Citizen Sleeper is a role-playing video game that came out in 2022. It was made available by Fellow Traveller on several platforms, including macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on May 5, 2022. It was also released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on March 31, 2023.
A sequel called Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector was released on January 31, 2025.
Plot
In the game Citizen Sleeper, the player controls a character called a "Sleeper," a human whose mind has been turned into digital data and placed inside a robot body. This body is controlled by the Essen-Arp corporation. The Sleeper has escaped forced labor on a spaceship and has arrived at a space station called the Eye. There, they must fight to survive and gain freedom. The Sleeper meets many people who belong to different groups with different goals. The game has several endings based on the player's choices.
The Eye was originally owned by the Solheim corporation, but the company collapsed many years ago, causing chaos on the station. A group called Havenage, a trade union, became the main power on the station and now shares control with a criminal gang named Yatagan.
The Sleeper is found by a scrap merchant named Dragos, who gives them shelter in an empty shipping container and lets them work at his business. However, after several "cycles" (the game's day/night system), Dragos becomes afraid of punishment from Essen-Arp and stops helping the Sleeper. From this point, the player can follow different story paths.
The Sleeper learns that their robot body is designed to break down over time without a special chemical called a stabilizer, which Essen-Arp makes. To survive, the Sleeper finds Sabine, a doctor who works for Yatagan. Sabine gets the stabilizer from criminals but charges the Sleeper a very high price for each dose. Later, Sabine leaves, and the next stabilizer the Sleeper buys includes a key and a hidden message. The key leads to Sabine's home, where Sabine asks the Sleeper to help them escape Yatagan. After sending hacked data to Yatagan agents, Sabine finds out that their cybernetic implants are secretly sending information to an unknown receiver. Sabine believes Yannick, Yatagan's leader, is using the implants to spy on agents for a corporate sponsor.
Sabine does not meet the Sleeper at their next meeting, so the Sleeper meets Rabiah, a Yatagan enforcer. Rabiah says Sabine was once employed by Essen-Arp and may not be trustworthy. Rabiah offers the Sleeper a job as a Yatagan enforcer to prove Yatagan is not evil. Later, Sabine confronts Rabiah and shows evidence that Yannick is working with Essen-Arp. Sabine apologizes for hiding their past and reveals they are a whistleblower who opposed the Sleeper project.
Rabiah arranges a meeting between Yannick and the Sleeper, convincing Yannick to hire the Sleeper as a personal enforcer. After working several jobs, the Sleeper finds a hidden device in Yannick's office. When the Sleeper destroys it, Yannick dies, and the Sleeper realizes Yannick was a remote-controlled body. Rabiah and Sabine thank the Sleeper for helping them. Sabine gives the Sleeper more stabilizer but warns they can no longer get more, as Yannick was getting the supply from Essen-Arp.
The Sleeper is contacted by Feng, an information security specialist who works for Havenage. Feng warns the Sleeper that their body has a tracker Essen-Arp will use to find them. Feng offers to disable the tracker if the Sleeper helps investigate Havenage. Using data from the Sleeper, Feng discovers that Havenage's leader, Hardin, was once employed by Solheim and harmed many workers, including Feng's parents. Feng fails to expose Hardin and goes into hiding.
After the Sleeper gives Feng data from Hardin's agents, Feng learns Hardin is planning to partner with another corporation called Conway. Feng and the Sleeper hack Hardin's security to watch a meeting between Hardin and a Conway official. They broadcast the meeting, exposing Hardin publicly. Feng is rehired by Havenage and disables the Sleeper's tracker as promised.
The Sleeper's tracker allows Essen-Arp to find them, leading to a bounty hunter named Ethan. Ethan agrees to let the Sleeper live if they pay his bar tab weekly. Later, Ethan learns Essen-Arp canceled his contract and gave it to Maywick, a dangerous mercenary. Ethan warns the Sleeper and offers protection if they help him pay his bar debt.
If the Sleeper fails to remove the tracker, Ethan will hand them over to Maywick, even if they helped him. Maywick kills Ethan, and the Sleeper uses Ethan's gun to kill Maywick. If the tracker is removed, Maywick never arrives, and Ethan leaves, thinking the Sleeper is dead.
If the Sleeper works in the shipyard, they meet Lem, a worker caring for a girl named Mina. Lem wants to leave the Eye and hopes to board the Sidereal Horizon, a generation ship offering passage to workers. The Sleeper agrees to babysit Mina, bonding with Lem. Lem reveals Mina is not his biological daughter but an orphan he adopted from a damaged ship.
