Played this recently after hearing good things. It broadly has the "build cozy community in late-stage capitalism" vibe. The early game (first 3 hours?) is excellent and pairs very well with the game mechanics. There is a real feeling of living on the edge even though the risk of failure is allegedly faked (the game isn't a roguelike). However, after that you become powerful enough that the survival mechanics are rendered irrelevant; you have enough money to buy as much food as you want, and can easily forage or buy scrap material to repair yourself. Thus the latter two thirds relies heavily on its story, which is really a bit one-note. The fundamental fantasy is that you can solve everybody's problems, making you this bizarre superhuman space-station-spanning force. This works against the overall plot that is about being a marginalized outsider building community to carve out a place for a small life in the cosmos, because you can singlehandedly remake the reality of the entire space station. Interesting conflicts within this new community you have made are not really ever explored, and it's entirely stuck in the wholesome solarpunk commune vs. giant menacing intergalactic corporations rut. Even the late-game refugee plot (ripped from today's headlines!) does not fully explore the interesting angle of how a humanistic system can handle refugees when life support systems could be authentically taxed by their arrival. I think here of The Dispossessed, where (spoilers to follow) a planet-wide famine is addressed in a messy but basically equitable way.
I've heard the sequel is a lot more difficult so perhaps it is worth checking out.-
erik [he/him] - 3w
I enjoyed it a lot. I wasn't really looking for challenge, I was looking for vibes and it delivers that really well. It's more of a visual novel than an RPG, and that's fine imo.
15
GeckoChamber [he/him] - 3w
A case where the game not letting the player do everything they want would make it much better, even if "requiring multiple playthroughs to see all the content" sounds bad on paper
11
LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them] - 3w
It's a relatively short game, too, which makes that totally appealing. I wish more people would make shorter CRPGs - makes my character creator decision paralysis better because I'll easily have a chance to play a few times
10
invalidusernamelol [he/him] - 3w
You actually can see almost everything on a single playthrough if you can get a good start. At least all the "positive" ending stuff
5
LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them] - 3w
The sequel has some of the same late-game problems (becoming OP, even on the hard difficulty). If you enjoyed the writing enough, I would recommend giving the second one a shot. You're running odd jobs on a space ship and I felt like I had quite a few tense moments.
I picked up Duskpunk recently after one of the developers posted about it here. It had a similar structure to the first Citizen Sleeper, but in a early 20th century scifi setting. I'd recommend it to people looking for a similar rules light RPG experience after playing both CS games, even if I didn't love-love it (it was still pretty fun).
8
erik [he/him] - 3w
Good shoutout on Duskpunk. Really wish the dev would put it on GOG or someplace with no DRM.
7
Palacegalleryratio [he/him] - 3w
I enjoyed my time with citizen sleeper. Some of the moments in the game affected me more strongly than I’d have expected. However overall the story did suffer a bit from “everything is better with the power of hard work and friendship, the good guys always win in the end” But I got towards the end and just felt bored. I had a stack of medicine, loads of scrap and good perks etc, and I then just lost interest. I didn’t finish the dlc.
At some point once I’ve had a rest I’ll give citizen sleeper 2 a go. But not for a minute.
towhee in games
Citizen Sleeper - it was all right
Played this recently after hearing good things. It broadly has the "build cozy community in late-stage capitalism" vibe. The early game (first 3 hours?) is excellent and pairs very well with the game mechanics. There is a real feeling of living on the edge even though the risk of failure is allegedly faked (the game isn't a roguelike). However, after that you become powerful enough that the survival mechanics are rendered irrelevant; you have enough money to buy as much food as you want, and can easily forage or buy scrap material to repair yourself. Thus the latter two thirds relies heavily on its story, which is really a bit one-note. The fundamental fantasy is that you can solve everybody's problems, making you this bizarre superhuman space-station-spanning force. This works against the overall plot that is about being a marginalized outsider building community to carve out a place for a small life in the cosmos, because you can singlehandedly remake the reality of the entire space station. Interesting conflicts within this new community you have made are not really ever explored, and it's entirely stuck in the wholesome solarpunk commune vs. giant menacing intergalactic corporations rut. Even the late-game refugee plot (ripped from today's headlines!) does not fully explore the interesting angle of how a humanistic system can handle refugees when life support systems could be authentically taxed by their arrival. I think here of The Dispossessed, where (spoilers to follow) a planet-wide famine is addressed in a messy but basically equitable way.
I've heard the sequel is a lot more difficult so perhaps it is worth checking out.-
I enjoyed it a lot. I wasn't really looking for challenge, I was looking for vibes and it delivers that really well. It's more of a visual novel than an RPG, and that's fine imo.
A case where the game not letting the player do everything they want would make it much better, even if "requiring multiple playthroughs to see all the content" sounds bad on paper
It's a relatively short game, too, which makes that totally appealing. I wish more people would make shorter CRPGs - makes my character creator decision paralysis better because I'll easily have a chance to play a few times
You actually can see almost everything on a single playthrough if you can get a good start. At least all the "positive" ending stuff
The sequel has some of the same late-game problems (becoming OP, even on the hard difficulty). If you enjoyed the writing enough, I would recommend giving the second one a shot. You're running odd jobs on a space ship and I felt like I had quite a few tense moments.
I picked up Duskpunk recently after one of the developers posted about it here. It had a similar structure to the first Citizen Sleeper, but in a early 20th century scifi setting. I'd recommend it to people looking for a similar rules light RPG experience after playing both CS games, even if I didn't love-love it (it was still pretty fun).
Good shoutout on Duskpunk. Really wish the dev would put it on GOG or someplace with no DRM.
I enjoyed my time with citizen sleeper. Some of the moments in the game affected me more strongly than I’d have expected. However overall the story did suffer a bit from “everything is better with the power of hard work and friendship, the good guys always win in the end” But I got towards the end and just felt bored. I had a stack of medicine, loads of scrap and good perks etc, and I then just lost interest. I didn’t finish the dlc.
At some point once I’ve had a rest I’ll give citizen sleeper 2 a go. But not for a minute.