Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector Review

There was a moment, a few hours into Citizen Sleeper 2, where I found myself freshly landed in a new spaceport, being examined by a complete stranger. This new acquaintance began to describe how my body, a synthetic approximation of the human form, was slowly changing. Impossibly, new things were growing. My Sleeper touched the back of their head, feeling for a node they’d never noticed was there, questioning their own senses and whether this new information—granted by a person who’d proven nothing but kind in these brief minutes—was influencing their experience. It wasn’t spelled out in the text, but I could parse the feeling. It was a feeling of invasion.

With nothing but character portraits and a few lines of sharply-written prose, I’m reminded of just why I adored the original Citizen Sleeper so much. As a player avatar, the Sleeper is a stirring parallel to humanity and the human condition, especially to any who understand the circumstance of being othered.

This much is also true of the second game, of course, but on a first go around there was the advantage of novelty. If I were solo developer, Jump Over the Age, and someone had suggested to me the idea of following up that perfect little title with a full-on sequel, I think I’d have let out a discomforted laugh. But luckily for me, and every other Citizen Sleeper fan, I am not Gareth Damian Martin, and they were exactly as intrepid as was needed to take that suggestion and go absolutely cosmic with it.

Starward Vector is similar enough to its predecessor as far as the fundamentals are concerned. This is still a choice-driven sci-fi RPG where the player’s journey through the fiction is dictated by the goals they set themselves, and how successfully or unsuccessfully those are completed as dictated by dice rolls. Like before, you play a Sleeper unmoored from their indentured servitude, out but not necessarily free.

This time, urgency comes in the form of Laine, an unhinged criminal and your previous “owner,” no better than the corporate slavers familiar to the Sleeper of the previous title—and far more dangerous. Laine isn’t thrilled about your escape, and thanks to an interrupted exit procedure he’s also still holding a partial tether, hellbent on tracking you through the Starward Belt to reclaim his property.

This already presents arguably the sequel’s biggest departure from the original Citizen Sleeper. Where that game was largely set aboard a single station, Starward Vector takes place across the edge of a system, with multiple locations spread throughout a fairly lawless and fringe asteroid cluster. Because Laine is able to track and hunt you down, it’s impossible to stay on one station too long while you figure out a way to leave the Belt. And because you need to move, you also need a ship and a crew.

It’s impressive just how different this sequel can feel simply by virtue of having a steadily growing team of allies and some forward momentum. The lonely quest for familiarity and comfort in Citizen Sleeper is still a vibe, but there’s a greater sense of both danger and camaraderie this time around. Though you’re guaranteed to ally with an existing friend in Serafin, and an engineer named Bliss (whom I adore), the makeup of the rest of your crew is down to your choices and your approval.

This lends itself to an even wider breadth of systems, and consequently more potential outcomes and emergent stories. The sequel still carries that fantastic balance between authored prose and TTRPG-style storytelling driven by players’ engagement with said systems, but your constant need for fuel and resources informs and motivates your choices in new ways. Instead of the steadily declining condition that threatened a fail state in the first game, you’ll manage your Sleeper’s stress levels through adequate rest and nourishment. Let the stress build too much, and any number of your five dice will begin to collapse or glitch—making successful rolls more difficult and thus increasing the risk and challenge of doing just about anything.

It’s a fair few plates to spin as you juggle your ship’s resources and your own upkeep all while trying to make enough money, find enough information and form enough alliances to see through your goals and those of your crew—and at the same time constantly evading a near-omnipresent pursuer. And while it threatens to be a little too much at points, there’s an unconventional sense of reprieve to be found in another of Starward Vector’s new ideas, Contracts.

Smaller, self-contained missions that take place in their own pockets of the Belt, Contracts are especially challenging diversions that, paradoxically, also allow for a bit of distance from the tension of the core game. After picking up a contract, whether by a chance meeting on a station or through uncovering valuable information, you’ll fly off to a location and attempt to complete a set of goals before Stress sets in and you’re forced to head back. Preparation is key for these, ensuring you have enough supplies to last a fair few cycles and keep Stress at bay, as well as picking two crew mates to accompany with appropriate skills for what you’ll face.

Because Contracts take place in separate locations from the main areas, they’re a great way to divert attention away from your pursuer’s constant hunt and can result in lucrative rewards without wasting precious days on your core goals. They’re not without their own sets of choices and consequences though, making them just as exciting as anything else in the game.

With more opportunities comes more risk, and with more risk comes consequence and challenge far more dire than anything in the first game. But, like in the original Citizen Sleeper, there is hope here. It’s beaming, just underneath the surface, loud enough to shine out if you can only scratch a way through before you’re betrayed by fractures of your own.

Where before, positive and negative outcomes were largely consistent across any activity, the sequel’s added complexity means the risks and rewards come in many more forms. Failing a roll could mean losing energy, or currency, it could mean adding Stress to yourself or your crew, and likewise in the other direction for nailing a roll. While that might sound more fraught than ever it also introduces a wonderful new layer of strategy where taking a different risk can be just as viable an option as taking none at all.

So the gameplay loop is as intoxicating as ever, driven by both choice and chance but weighted, crushingly and appropriately, to the latter. You’ll earn, learn and hopefully overcome as much as possible, but you’re ultimately in the same boat as almost everyone you meet along the way—scraping by within an inch of your life. Artificial body be damned, you succumb to decay just the same, if not more so, and as frustrating as that can be it’s also an enormous driver of empathy. Funny how that works.

One of the most impressive results here is how tightly directed the whole experience feels in the face of all of these variables. It always seems that just when I’ve gambled myself into a corner, drained of funds or fuel to move forward, an enterprising broker is willing to trade credits for whatever precious components I’m willing to give up to get by. Or that every narrow escape from the cold clutches of a death in space is followed up by a reprieve so glorious it feels like cheating. But these moments aren’t driven by some algorithm or invisible game master, they’re simply authored with a pen that most could never dream to wield.

It’s something of a feat, to have produced a game that’s so driven by its systems, but that can instill an emotional response in the player that’s so strong they’re willing to fight those systems, or relent to them. One character in particular, the aforementioned Bliss, struck such a chord that I became unflinchingly protective of them even to the detriment of myself or my progress. Their story, their development, the honesty and intimacy with which they were written saw me pivot to play the game for them. A million modern AAA RPGs could never.

Final Thoughts

There are so many other great stories here. That much shouldn’t be a surprise after any experience with the first Citizen Sleeper. Those with a hunger for hard sci-fi have a lot of great stuff to chew on with threads of galactic war, human consciousness, survival, rebellion and so many more all woven together through a lively, messy, colourful array of communities. By the end, at least in my experience of it, Citizen Sleeper 2 is a starkly prescient story about finding your freedom, and fighting for it. But even more than that—for the citizens of The Belt, for your crew, for the Sleeper, and for those playing—it’s ultimately one about moving forward. 

Recapturing the lightning in a bottle that was Citizen Sleeper for another go around was surely a dice roll of its own, and one that I’m glad Jump Over the Age took the risk on. Don’t sleep on it.

Reviewed on PS5 // Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics