Citizen Sleeper’s latest DLC starts with a bang, or more specifဣically, a wave. An electronic tidal wave wreaks havoc on The Eye and corrupts thousands of systems therein. It’s your job, as the ever-helpful Sleeper, to help the worst affected people of the refugee flotilla.
It’s not that easy, though. It never is. The refugees have fled from three dying moons and their captains have brought their intense rivalries with them. As ever, these rivalries stem from multiplanetary corporations mining celestial bodies until their husks remain, in the process turning their peoples against each other. The result is a new kind of story for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Citizen Sleeper. As well a𒈔s repairing ships and couriering aid parcels, you have to navigate the inter-satellite politics, choosing whose stories to believe and placating tensions that inevitably arise.
If you played Flux, Refuge picks up exactly where you left off. I’m not going to spoil anything, but returning and new characters continue to showcase the game’s finest writing and remain the driving impetus as you explore relatioꦉnships and desperately try to help as many people as you can. Refuge is as thoughtfully written as I’ve come to expect from solo developer Gareth Damian Martin, and navigating the flotilla is as emotive as it is thought-provoking.
This chapter does feel more like worldbuilding and setting u🦩p for the real meat of the refugee flotilla story, but the characters and writing continue to make it engaging and evocative. The three flotilla captains are brilliant additions to Citizen Sleeper’s roster of rounded and interesting NPCs, their actions justified and motivations believable. You must navigate their political bickering in a way that feels fresh while comfortably fitting in with the existing world, and they, like most of the game’s characters, are a high point of the most recent DLC. Picking sides feels harsh when lives are at stake, but you can’t help it as your intimate conversations unearth emotional pasts and hopeful futures. However, as you gain the trus✱t of the captains, more details of their plights emerge and you quickly feel guilty for internally siding with one of the others.
However, Refuge makes some dramatic changes to the Citizen Sleeper experience, purely by way of it being DLC. The main game, as I praised in my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:five-star review, is a tense and nervy affair where your actions are constantly undermined by your rapidly failing body, and the fight against your planned obsolescence is as important as your struggles on The Eye. In the DLC, though, after 70 cycles and countless upgrades, my body doesn’t worry me. I have more cryo than I’ll ever spend, so I can keep my hunger topped up with ease. This gr🧸ants me time to complete the missions set by Peake and the flotilla captains, as well as taking a few cycle൩s to grow mushrooms and, in turn, craft vital Stabilizers to keep my frame intact. I’ve not once felt the gnawing worry that my body could fail me while playing either DLC, so the decisions of which task to start first don’t carry as much weight.
While the missions themselves and the stories they told were incredibly compelling, there wasꦉ no urgency there either. Peake tells me that another devastating wave could strike at any moment, and urges me to begin our research right now, with not a moment to spare. Her words are frantic and worried, but there’s no timer on the mission, despite that being an established m🧸echanic in the game. I could spend another 20 cycles gambling my cryo balance if I wished, before getting to these supposedly urgent tasks when I’m bored of the casino.
Citizen Sleeper’s DLC is always engaging and interesting, and I loved the inter-moon politics of the new characters, but there’s a part of me that feels like DLC, by its nature, resists the most important aspects of the base game. Choosing your destiny and finding your place in the universe are integral to the game’s story, whether that is escaping via servitude on board a passing ship or staying on The Eye and people watching across delicious bowls of noodles. If you’ve finished the game, which is recommended before playing the DLC, there’s nothing to do except play the new DLC missions and no stakes if you dither🐼. There aren’t any consequences if you don’t bꦇegin immediately, either, the refugees don’t float away to another station or struggle under the mismanagement of the Havenage. The missions and the deprived people within just wait for you.
Despite my reservations, I still love jumping back into the world of Citizen Sleeper, and will never turn down an opportunity to go back to The Eye for anotജher helping of original science fiction. Its episodic structure is a stroke of genius that keeps it perpetually percolating in my mind, even if the continual and focused stories sometimes feel like they are contradicting the soul of the original narrative. Even if the DLC doesn’t quite capture all of the aspects that helped Citizen Sleeper carve a ringﷺ-shaped space in my heart, I’ll always return for more stories set in this brilliant world.