Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
“Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector balances survival stress and transhumanist optimism, even if those ideas are sometimes at odds with one another.”
Pros
Same successful tabletop hook
More layered survival gameplay
Hopeful storytelling
Cons
Learning curve will be steep
Some underexplained techniques
My first escape try was a catastrophe.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Stress and survival
A transhumanist story
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, the sequel to 2022’s indie important darling, kicks off in a high-stakes style that I wasn’t ready for. Rather than hiding out on The Eye and quietly attempting to outlive, I’m instantly on the run. Terrified that I’ll be caught if I keep on anybody planet too lengthy, I start to make hasty selections that depart me in a deficit. My power depletes, I don’t have the chits to keep up my ship, and every of my cube shatters one after the other, limiting what I can accomplish in a day. I’m left hungry, confused, and stranded. With every passing cycle, I sink into despair. How is anybody anticipated to outlive in such an unforgiving world?
It’s solely by that first failure that I may discover the hope that powers developer Jump Over the Edge’s sci-fi sequel. Citizen Sleeper 2’s steep studying curve will be irritating, leaving gamers to juggle an amazing variety of chilly survival techniques that usually really feel at odds with its heat. Learn to grasp these nuances, although, and also you’ll unravel a compassionate story about reclaiming and rebuilding oneself — physique and all — within the face of overwhelming cruelty.
Stress and survival
Like its predecessor, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a story RPG that attracts its inspiration from tabletop video games. It as soon as once more follows a runaway Sleeper, a human whose emulated consciousness is positioned into an artificial physique by the shady Essen-Arp Corporation. They are indentured servants who’ve been robbed of all autonomy till they’ll repay their debt. This time round, our Sleeper can’t simply disguise out on one area station; they need to hop across the galaxy to evade the villainous Laine, who will get nearer with every passing day (or cycles, as they’re referred to as right here). It’s a heart-pounding setup that finds rigidity in minimalism.
To reinforce that, Starward Vector doubles down on Citizen Sleeper’s comparatively gentle survival techniques for higher or worse. The core gameplay loop stays unchanged even with extra places to discover. Each day, 5 six-sided cube are randomly rolled. These are used to hold out actions, from working for chits to taking over odd jobs, by way of ability checks tied to proficiencies like instinct. It’s deceptively easy, and that’s how I initially ended up in such a gap on my first strive. Players want to consider carefully about the place they spend every die to be able to maximize what they’ll pull off every day — particularly as a result of a counter ticks up every single day to notice that Laine is closing in. Once he’s shut, it’s time to maneuver someplace else to chill it down.
Fellow Traveller
There’s much more to handle this time round, which will be overwhelming early on. There’s a starvation system that forces gamers to replenish power to combat off hunger. The ship wants gas to journey between planets. A stockpile of provides is required to tackle multi-day odd jobs. There’s a stress meter that may result in a die shattering, which then must be repaired with valuable scraps to make use of it once more. A “push” system will increase my stress, however buffs my crewmates’ cube. It’s quite a bit, and people techniques aren’t all the time simple to know. What broke me in my first playthrough was my glitch meter, an underexplained system that may depart a die with a everlasting debuff. I rapidly discovered myself with an array of damaged cube, limiting my capability to refill all my different sources and leaving me hopelessly stranded.
That friction feels purposeful early on, even when it makes for a troublesome opening. While Citizen Sleeper 2 is a piece of cyberpunk media, it calls a way more grounded media touchpoint to thoughts: Wendy and Lucy. Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 drama tells the story of a homeless lady attempting to make her approach from Oregon to Alaska together with her canine in hopes that she will be able to survive in a state with a decrease price of dwelling. The quiet story finds her in financial purgatory, as each couple of dollars she manages to scrape collectively instantly must be spent to outlive one other day. She’s trapped in a cycle that feels unimaginable to flee. Citizen Sleeper 2 carries that very same weight in its exhausting sci-fi, which makes good sense. Both are anti-capitalist works that play into tangible human nervousness.
I solely discovered my groove as soon as I dialed down the problem and began from scratch.
That survival edge can really feel at odds with the story’s long-term tone, although, which isn’t practically as hopeless as its allegorical setup suggests. For all its dystopian gloom, Citizen Sleeper 2 is nearly candy in nature. Once the escape premise cools down, the story turns into extra about placing collectively a ragtag crew of recruitable companions who lend a couple of further cube on contract jobs. Where Citizen Sleeper felt remoted, Starward Vector embraces the heat of group. The extra stress born from useful resource administration seems like a extra of a match for a bleaker technique recreation like The Banished Vault or Frostpunk 2.