After the Sidereal Horizon is built, it is revealed only corporate employees are eligible for tickets, and Havenage limits this to its leaders. Lem is upset, but the Sleeper helps find another way. They meet Castor, a data broker, who offers to forge tickets for Lem and Mina if the Sleeper accompanies them to spy on the Horizon's corporate activities.
This storyline has four endings: the Sleeper can refuse Castor's offer, accept it but destroy the tickets, accept it but hide the tickets to travel alone, or give the tickets to Lem and Mina and stay behind. If the Sleeper travels on the Horizon, the game ends with an epilogue stating the Sleeper's body eventually breaks down after decades. If they accompany Lem and Mina, Lem dies during the voyage, but Mina survives. If the Sleeper refuses or stays, Castor is disappointed but does not punish them.
While working on the station, the Sleeper meets Ankhita, a mercenary needing repairs for her damaged ship. Ankhita explains her ship's "shipmind," an artificial intelligence, was stolen by her teammate Ashton. She asks the Sleeper to help find Ashton. If the Sleeper succeeds, Ashton reveals he stole the shipmind to save another Sleeper whose body is failing. Ankhita kills Ashton and the Sleeper he was trying to save but regrets the outcome. She pays the Sleeper, who can choose to accept or refuse the money.
In the central hub of the Eye, the Sleeper meets Bliss and Moritz, engineers wanting to start a repair business. If the Sleeper gives Bliss seed money, Bliss gets a contract and asks for the Sleeper's help. However, the payment for the job is stolen.
Gameplay
To move the story forward, stay alive, and avoid the Eye, the player rolls dice each day in the game. These dice are used for different tasks, and usually, higher numbers mean better results. Lower numbers are helpful on the data-cloud part of the station, letting the player collect information about the groups. Higher numbers usually lead to better results in other parts of the game. The player must keep working to get food and care for their robot body, which gets worse over time and needs special materials to keep it running.
Development
Citizen Sleeper was created and developed by Gareth Damian Martin. Martin worked with their London-based one-person game development studio called Jump Over The Age. The character artwork was designed by Guillaume Singelin. When Martin first started working as a game developer, they planned two games: In Other Waters and a game about a thief in a fantasy city trying to survive poverty and difficult situations while getting involved in politics. The second game changed to a science-fiction setting and became the basis for Citizen Sleeper.
During development, Martin focused on showing how people can come together and share experiences. They also included their own life as a non-binary person struggling to earn money in a city through gig economy jobs. While playing science-fiction games like the Mass Effect series, Martin noticed how stories often focus on exciting adventures. They wanted to highlight everyday people living in unusual places instead. They mentioned Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor as an example of the kind of story they aimed to create, which shows how science-fiction can explore everyday life in extraordinary settings.
Martin was influenced by real-life experiences with companies like Uber and the challenges of debt. They wanted to tell a story about people living on the edges of capitalism, where many people learn how to survive. They were also inspired by Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World and other similar works.
The developers released three additional DLC packs, which are extra game content available for free. The first DLC, called Flux, was released in July 2022. The second chapter, Refuge, was released in October 2022. The final chapter, Purge, was released in March 2023.
Reception
Citizen Sleeper received "generally favorable" reviews, according to the review aggregator Metacritic. At its release, Polygon listed Citizen Sleeper among the best games of 2022.
Reviewers praised the game's writing. Many reviewers highlighted the well-developed characters in the game. The Guardian's Lewis Packwood described the writing as "gloriously evocative and compelling" and noted that the game's story felt "intriguing and unique." Polygon's Alexis Ong said the game's ability to move players away from focusing on specific goals in the plot was its "greatest strength." IndieGameReviewer wrote that the game's combination of a virtual ghost world and an unfamiliar wet world created a "simply sublime and rare experience," placing it third on its list of top 10 games of 2022.
Critics praised the game's simple and clear mechanics. Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell described the game's mechanics as creating a "wonderful elegance" in a positive review.
The game's three free DLC chapters received positive feedback from critics. Polygon's Nicole Clark noted that the first chapter, Flux, changed how she played the game by encouraging her to create systems to help the community of The Eye overall, not just her character's friends. The Gamer's Ben Sledge said the second chapter lacked urgency, but the third chapter balanced the pacing of the second.
Related media
In 2024, a book titled Citizen Sleeper: Design Works was published by Lost in Cult. The same company also released a tabletop role-playing game named Cycles of the Eye, which was co-designed by Gareth Damian Martin. A serialized, text-based story called Helion Dispatches, which connects the events of the first game and its sequel, was released on Martin's Substack.
Sequel
A sequel called Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector was released for Windows in June 2023. A version for Xbox Series was announced in August 2023, and versions for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 were made available in June 2024. The sequel was officially released on January 31, 2025.