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With a new found sense of tension, and showpiece Contract missions, Citizen Sleeper is transformed. This follow-up has improved the RPG formula in every way.There's a moment a few hours into Citizen Sleeper 2 where I'm on the back foot and failing. The dice I use to do things in the game are breaking, and the mission I was confident about finishing is ending in failure. Timers tick down before I can do anything about them. Enemies I'm running from catch up with me and beat me down and break me. Things explode. Whatever I do, I can't seem to get a foothold in the game, and I realise at that moment I'm not having fun.Simultaneously I realise: I love it.Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector reviewDeveloper: Jump Over the AgePublisher: Fellow TravellerPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 31st January on PC (Steam, GOG, Epic, Humble), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and Game PassCitizen Sleeper 2 isn't afraid to let you fail. A whole new suite of mechanics is designed to pile the pressure on and put you in uncomfortable situations. And knowing you can fail does a tremendously powerful thing: it grips you, pulls you forward, and makes you pay close attention to what you're doing. It pulls you deeper into the sci-fi world, and in Citizen Sleeper 2, it's as though a whole new side of the game has emerged, coming forward to energise the tender-hearted formula of the original. Under tension, the series is transformed.At the heart of it all is the game's new set-up: a ship and crew. This time, you're not stuck on one station but immediately, in a ship, and on the run. From the beginning, you're also partnered with another other person called Serafin, who saved you from a vicious crime lord - Laine - the latter of whom will continue to dog you throughout the game. You - a sleeper (and a different sleeper to the one in the first game) were Laine's property, an android remotely connected to a person somewhere in the galaxy, destined to work off their debt. But as in Citizen Sleeper 1, there's something different about you, something more human, something that's changing, and you will have to find out what.Watch on YouTubeThis ship and crew set-up opens up the game enormously. It alters the structure to be about flying around an asteroid belt to different locales - asteroids, clusters of floating ships, small space stations, larger space stations, hidden habitats on moons, mining stations - and what this gives the game in abundance is variation, visually and tonally. Each of these places looks and feels like somewhere else, and has a personality of its own. Some have neon pink pops of colour and cyberpunk stylings, while others are icy asteroids with crevices where humanity clings like barnacles. Their smaller scale also allows the camera to get right in and blow up the dinky dwellings for us, so we can better imagine life there.The ship brings something else vitally important too: companionship. Not with the ship, that would be weird (although it does become something of a character in its own right), but with people who are drawn to it. Ships are rare and represent opportunity in this part of Citizen Sleeper's universe, and so like iron filings to magnets, people are attracted to them. Can you help someone out? They'll make it worth your while. Maybe they can hop on and join you? Whereas Citizen Sleeper 1 was a game about individually dealing with people, in relationships scattered across Erlin's Eye, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a game about a collective, about a group, which you're the shepherd (Shepard, perhaps) of. And what this allows the game to do is take stories on the move with you. It means it can tell your collective story while you travel and weave it in and out of everything you do. Rarely a day - a Cycle, in the game's parlance - goes by without something happening, a character approaching you for a chat, a complication, a conflict. It works much better this way.Mechanically, the other characters on your ship present a huge gameplay opportunity too - tied as they are to the game's big new development: contracts. These are special events involving great danger and reward, moments in the game where big things go down, and where the game's suite of new mechanics are really brought to bear.Contracts usually take place off-world (or off-asteroid or off-moon or whatever the hub is you're on), so you fly away a short distance to them, and then they lock you into a scripted adventure for a handful of Cycles that you will either succeed on, or fail. For example, you fly to recover something from a shipwreck, but when you arrive, you discover it's in such a volatile state it will fall apart if you disturb it too much - or worse, explode. Your mission is to find and retrieve something, but locating it and getting it will take a few steps, likely a few Cycles. There's also something of value out here to salvage too. You can't do everything - you don't have time - so what do you do? This is a Contract. Note the drone stress gauge in the middle of the screen - if I fluff things up, I'll aggravate it, and the whole mission could collapse.Your other crewmates will help you on these missions - you can take two of them with you - and they bring two dice each to use, plus their own set of skills. The dice-rolling system of the first game returns here. It's based around six-sided dice, which are automatically rolled for you each Cycle, then spent on actions in the game, your skills modifying the outcome up or down. Sixes are guaranteed successes, for example, fives are usually good, threes and fours are a risk, and ones and twos - well, only use them if you must, or on safe actions where the risk of a negative outcome is less harmful. Other characters, then, are enormously useful - they bring four more dice to the table