The future is being made now

May 30, 2023 2:25 PM

"Citizen Sleeper asks you to decide if escape is possible. It took several minutes of impasse and tears and not touching my controller, for fear of making a decision before I was ready, for me to know what I thought about that question. Citizen Sleeper gives you several potential answers and in the ones that resonated with me was the kind of deep personal freedom you only find, sure enough, through community.

Citizen Sleeper is about disability and body dysmorphia and the inevitability of corruption, and it is about the things that grow among and around those things. The antidotes and the byproducts. "
posted by simmering octagon (11 comments total)

This looks 1000% up my alley and I hadn't heard of it. Thanks!
posted by kaibutsu at 5:49 PM on May 30, 2023

I wrote a lot about Citizen Sleeper shortly after playing the main game last year (lots of spoilers). I played the DLC chapters as they came out and still have lots of thoughts, but I haven't put them anywhere coherent yet.

It is an absolute work of art.
posted by curious nu at 6:42 PM on May 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

everyone should play the developer's previous game, In Other Waters. it is a sublime, beautiful experience.
posted by secret about box at 11:14 PM on May 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Lots of people have been writing about this game. The much esteemed Triple Click podcast on video games covered it, and it was on all three hosts' best games of 2022 lists.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:21 AM on May 31, 2023

I haven't played through all of the endings -- this video reminded me, in fact, that I never finished Lem & Mina's story (I stopped working on the Sidereal Horizon sometime earlier, because I realized I had no intention of leaving the Eye). Grow Vast and Strange was the ending decision I made with the least hesitation. Like, no hesitation at all. And it was the first ending I arrived at, so I wasn't even sure if the game would let me continue again from somewhere nearby or if I'd have to start from the beginning. I just felt that one. It felt right.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 9:39 AM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]

I played Citizen Sleeper over the Christmas holidays, and quite liked it. However, one thing I didn’t like about how the game is designed is how easy it becomes in the end. The interesting part is at the beginning: having to manage your meager resources, finding your place in the Eye, and finding friends and allies in this unforgiving place. At the end you will have solved the two urgent problems you have when arriving at the Eye (I’ll try to keep it vague to avoid spoilers), and will be generating a lot of resources you no longer need.

I actually arrived at the Lem & Mina ending first. The game lets you keep a saved state from just before making the decision to leave the Eye or not, so you can keep playing and experience all other endings – which is what I did.

I thought the Grow Vast and Strange ending was the most appropriate for my character, but there is a further “ending”: simply choose to keep playing. In this way, your “ending” means that you found your place in the Eye and were free to live a self-determined life.

I was waiting for the DLC story to be finished, so I can play it from beginning to end. I’ll see if I can find a gap in my backlog…
posted by LaVidaEsUnCarnaval at 6:21 AM on June 1, 2023

Citizen Sleeper, as a story and experience, is amazing on multiple levels. As a game, though, it's fairly disappointing - it's basic skill checks and time management, and feels very much like the mechanics are there just to pace out the story at the speed we were intended to absorb it.

There are a lot of games out there like this these days - story-first experiences that feel more like slightly interactive novels than they do games. That doesn't make them bad, but I do think the hallmark of a good game - as opposed to a good story - is replay value, and this sort of game's replay value tends to be either low or negligible.
posted by mightygodking at 11:09 AM on June 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

As a game, though, it's fairly disappointing - it's basic skill checks and time management, and feels very much like the mechanics are there just to pace out the story at the speed we were intended to absorb it.

Respectfully, you have COMPLETELY missed the point. This is what irritated me so much about most of the coverage of this game.

The mechanics directly reinforce the themes. It's a beautiful execution of System Matters, which was a foundational tenet of the TTRPG theory that came out of the Forge, of which Vincent Baker was a major participant, from whom we get Apocalypse World and all the "Powered by Apocalypse" games, including Blades in the Dark, which is what Gareth was pulling on for a lot of his game mechanic inspiration for Citizen Sleeper. Even just finally getting a video game using some of the hard-won lessons of TTRPGs is an achievement, but to also get one that does it well is astounding.

I'd suggest taking a step back and thinking if you can maybe have a more expansive idea of what a game might be. I totally get that it was disappointing for you, but there are layers and layers going on here and it is SO well done. There are lots of different kinds of games.
posted by curious nu at 7:10 PM on June 1, 2023 [3 favorites]

(clarification: Baker didn't make all the PbtA games, natch, but they all pull from the basic assumptions and premise of that game structure of his original work)
posted by curious nu at 7:12 PM on June 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hey thanks for sharing my video! I wondered where all the new traffic came from.

The mechanics directly reinforce the themes.

YES. This was one of the many points I was trying to make. (Slight respectful sidenote: Gareth uses they/them these days.)

I love love love how these mechanics are meant not only to encapsulate the story but to support it. To, in many ways, be the vehicle for telling that story. It's perfection.
posted by matthorton at 9:28 AM on June 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh gosh, thank you for the pronoun correction! And thank you for the video. :)

I will never get tired of talking about this game.
posted by curious nu at 8:43 PM on June 2, 2023 [1 favorite]