I’m not the least bit surprised that Citizen Sleeper has been named TG’s Game of the Year for 2022. While it wasn’t my personal pick (that ho🔥💙nor goes to the strikingly similar Hardspace: Shipbreaker) it checked all the boxes it needed to to come out on top. It was short enough that most of us actually finished it, it was exceptionally well-written and emotionally resonant, and it spoke to the disdain for late-stage capitalism that us left-leaning media types tend to gobble up. I loved Citizen Sleeper and I’m proud to call it our GOTY, but I also can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t quite come together as well as it could have. While I appreciate the intention behind its freeform approach to mission pathing, I don’t think its gameplay systems - specifically the quest timers - adequately support the choice-based narrative. Let me explain.
Citizen Sleeper does not have a ‘main&rsqu🍰o; questline. There are a few basic survival things you need to manage, like recovering your energy and condition, but even these goals have multiple solutions. From the very start, you’re free to explore Erlin’s Eye and pursue whatever questlines interest you the most. There is no distinction between the main quests and side quests - whatever you choose to 🅠do determines the way your story unfolds.
This is different from every other RPG I’ve ever played. Normally, you follow a critical path that tells you the story, and if you want more you can splinter off in different directions along the way to experience side quests. One of the most impressive qualities of Citizen Sleeper is the way its themes and gameplay reflect one another. You are a synthetic person with someone else's memories who has rejected the path set forward for you by the corporation that made you, and now you’re trying to determine who you really are and what you want your life to be. The freeform approach to mission pathing allows you explore your character’s options and shape their life story however you want.
That’s something I loved about Citizen Sleeper, but I also think it has a critical design flaw. As you settle into life on Erlin’s Eye, the passage of time is represented by timers. Some pursuits can only be achieved within a window of several days or weeks, so the game keeps track of how much time you have left to accomplish your goals. On occasion, this can create a lot of dramatic tension. When you discover the company is sending an agent to retrieve you, you only have so many cycles to find a way to deactivate your trac♛ker before he arrives. That time pressure makes every decision feel critical. Starting the day with weak dice rolls can be devastating when you’re running out of time, and when you’re forced to make high-risk, high-reward decisions, succeeding is a thrill.
More importantly, the time constraints can force you to make choices that change the path you’re on. Some plot threads expire after some amount of time, meaning you only have a small window to pursue certain storylines before they’re gone. These limܫitations are important because they shape your story and make your ch🔯oices feel important. After all, making choices that define your character is what role playing games are all about.
The problem is that this never really happens in Citizen Sleeper. You can follow the quest lines in any order you want, but if you want to do all of them, you pretty much can. In mꦜy playthrough, there were only two drives in the entire game I wasn’t able to complete, and neither of them changed the trajectory of my story.
Once you learn about the company building the shuttle, the Sidereal, to escape Erlin’s Eye, you’ll meet Lem, a father that wants to work in the shipyard to earn a ticket for himself and his daughter Mina. In order to do that, Lem needs you💎 to babysit Mina while he 🎉works. If you haven’t spent enough time babysitting Mina by the time the shuttle is finished, Lem will miss his chance to leave.
I ignored this drive with the expectation I would be able to earn myself a spot on the ship and give it to Lem, but it turned out the whole thing was a fraud from the start, and there was no way Lem - or you - could have earned a ticket anyway. The next step is to forge a ticket by helping a man named Castor hack some data from the Celis servers. I ignored this drivꩵe too, but for reasons that I still don’t quite understand, I꧃ was invited on to the Sidereal. At this point I could either leave, ending the game, or give my spot to Lem and Mina. Nothing I did up to this point had any affect on the outcome, and none of my choices, save for this final one, actually mattered.
The other drive I failed to complete was Ethan’s Tab, a storyline involving a mercenary sent to bring you back to the company that made you. At a certain point Ethan will reveal that another bounty hunter called Maywick is on the way to retrieve you, but he can protect you if you’re willing to help him pay off his tab. I ignored this drive and instead focused on helping Feng expose Hardin’s betrayal ꩵto the citizen&ไrsquo;s of Earlin’s Eye, known Feng had agreed to disable the tracker if I did. Like Lem’s story, the only difference here is how things end. If you pay off Ethan’s tab he and Maywick will kill each other, but if you have Feng disable the tracker you’ll never see Maywick and Ethan will disappear. You can follow both quest lines up until the critical point and the only thing that changes is the ending.
I’ve heard my colleagues talk about doing multiple playthroughs of Citizen Sleeper, but I don’t see any reason to do that. I completed every single drive there I could, and even the two that expired didn’t have any impact on my path. I could play it again and do things in a different order I suppose, but it wouldn’t be a different story, nor would my character feel like they were a different person in the end based on my choices. Had the timers been more restrictive and actually forced you to make hard decisions about which drives you pursue, there would be a reason to replay it, make different choices, and see all the things you missed. Citizen Sleeper’s strength🅘 is the way it lets you head off in any direction, but its failure is in never asking you to commit to the direction you choose.