CHENNAI: Citizen Sleeper has become a quick success, which surprises me because I assumed that reading isn’t the first virtue you would associate with people who play videogames. It took me a while to figure out the game although everything about it is vividly descriptive. It took me even more time to get used to the fact that the gameplay involved mostly reading people’s stories. If it isn’t evident already, Citizen Sleeper is a text-based game. But it also has a very table-top RPG playstyle. The strange dissonance of this game is that — anyone could play it and finish it, but it probably isn’t for everyone.
It would be extremely lazy of me to compare Citizen Sleeper to Disco Elysium. But I’m going to do it anyway because there are some obvious similarities. Both games focus entirely on stories and interactions with people; there’s a lot to read.
Both stories are set in a dystopian environment. There exists dice-roll based luck involved in actions that are attempted. Time is cyclical. But that’s all there is. In every other way, Citizen Sleeper and Disco Elysium are as different as chalk and cheese. The game begins with me emerging from artificial sleep as a “Sleeper”, in an unknown space station.
It takes a birds-eye view of the space station, and movement is limited to toggling between the rooms. As a “Sleeper”, I am a being that is not entirely living and breathing, but not a machine either. With limited resources for my survival, I seek regular medication as to not dissolve into obsolescence. I speak to several people I meet in the station.
They all have odd favours that need fulfilment which would give me the resources to progress. However, completing these missions require consumption of my energy, luck, and several time cycles. There is only limited activity I can carry out in given day because my energy can only afford a few die rolls at any given time cycle. I must use this judiciously, and optimise the activity carried out, so that I don’t starve during the next cycle.
But forget the last paragraph. The gameplay element is really an exceedingly small part of the experience. Citizen Sleeper is a game about people living in a space station — their motivations, their lives, and some societal discourse in a sci-fi world. Citizen Sleeper is a remarkably interesting interactive fiction adventure, less a game. I played it on the Nintendo Switch, which perfectly bookmarks and picks up the game from where I left it. The game is also available on the Xbox, and PC (Windows and Mac).