Do not get too comfy. As an RPG that places you within the artificial boots of an escaped robo-person, Citizen Sleeper 2 typically has you on the run. It is a crunchy, dicey machine of vibrant world-building that generally forgets itself in wandering prose. A compelling universe to sail by, with extra habitats and hovels than its predecessor, extra stations and stellar gateways. It could’t – for me – escape the dense gravity of the primary recreation’s compact storytelling and novel character constructing, regardless of how typically it funnels you from one area caper to the following. However it has an excellent time attempting.
As soon as once more you play a “Sleeper”, a biomechanical being designed to work as slave labour. Initially of your story, you might be in thrall to a criminal offense boss known as Laine, who’s been holding you below his thumb in change for a drug known as stabiliser (an injectable pick-me-up all sleepers want to forestall their our bodies deteriorating). However right here comes a pleasant spacepal, known as Serafin, who reboots your physique and hauls you chilly turkey off your captor’s area station. Collectively in a stolen ship, you will discover a belt of inhabited shucks, searching for to place ever extra distance between you and the abusive Laine.
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The earlier recreation came about on a single rotating station, Erlin’s Eye. However right here you will step by step unlock a map stuffed with locations to leap to, offered you will have the gas. There is a slender buying and selling spire known as the Far Spindle, the place a water freighter has ruptured and wishes emergency repairs. Or a flotilla of ships known as the Scatteryards, the place a shipmaker pays you to color an commercial in your vessel. Or an asteroid known as the Greenbelt, which grows meals in precarious situations for the entire belt.
In splintering its sci-fi tales into these many small hubs, Citizen Sleeper 2 can really feel extra sweeping in its area drama. Every place affords “contracts” that ship you right into a bubble of native area close by to finish a activity, like rescuing misplaced crew members or salvaging information from a destroyed ship. However it may well additionally really feel much less deep and extra formulaic with every passing hub-hop, too.
Maybe that is all the way down to the growth of the sport’s extra cog-like parts. As soon as once more, you will roll a bunch of cube at the start of every “cycle” (each morning, principally). You fit these into numerous squares to take an motion. Drag a 5 into working a shift in a “dangerous” scrapyard, for instance, and you will most likely receives a commission properly and will not lose vitality or accrue stress (two vital meters you will must juggle). Slot a one right into a “secure” exercise, like resting. The twos and threes? Effectively, these are iffy. However gamble away, work one other shift. Why not? On contract missions you will additionally have the ability to use additional probability cubes offered by your fellow crew members.
However cube can break below sure situations, making them unusable, or they’ll develop into “glitched”, that means they will have a a lot larger probability of leading to a unfavourable consequence. Ideally, you will hold all of your cube neatly maintained as you go alongside (you meet an engineer who can gluegun them again into form). However it’s potential all of your cube will rupture in a single determined mission gone awry.
5 damaged cube is a tricky fail state that places you in your robotic ass and leaves you with a everlasting, unfixable glitch cube each cycle. Undoubtedly one thing to keep away from. It will imply you will have fewer actions day-after-day. Much less noodle broth to slurp, fewer cargo shifts to select up, or maybe no dice-time to discover dodgy shantytowns spinning within the void. The sport’s best mode forgoes this punishment, so you’ll be able to merely keep it up the story. The toughest mode would not even humour you. You merely croak it – recreation over, begin once more.
That I’ve to spend this many paragraphs explaining the cube is itself an indication that the techniques and merchandise administration really feel bulkier this time round (and I’ve not even talked about “provides”, class bonuses, dice-altering skills, or numerous different currencies). As earlier than, it is a stable method of giving the story some gamey bones. However this heavier emphasis on the technicalities generally really feel overbearing.
The extra linear hubs particularly can really feel like there’s just one railroaded technique to distribute cube. You merely pump your gambleblocks into the one slots that appear to matter, making it really feel much less such as you’re playing with story outcomes and extra like a forgone narrative conclusion is being click on’n’dragged out for the sake of a flowery system that must be carried out in every single place. For me, these numerical techniques had been all the time much less fascinating than the characters and tales that orbited them.
There’s nonetheless quite a bit to love within the folks right here. The character artwork has the brilliant stylishness of a well-inked comedian ebook, gentle shadows falling over faces and countless folds of material non-fluttering in zero gravity. When you’ve ever purchased an idea artwork ebook simply to see what the artists designed earlier than the modelers received their arms on issues, you’ll admire the figures that stand towards the glowing home windows and drifting ships of the 3D animated background.
Crucially, when these characters converse they really feel alive. Laine is a heinous pusher man with a slave proprietor’s cruelty, to not point out a ghostly pursuer whose voice arises in your thoughts at numerous intervals. In his eerie need for complete management of your Sleeper’s physique, he’s a classically dislikable if in the end diluted villain. Think about Kilgrave of Jessica Jones poured right into a glass with a spritz of Harvey from the 2000s fugitive sci-fi present Farscape (a present the sport’s creator cites as an affect). Laine is a systemic stressor as a lot as a storyful one – a bit purple clock typically ticks down if you’re exploring a hub, to point out that he’s in your scent. You’ll have to get out of dodge earlier than he arrives.