I solely discovered my groove as soon as I dialed down the problem and began from scratch. It was there I discovered a stream that higher match Citizen Sleeper 2’s broader themes, extra hopeful ones centered across the want to construct a greater, extra manageable world. I wanted that first failure to essentially get that, although. I needed to really feel the crushing weight of all of it — to really feel like life simply will get worse and worse with no reduction — to be able to take a deep breath and plot out how I may stay regardless of all of it. Both in life and Citizen Sleeper, “reset” will not be a unclean phrase.
A transhumanist story
With its techniques tamed, I may extra clearly admire Citizen Sleeper 2’s optimism. Yes, it’s a searing anti-capitalist recreation about people compelled into company slavery. It all takes place on rusting area stations floating in a sea of darkness. Starward Vector doesn’t wallow within the void; as a substitute, it’s about carving out a livable place in it.
That’s completed by a wider scope than its predecessor, which was confined to 1 claustrophobic area. Here, we get to a wider take a look at what disparate communities appear to be in a single nook of area, a setup that feels spiritually linked to the island-hopping Seasalt Chronicles. Once I’m in a position to lower my approach by asteroid belts, I start to seek out hope in sudden locations. On one stray ship, I uncover a profitable farming group. The extra cycles I dedicate to serving to out with contracts, the extra I’m in a position to profit from the ecosystem and high off my power and provides. It’s the primary second the place I really feel prefer it’s doable to not simply escape this world however discover a house in it.
Fellow Traveller
Home is not only an exterior place; it’s my very own physique, too. Building on the collection’ transhumanist themes, Starward Vector places a larger emphasis on its Sleeper’s quest to reclaim their very own physique — one thing that carries a double which means. There’s a transparent commentary on gender dysphoria as characters discuss being uncomfortable in their very own artificial pores and skin. It’s a considerate analogy, although that studying is sophisticated by the story’s sci-fi framework. The Sleeper’s bodily transformation on the coronary heart of all of it isn’t a lot a course of they need a lot as one thrust upon them in a doubtful method. The spirit is there, but it surely’s maybe too snarled in company villainy.
The smoother studying is about reclaiming one’s physique from a capitalist system, an concept that feeds into the opposite. The Essen-Arp Corporation actually owns folks’s our bodies on this world, however the heightened metaphor isn’t far off from the true world. There have been a number of accounts of Amazon workers pushed to work lengthy shifts with restricted alternatives for lavatory breaks. Video recreation staff need to deal with a widespread crunch tradition that may depart builders sleeping of their places of work. This sort of company overreach modeled in Essen-Arp isn’t science fiction. Only by escaping its clutches can Starward Vector’s Sleeper start to take again their physique and make it their house once more. No one else can inform them what they’ll and might’t do with it.
Its consolation is within the perception that we will carve out a house in a world that’s constructed to field us out.
Sometimes all of it feels somewhat too simple. Maybe it’s simply the cynic in me; there are moments the place all of the optimism seems like Jump Over the Edge telling me what I wish to hear in screenshot-friendly dialogue. When I full a quest that ends with me assembly a stowaway kitty, I ponder if I’m being coddled a bit. A heat blanket draped over an abyss. My day-to-day life nonetheless feels monotonous by the tip. I slot in my cube each cycle, clocking out and in. My chits return into my “bills.” I work, earn chits, and use that cash to eat, refuel my ship, and scale back my stress. Repeat. There is a freedom dangled in entrance of me that I’m skeptical exists exterior the Starward Belt.
It takes a late dialog with one in every of my companions to set me proper. Citizen Sleeper 2 isn’t about dwelling in an ideal world free from oppressive techniques, nor does it posit that such a factor is feasible. Its consolation is within the perception that we will carve out a house in a world that’s constructed to field us out. That’s completed by the folks we maintain shut, the communities we construct, and what we do with our our bodies. These must be the issues that nobody can take from us.
“I want to build something here, in spite of everything, in spite of the fact that they could take it all away,” one character tells me in a second that nearly seems like they’ve sensed my misunderstanding by my mouse. “Because that’s the point. To go on living without conceding.”
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector was examined on PC and Steam Deck.