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One of the best indie titles of recent years hits new heights with an excellent sequel that becomes the first must-play video game of 2025.
Despite its unusual gameplay and meditative pace, Citizen Sleeper was something of a breakthrough for UK developer Gareth Damian Martin. The dice-based space adventure racked up four BAFTA nominations and a nod at The Game Awards, albeit in the patronising Games For Impact category. The place where thoughtful, genre-defying games are lumped together and given a disengaged pat on the head, so they don’t disturb the crowd pleasers.
After multiple slices of DLC, Citizen Sleeper’s success has led to a somewhat unconventional sequel. It’s bigger, richer, and builds on the original’s foundations, but there’s also more friction shouldering you into its survival mechanics.
If you didn’t play the original, Citizen Sleeper is a tabletop-inspired role-playing game driven by text-based sci-fi storytelling. You play as a Sleeper, an emulation of a human mind housed within an artificial body, who is on the run from the corporation that gave you life. This time though, you’re primarily on the run from a criminal gang leader called Laine, who is trying to control your synthetic existence for his own mysterious gains.
In your escape for a better life, you find yourself in the Starward Belt, a sequence of crumbled settlements at the edge of the war-torn Helion system. Instead of controlling the character directly, the game is played via an overhead view of a space station, with no action gameplay to speak of.
The tabletop-style loop is hinged around fixed dice you’re given at the start of every cycle, which you can use in places of interest via the aerial view, such as shops and other facilities, in order to progress the story or maintain your survival. The higher the dice number is – and if your character class has the relevant skill – the better your chances are of completing a task successfully, whether that’s working a shift in a factory for cash or trying to hack into a device as part of a story mission.
Tension comes from balancing the completion of these tasks while ensuring you have the resources to survive through each cycle, which you manually end yourself once you have used all your dice. If luck isn’t on your side or you gamble with a low die, you might be punished with energy loss, which costs supplies, and in turn resources, to rejuvenate.
The sequel introduces other layers of stress. If your energy runs out or if you fail certain jobs a literal stress gauge will increase and slowly erode health bars attached to your five dice. If left untreated, you’ll quickly find yourself on a slippery slope, with broken slots and limited options on how to crawl back to safety.
To add to the pressure, there’s also a new glitch mechanic. Some actions will boost a glitch meter, increasing the chance of a malfunctioning die occupying one (or several) of your slots. These only give you a one-in-five chance of success, so they become a very tempting gamble when you are clamouring for a hail Mary against the cyclical clock.
These are well implemented as a death penalty too, with every wipe out (if all your dice break) applying a permanent glitch you have to contend with for the rest of the game. If you fancy an extra challenge, the highest difficulty option ends your run entirely if you die, heightening the stakes even further.
If the first Citizen Sleeper was relatively relaxed in its difficulty, Starward Vector isn’t afraid to squeeze your supplies and throw you into pressured situations where you’re one die throw away from failure. It does still have stretches where it eases up and relishes in the cerebral atmosphere, but the overall bump in difficulty feels like a considered swerve to accentuate the role-playing systems at the game’s core.
These revamped systems also make every choice, whether in the dice meta-game or in the narrative’s dialogue options, more meaningful and consequential. The original Citizen Sleeper, while great, was largely superfluous as a role-playing game, with tacked-on character classes and skill trees which you could mostly ignore. Here, everything is cohesive and complimentary to the overall design, in a way that is far more accomplished than its predecessor.
The added intensity baked into the mechanics coalesces with the narrative too. Yes, you’re a Sleeper that’s on the run, but your body is also in a gradual state of decline after an attempted reboot – causing memory loss and other malfunctions, which you gradually unpack as you encounter characters across the adventure.
While the overall premise is similar to the original, the conceit is more compelling due to the sequel’s expanded scope. Instead of being pinned to one location throughout, this sequel, in a similar vein to Mass Effect 2, sees you traverse to different space stations across the Starward Belt, where you encounter different characters who can join your crew. Every crew member you acquire can then be utilised in isolated contract missions, who will team up with you with their own dice and specific attributes to complete the job at hand.
These contract missions act as concentrated doses of stress between the downtime of gathering resources, where you’ll be trying to hack into wreckage without alerting patrolling drones and mining for supplies in a race against a rival ship, among other tasks. Your decision over which crewmates you take on missions often boils down to balancing attributes to counter the weaknesses in your build, but you will also start to form favourites based on their personalities.
Between these isolated jobs and the greater freedom in its design, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a far more robust gaming experience when compared to the original. You are essentially just travelling between different menu screens, sure, but the extra layer of consideration space travel brings to the table – with each trip requiring you to refuel your ship – only reinforces the convincing illusion that you aren’t simply clicking on widgets.
Like the first game, the characters you meet are the soul of Citizen Sleeper. These are all individuals who, like the protagonist, are trying to deal with situations beyond their control, in one form or another, as they search for purpose and solace on the periphery of an escalating war. It’s pertinent and, at times, disarmingly touching – especially in its final act. The dialogue choices you make, which are occasionally skill dependent, alter other characters’ arcs in notable ways too, giving you the incentive for repeat runs with other character classes.
None of this would work without the exceptional writing, which always feels uncluttered and purposeful. It’s particularly impressive when, for long stretches, you’re simply reading text off a screen with static character artwork (excellently drawn by Guillaume Singelin) and occasional white flashes for dramatic effect, yet it manages to be more absorbing than many fully realised 3D worlds.
It’s a testament to the writing but also the subtle soundtrack by Amos Roddy, which is all spacious synth trickles and atmospheric soundscapes that allows your imagination to fill in the blanks.
If the original Citizen Sleeper was an engrossing but flawed introduction to its hybrid tabletop concept, Starward Vector represents a true original flourishing into its full potential. Like the best sequels, it builds on and refines what’s come before, but it also charts its own distinctive path
through the specific choices of its design. It might only be January, but this game of the year contender deserves to land with maximum impact.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
In Short: A fantastic sequel which succeeds in providing a mechanically deeper role-playing experience, while still being one of the best-written games around.
Pros: Revamped role-playing systems and increased challenge heighten the original game’s best qualities. Absorbing presentation with a better open structure. Excellent writing and a great cast of characters, who play a more meaningful role in the story.
Cons: Some of the space stations can feel somewhat barren, with few activities. Some bugs at
launch.
Score: 9/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £20.99*
Publisher: Fellow Traveller
Developer: Jump Over the Age
Release Date: 31st January 2025
Age Rating: 12
*available on Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass from day one
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Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·