick.
Stations
Stations are the primary locations where you spend the majority of your time. Sometimes, a lot is going on, and sometimes, you have some downtime just to spend a couple of cycles working jobs and buying fuel until you can travel to the following location.
Most of the stations on the Starward Belt are not friendly to outsiders. This means that your first interaction at a new station is going to be getting to know the people and exploring the station. This is where the dice come in. You will have two options that each require a different skill. You will need a handful of successes with the dice before other locations on the station will unlock.
The other locations depend on the station that you are at. The majority have a place or two where you can work for money. They usually also have a place to buy fuel and rations. Lastly, some will have story drive locations. All of these locations have an interface to place a die to perform a task or an amount of resources (usually money) in order to pay for something.
The interfaces that require dice are each related to a particular skill. This means that skills you are more proficient in will show if you have a +1 or +2 to your die when you put it there. As mentioned in the dice section, the higher the number, the better the results. So, try to find jobs related to your higher-ranking skills. 
Once you feel like you have exhausted all your options at that station, it’s time to move on to the next one. Keep an eye out for unique locations at stations. They might not do much while you are there the first time, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find something useful for that location somewhere else. You will definitely be returning to each station more than once.
Contracts
Contracts in Citizen Sleeper 2 are missions that you can go on as a source of income. That’s the goal, at least. They are very high-risk, high-reward jobs. There are a few different types of contracts, but they are mostly scavenger missions. Someone needs something from an old derelict ship, and they will pay you if you can bring that component back to them in one piece. 
When you take a contract, you need to make sure that you are fully prepared. This means having enough fuel to make it to the desired destination. Then, you need to make sure you have enough rations to get the job done while you are there. On contract missions, you will use a ration at the end of each cycle. Once you run out of rations, you will start gaining stress. There isn’t really a timer on missions, but you certainly start to feel the pressure when you run out of rations. This forces you to make sure you are using each cycle as efficiently as possible.
The interaction on a contract is similar to that of the stations. There will be skill-associated tasks for you to complete. Most of which are multi-tier. Meaning they are going to take a lot of dice and a lot of cycles to complete. Luckily, this is where a good crew can help out. You can have up to two crew members joining you on a contract.
Each crew member will have one or two skills that they are proficient in. They will also have two dice each that you can assign to tasks. Having a well-rounded crew can help you complete tasks for which your sleeper might not have the right skills. Not only are you trying to get the tasks completed before you run out of rations, but any negative outcomes on the tasks usually have a very detrimental effect. This makes the cycles with bad rolls that much more stressful. 
Some contracts are more complex than others. This could be story-driven or purely the luck of the dice. Either way, none of them felt like a piece of cake. It was always a sigh of relief after each successful contract.
Conclusion
I’ll be totally honest: I was afraid I wasn’t going to have enough to say in this article without giving away a bunch of the story. I guess I was wrong. That just goes to show how much there is to this game, even though it is primarily dice and story-driven. Citizen Sleeper 2 took everything that made the first game from 2022 a success and grew on it exponentially.
I absolutely loved the story. If you needed just one reason to play this game, that would be it. The story was so well written. You can tell it was a piece of the developer’s passion. But it doesn’t stop there. Citizen Sleeper 2 has such a well-thought-out system. It really took me back to my tabletop RPG days. 
There are so many elements that really made the game so thematic. Like having to get to know the ins and outs of each station before you could access its other locations. Or when you use low-quality components to fix a broken die, which results in glitches in the system for a few cycles. There are so many things that I could go on about that really made me feel like I was the character living in this world.
To not make this article last forever, I better wrap it up before I think of something else to rave about. If you couldn’t tell by now, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a must-buy for anyone who enjoys a game with a good story, anyone who enjoys classic RPGs, or even someone simply looking for something new to play. It will be out on PC, Mac, and all current gaming systems. I played it on PC and the Steam Deck, and it ran great on both. Here is the link to their Steam page.
A review key was provided for this game by the developer at Jump Over The Age.
