You play as a sleeper – a cyborg, essentially – on the run having escaped a previous abusive owner. Citizen Sleeper 2, the sequel to 2022’s acclaimed science-fiction game, expands the scope and heightens the stakes, presenting a taut, delicately written adventure, part interactive fiction, part digital boardgame. You and your fellow escaper have the use of a tiny spaceship, the Rig, which, with your pursuer always close behind, cannot linger on any asteroid or space station for long. This is rickety, dust-blown sci-fi, where the ships are chaotic tangles of wire and accumulated parts, and most of the freelance work available involves salvaging parts from wrecks launched in some earlier, more moneyed period in galactic history. Each excursion must be carefully planned, and turning the key on the Rig’s engine feels like a roll of the dice which, in this game, everything is.
Each day – the equivalent of a turn in a traditional boardgame – you are presented with five dice rolls. These numbers represent a currency that can be spent on dozens of activities: taking on odd jobs, farming resources, making friends or enemies, laying traps, perhaps establishing a mushroom colony in an isolated bay of your ship. The higher the roll, the more quickly you achieve your goals, with setbacks and penalties for small numbers (and the risk of permanent damage to the dice themselves, depending on your luck and choices). Through these tasks you can gather new specialised crew members, discover new locations and, day by day, try to put distance between you and your pursuer, while undoing the damage he did to you.
The people you meet often have their own needs and wants too, which you can choose to accommodate or ignore. The game is text-heavy, yet has a tensely kinetic quality. As the stakes raise, every choice becomes more consequential, while the capriciousness of the dice remains constant, providing ongoing moments of bliss and frustration. An intricate, wonderfully balanced game, that feels both familiar, yet entirely unique.