and a wider spread of skills to use.Citizen Sleeper 2 has another trick here: you can tamper with crew dice using a Push ability, native to each individual character class. As an Extractor, I could add two points to their dice rolls, for example, potentially changing a four to a six, or a three to a five - both incredibly useful leaps. But there's a price: Stress. Every time I Push, I accrue Stress, and Stress is the most important new mechanic in the game.As Stress increases, the health of your dice can deteriorate, and if they break, they're temporarily out of the game. Similarly, if a companion's stress maxes out, they will be temporarily taken out of the game. This only happens on Contact missions, I should add, but it's when these elements start piling up that you can find the game not going your way. Already tight missions become orders of magnitude harder. Bowl into a mission blas, under the assumption you'll do everything, and you will come undone.Now, this might sound tense in a way you don't want, and quite different to the vibe of the original, but there's a safety net underneath it all (on normal difficulty; there isn't on the hardest difficulty). There's still a consequence to completely filling your Stress bar and breaking your dice, but it's not the end. Should that happen, you will be somewhat reset and gain a permanent Glitch die, which always appears in your rolled hand of dice and gets in the bloody way. It has an 80 percent chance of a negative outcome and a 20 percent of a positive one, so it's devilish, but it's not a complete write-off - there are situations where that's useful. And I love this; I think failure in tabletop RPGs especially is a really interesting thing to play with, and it feels like Citizen Sleeper 2 agrees.The game's newfound energy doesn't all come from mechanics. Solo developer Gareth Damian-Martin (who made the game with character art from Guillaume Singelin and music from Amos Roddy) has a knack for putting players in exciting situations. It's there in the 'run for your life' beginnings, but it's also laced into every activity in the game you do. Be it a conversation or a Contract, it always feels as though there's something inherently interesting to do. A forgotten archive encased in an asteroid, storing knowledge thousands of years old: tell me more. A prison-like mining planet ready to mutiny: let me at 'em. Deceptive crewmates: bring it on. I don't think I ever found myself bored - and the times I nearly was, a surprise soon appeared to turn it around.This craft is evident right down to the delivery of the writing itself. There's very little wastage - I've always loved this about Citizen Sleeper. Playing it feels like being led personally on a tabletop adventure, yanked into the eyes of a character and shown what they see. Short sharp chunks: that's how it's delivered. You see this, you do this, and someone says that. There's a motoring sense of momentum to it. Click to interact to receive another dollop. It never swamps you. And it's so important, this writing, because it's the engine of the game. The character art may be delicate and delicious, and the plinks and plonks and starry pops of music may be celestially transportative, but there's no inherent energy in them. The writing powers it all.And it's through this writing that Damian-Martin conjures the magic people remember Citizen Sleeper for: the heartfelt moments. Here is a world where people say what they mean, where in a few words they fire a truth into your heart like an unwavering arrow, popping it and causing the leaky rush of blood to warm your core. It's a game where people see people, see into the insecurities that make us up, and say it's okay, you're okay. Be yourself. There's a sense that here, on the edge of everything, amidst so much collapse, of course only hope can rule.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Citizen Sleeper 2 tells a longer story (roughly 10 hours) than Citizen Sleeper 1, and a wider one, given the various companion permutations. But it's broken quite nicely into what loosely feel like chapters, encasing each new place you fly to. One or two a night feels like a nice pace to play the game at. These are self-contained stories, to a degree, dangling like baubles from the main string you're following - a story about falling apart. It's a theme you might remember that haunted Damian-Martin throughout development, as they struggled with their own health, and I think you can feel that lived experience palpably here.Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector accessibility optionsAdjustable text size and scroll speed, and three difficulty levels.There won't be any more Citizen Sleeper video games after this, as you might have already heard; the intention is to make a full tabletop RPG and hand it to the tabletop space that so inspired it, to do with as they will. I'm glad for many reasons, not least because I don't know how you'd follow this. I didn't know how Damian-Martin would follow Citizen Sleeper 1, to be clear, but in Citizen Sleeper 2 they've done that and done it in some style. They've found a way to make the game part of the equation make sense, to bring it forward from the shadows and weld the adventure inseparably to it. It works wonderfully.If I'm picky, I felt some threads in the game ended up dangling loose, and when I looked for closure with certain companions at the very end, I couldn't find them, our interconnected stories left hanging. Some aspects of the story failed to properly convince me, too, like the Overseer arc, and, I have to say, the main baddie. But I am really splitting hairs. Citizen Sleeper 2 is terrific. There are few other games that can reach out like this and clutch as unerringly at my heart, and few other games I would want to.A copy of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector was provided for review by Fellow Traveller.
