Citizen Sleeper

In the distant future humans can digitise their consciousness and place it in android replicants, "Sleepers." A Sleeper escapes indentured servitude on a freighter and finds themselves on the Eye, a large space station formerly controlled by the Solheim Corporation but is now contested between several factions. A former trade union turned civil authority, Havenage, uneasily shares the station with a criminal operation named Yatagan. The Sleeper must navigate between these factions and find some way of escaping the station and living a good life.

Citizen Sleeper was originally released in 2022 and attracted significant acclaim on release. The game can be summarised as part roleplaying game, part survival resource-juggler and part adventure game. The game is smoothly minimalist, playing entirely from a map of the Eye space station, occasionally with character art displayed whilst conversations are held.

The story unfolds over multiple days. At the start of each day, you roll a series of dice. The results of the dice can be applied to different activities, such as doing a day job for money, investigating the station to further the storyline or hacking into the station network and uncovering the secrets of its long-dormant mainframe (evading ancient security programmes in the process).

Citizen Sleeper's storyline feels quite tight at the start but then starts sprawling in numerous different directions. There are multiple ways to escape the station, different factions to align with, and a dozen or so significant characters you can develop relationships with, some of whom can help you, others hinder. Some characters are antagonistic but can be won over to help you; some are initially friendly but have hidden, darker agendas you might deal with.

Your Sleeper requires food and energy, meaning you sometimes have to make tough choices on whether to do more activities or spend dice on sustenance. But if you take too long, you can start losing dice (representing your growing weakness). The numbers you roll on your dice also have different application. In general, the higher the number the better, but some tasks require you to precisely match a number and you can't do anything without anything else, meaning you may have to wait a few days and several rerolls before accomplishing that task.

Your character does level up periodically and you get new abilities such as being able to reroll dice once a week or being able to tackle specialist tasks.

It's a compelling mix of interesting systems, complicated further by various ticking clocks, such as a character completing their own mission before they are ready to help you or until pursuers catch up with you on the station. Things stay just on the right side of being overwhelming, and the game is generally fair with you about keeping your character informed about what's going on and what possibilities there are for things to do next. However, the game can also be relatively ruthless in shutting down the possibility for hedging your bets: once you commit to a course of action, some other possibilities are invalidated.

With a single run of the game taking less than eight hours (depending on your choices, you might wrap up one in maybe four), it's short enough to encourage multiple replays and it can be surprising to see how your choices can impact the game. One playthrough might see you developing a major quest to discover your original human identity; in another, this might barely be mentioned as a factor in the story. One run might see you explore the entire station and visit every location, the next might see you leaving the station with half the map still in darkness. Your impact on the story is considerable, and fascinating.

Obviously this is a low-budget game, but the production values are quite impressive. The graphics are minimalist but atmospherically effective, the soundtrack is superb and the writing is quite compelling. Most of the NPC characters are well-written and engaging, and the game does a good job of holding your attention and making you make tough choices, with the consequences for failure being usually as interesting as those for success. Citizen Sleeper does a lot with not a lot of resources.

That said, the game can feel a bit punishing, especially near the start, and occasionally too reliant on the RNG number gods to progress to the next part of the story, resulting in bursts of wheel-spinning. The game is still short enough that this is not a major problem, but it can be a source of occasional frustration.

Citizen Sleeper (****) is a fascinating and well-written game, with a lot of substantive choices to make and encouraging of replays. The game is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Xbox One and Series X/S, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, was released last year.

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New China Miéville novel gets cover art and blurb

China Miéville's enormous new novel now has cover art and an expanded blurb.

"From the bestselling, award-winning master of uncanny fiction comes a defining work, twenty years in the making – a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic of grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy.

"Maur’s life has been shaped by an unbearable loss. But in the aftermath of what is an apparently ordinary tragedy, deeper, stranger questions arise . . . Their answers may lie within the dark heart and darker history of an old soldier who shares Maur’s obsessions – and is violently pursued by the same unknown, unquiet forces.

"So begins The Rouse, a book unlike any other: at once a sprawling saga of a bloody century, and the intimate story of two lives, their loves, regrets and secrets – and a terrifying journey into infinite mystery."

The Rouse, all 1,264 pages of it, is currently due for publication on 17 September 2026.