Citizen Sleeper 2 review: An unmissable galactic adventure

If you didn’t play the first Citizen Sleeper game, you missed out on a brilliant experience. One that takes you across space, with tabletop RPG rules playing out after rolls of dice. As someone who doesn’t get much chance to actually play tabletop RPGs due to adult commitments constantly getting in the way, I got my fix here.

If you did play the first game, you’ll know it’s a stellar example of delicate writing with impactful sentiments running throughout. There are themes that the creator approaches with a deft hand, exploring the ideas of identity, acceptance, and our place in the universe.

Citizen Sleeper 2 expands the section of space that players call home, with various locations filled with a populace disenfranchised by the governments and businesses happily waging war and creating a legacy of outcasts. You play as ‘Sleeper’, a synthetic humanoid with a real consciousness implanted inside its mainframe. Sleepers are used as slaves, often down-trodden and treated as disposable despite their talents for engineering and technological interfaces.

The series is heavily inspired by tabletop RPGs and serialised television shows, creating a world of intrigue explored through player choice. Arriving at any location offers pockets of space stations to investigate as you try to stay ahead of Laine, your previous ‘owner’ who is insistent on you returning to a world of toil.

Fellow Traveller

You’ll pick up odd jobs, chat with the locals, learn of the history behind the corporate war that wages through the galaxy. Each area features opportunities to further your goals, whether that’s earning money or finding information. Each action you take requires dice rolls resulting in events that will impact your story, character, and success in the overall story.

For example, you might want to blend in with society in an outpost, so you’d choose from a handful of dice that are randomly determined at the start of the day’s cycle. Your Sleeper will be proficient in certain skills offering pluses to tasks, so here you’d choose the highest dice for the best possible outcome.

However, Citizen Sleeper 2 is based on both chance and risk. In that same example, you could offer up lower dice with lower odds of success, but sometimes it’s your only option. This is more integral when it comes to running contracts.

Contracts offer bigger paydays, but also set pieces for the story to progress. You might be investigating a bunker on a deserted and crumbling planet, or navigating the interfaces of a potentially hostile A.I. Using lower dice, or getting bad outcomes will increase your stress level, breaking dice and making them unusable. It’s a fraught balance that urges you to take risks and the game is never unfair - the lowest odds you can get is a 50/50 shot of neutral and negative outcomes. The most you’d lose is some rations or a pocket of change, but as you’re playing a role via Sleeper, you might want to err on the side of caution if it fits your role.

Each of these story beats or tasks will complete missions, offering upgrade points to build a more refined Sleeper. You’ll be able to add pluses to certain dice, negate any negative effects, or improve your ‘push’ ability. Pushing allows you to affect a die, improving them, or reducing stress. Pushing at the right point is sometimes pivotal to completing a task or passing a check.

Fellow Traveller

The biggest addition to Citizen Sleeper 2 is perhaps its best - building a crew. Once you start gathering a crew, formed of ragtag rejects from across the belt, the game comes alive with camaraderie and a sense of belonging. Being a Sleeper feels like an achingly lonely existence. An old human consciousness emulated inside a synthetic body, it’s easy to see the isolation that comes from being ‘other.’ Is a Sleeper human? What defines our place in wider society? No matter how you play the character, there’s always a feeling of not belonging.

So, when you form a crew of people who come to rely on you, and you them, it feels like finally being accepted by the greater world around you. This is the message running throughout Citizen Sleeper 2; it’s okay to be different, and you can find a family in the unlikeliest of places.

Conversations take on new meaning in this ambitious sequel. There’s a fine line between keeping your friends close or alienating them. You can play the Sleeper in any way you choose, but forming a team is integral, and how you treat them could only recreate the hostile environment you find yourself in.

I played my Sleeper as someone who wants to help everyone but is accepting of their curiosity and unsure feelings of their mind and body. I pushed myself to travel back and forth across the Starward Belt completing errands, learning the nuances of the characters who hang out in bars, restaurants, and shipping yards. My crew became a source of comfort and love while playing. I wanted to protect them, guide them, nurture their lives.

Fellow Traveller

This is the nugget of beauty and joy found within Citizen Sleeper 2, built on your choices, encouraged by dice rolls that fill out your own emerging story. Like any good TTRPG, what you discover is only a trail of breadcrumbs for you to follow, and there’s so much here that two playthroughs will never be the same.

Quirks will continually pop up to further, or even hinder, your path. Glitched dice drastically reduce your chances of success, running out of food will drain your energy, putting more stress on you, and this is all balanced by logistical concerns like never running out of fuel or keeping your bank balance topped up. Living as a Sleeper isn’t an easy task, and it shouldn’t be. Conflict brings out the best moments, each becoming a memorable point in your journey.

By the end of my adventure, I’d questioned so much about friendships, how society treats each other, and how emotions shape our outlook on the world. I was sad when it ended, I could have stayed here for many more hours. Citizen Sleeper 2 asks big questions, but never bludgeons you over the head with subtext, it simply asks you what you’d do in a certain situation, playing a chosen role. It does so, bolstered by a robust dice-rolling system, and some genuinely astonishing writing, as if you were playing a TTRPG with your best friend guiding your hand.

Pros: Emotion driven story, sumptuous writing, intelligent mechanics, bags of charm

Cons: Sci-fi RPGs and dice-rolling may be a bit niche for some

For fans of: Dungeons and Dragons, Cyberpunk 2077, Visual Novels

9/10: Exceptional

Citizen Sleeper 2 is available now for PC (version tested, on Steam Deck), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.