Point and click games are something I play a few and far between, but sometimes there are games that mix certain elements like space age with cyberpunk aesthetics, juxtaposed with odd cosmological supplements in digital form. Playing this game made me see that it's mixed so many ideas, it was a neurological overload just figuring them out.
In comes Citizen Sleeper, a narrative survival game that pits a robotic husk with a human like conscience in it, working for scraps and survival within a rotating spaceship filled with denizens of humans, all tightly packed with each other. It's one of those with stories with great world building and characters I got lost in, I just kept playing continuously.
I do like indie games that take certain ideas from other genres, and incorporate them here in ways that not only makes them interesting, but help immerse you into the game's overarching narrative. At one point, it's story driven, another is where you have to make choices that could otherwise result in the end of your life. As long as you live, you learn new tricks of the trade, and new skills to use in order to survive.
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The game starts right after I pick a save slot, and pick between 3 different classes. Playing it, I've only realized their class matters for gameplay reasons, little having to do with the story. The different classes helped you do certain tasks or missions a lot easier because of the skills they had. I picked mine as the Operator.
These missions would be story based, and they are called drives. The drives are activated when I come across distinguishing icons on the ship, and click on them, initiating a dialogue sequence where some choices I make responding to them either creates a different outcome or just ends all in the same way. Finishing these drives would give upgrade points, and based on story, would create new drives in extension to the prior one.
In this circular disc of a ship, I would often meet up interesting people like this old man named Dragos. If anyone's naïveté intuition had been activated at this sight, it would have been misleading. After he woke my character up, he started giving me work that revolves around fixing broken transports, and salvage parts for him so that he could sell them and pay off people he owes. It wasn't long till he told me I've outlived my use, and that I was too dangerous to work with him. Kind of a racist for androids if you ask me.
This is a survival sim, so doing these jobs helped me save up credit so that my character could progress through the story and kept themselves (assumed they are 'they' as gender) fed. Buying parts, and giving guards blocking other sectors of the ship money for access. I really was bumped out when a guy like him, who helped me so far, just shuts me out immediately.
From that point I realized anything that I did on this game, I would have to practice caution. Because choices in-between story and gameplay could negatively affect my character if I am not being careful enough.
After that dreary experience, I had this weird specter in the cyberspace realm attacking my character, calling them an "illegal entity" and that they should return the property back to the corporate that owns them. The game's story made it uneasy to play, as I was constantly guessing the looming threats that were around me. If it wasn't going to this specter, then some bounty hunter would come after me.
Thankfully, all the bad things doesn't blur the line between good and evil, as there were actual good people in-between. Take Ankhita for example, someone I've encountered whom have been a great contractor. Seeing someone frail as my sleeper, she handed her a large stack of credits real quick as advancements for a job. From that point, I put some hours into the game just to help her out.
It was already difficult enough with not being able to find good work, and keeping my character's body sustained long enough to survive unless they die out. Finding characters like these among all the drudgery was like finding a beacon of hope.
You could easily call this a Cyberpunk Disco Elysium, but that's half true, because the game isn't highly eclectic, but the writing also has wit, intelligible dialogue, all with an amazing world built up around it. That, for a Cyberpunk aficionado like me, can easily get lost in. Plus, the character designs are created by Guillaume Singelin, and the artwork looks similar to Lancer.
As I've mentioned before, half of the game is about survival, and the other half is trying to find ways to finish the missions and get closer to your mission goals. That is, if you've found what your main mission goals are to begin with, because the game doesn't give you any ideas on how to end it if you're no longer interested in continuing.
There's a chance based mechanics, where having a roll of 6 gives you 100% chance of a positive outcome, but a roll of 3 splits to 25% negative, 50% neutral, and 25% positive outcomes. Lower the dice, the worse your chances are. Those icons in the ship, I had to interact with, would need action dice to initiate with. Limited set of dice per cycle, renewing them means my character has to go to sleep in order to continue in the next one.
And since I am a runaway bucket of bolts, my condition deteriorates. This is why having currency is also important so that I could buy medication, and food. Food I guess is anything edible that can be converted into energy to maintain function. I say that, because again, my character isn't entirely human.
There's also the digital void where you hack into data nodes and steal information, or get key items for access elsewhere. Again, all of pertains to surviving or progressing through the story. Nothing much else.
Incorporating the gameplay to give this feeling that your character choices matter and that you have to make the best case of what you can get really sinks you into this nomad lifestyle. Not all is bad as there are people in this ship that sees you for your worth, and often times extend their sense of humanity towards you. Indie games like these often don't get the appreciation they deserve because of the lack of marketing, they're one of the few good ones in a pretty big market.
Citizen Sleeper was a unique experience for me. It doesn't have larger, deeper meanings, I believe. But ideologically speaking, it settled this feeling that no matter how hard things can get, the work you've put in, and the people you found trust in will always work out.
The issue is for a game, overall agency goes away when I can't figure what it is exactly that my goal here in this game. What is the actual silver lining outside the glimpses of capitalism going wrong. And you do so much work for these people, it didn't feel like my character actually developed in any tangible sense outside of getting upgrades. The reward and progression system here feels miff.
Lot of great ideas, but I am not sure if anybody really could get into this. A lot of players like playing story based interactive games now, but they either to see them as hit or miss. This is somewhere in between for them. For me, it's alright.