There are different memorable people. Nemba is a straight-talking chef who would possibly hearth you from a part-time gig in his kitchens, however solely as a result of he has a cheeky side-mission in thoughts. Kadet is a leatherclad area biker who coolly saves your life from a cargo hauler, then makes use of her biker chick charisma to rope you into dodgy information dealings. There are much more examples of such characters. However what unites many is a way of transience. Such as you, these persons are typically on the transfer, disappearing out of your station however reappearing in far-flung hubs hours later.
That mentioned, they don’t seem to be all so compelling to me. A lot of your shipmates appear to endure a dose of the “niceys”. Battle is resolved readily, and kindness prevails extra typically than battle erupts. The drama you would possibly count on from a crew of misfits compelled into proximity on a starship is put aside for a quieter, familial bonding that generally makes me smile sweetly, and generally makes me yawn and want for an abrasive bastard to point out up. For a lot of others, a kinder-hearted crew could also be a winner. However I do know I am not alone in craving for a scumbag or two in my fictional ensemble.
Take your saviour Serafin, for instance. He is a good-hearted and competent pilot, and your shut buddy all through the sport. I would love a buddy like him in actual life. In-game, I wished to hiss him out the airlock. As your first companion he fulfills the function of a Mass Impact starter companion – somebody who will clarify issues to you and voice vanilla misgivings. He’s strong-willed, caring, considerate, and resolute. I wished to desert him in an asteroid area after a few hours.
As a substitute, Serafin accompanies you alongside a predominant quest that by no means fairly me as a lot as the assorted aspect gigs. I discovered his narrative hand-holding irritating even – often taking you apart to let you know which spacerock would be the subsequent finest hub to go to. It is nothing a Bethesda predominant quest character would not do, however after the relative looseness of Erlin’s Eye, the place I actually did really feel in charge of my wanderings, there may be generally a sense right here of being shuttled from plot level to plot level, reasonably than meandering by the world at your individual tempo, selecting up the tales you need and dropping others at will.
In equity, a number of the shuttlestops are advantageous adventures. It’s possible you’ll assist a union organise an interstellar strike, or delve again into the shadowy streets of the Darkside (scumbag territory that belongs to Laine). However I used to be anticipating a extra open-ended story proper from the start. By the point this freedom is afforded to you as a participant, you have principally seen the entire system and met everybody of be aware. It’s geographically a broader recreation than the primary, but it feels by some means extra confined.
Do not let me scare you an excessive amount of. Scenes are nonetheless well-written, the expressive prose sustaining an excellent eye for physique language and mannerisms. An engineer will wipe their arms on rags as they converse to you, hacker children will betray their mysterious ulterior motives with steely seems to be. It has all of the panache of well-crafted style fiction, but doesn’t overload you with paragraphs of lore, holding to the cadence of excellent interactive fiction. No less than, that is the case for a lot of the sport. Later sequences can get slowed down in lengthy descriptions of summary hacking or area structure, the sport generally forgetting to verify its personal wordy enthusiasm.
Thematically, it is loyal to its progenitor. The primary Citizen Sleeper hauled its disdain for interstellar capitalism proper to the centre of your story. You had been a gig economic system robotic with a horrible habit to a restore drug; a strolling iPhone that grew a coronary heart and ran away from the Apple retailer. Starward Vector would not deviate from these themes of coercion below capital, besides to generally discover the destiny of refugees fleeing conflict. It additionally revisits the dysmorphia that leads to having a physique that does not really feel actually yours, and the aid which may come from realising you aren’t alone in such a battle.
In all this, it once more treads a line between considerate speculative fiction and popcorn sci-fi the likes of Area Sweepers. I preferred befriending a stray cat in zero gravity to summon the reminiscence of my earlier bio-self in a poetic passage about identification and luxury. However I additionally loved assembly an historical drilling worm within the stomach of a cursed asteroid, nonetheless digging after hundreds of years like some robotic Shai-Hulud coached by the Energizer bunny.
It typically loses itself within the lengthy spool of its predominant quest, within the runaway passages that might have been shorter, and within the tales of characters who generally really feel like they’re hijacking your story, turning it right into a choose-their-own-adventure. However Citizen Sleeper 2 nonetheless manages to ship some heartfelt moments in a sci-fi world that feels extra vibrant than the likes of Starfield (once more), regardless of being the work of a a lot smaller staff over far much less time. It is finely made sci-fi, even when I nonetheless favor the noodles on Erlin’s Eye.
Disclosure: Bounce Over The Age’s developer Gareth Damian Martin has written for RPS
