Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

Posted:  Jan 30, 2025
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Review

Citizen Sleeper 2 was provided by Fellow Traveller for review. Thank you!

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a curious one. While officially marketed as an "Adventure RPG," I would define it more as a Visual Novel with lite RPG elements. Normally, I'd be up for this mash-up of genres, but when you take into account all the other aspects of Citizen Sleeper 2, it left me feeling as though this game is one big missed opportunity.

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Citizen Sleeper 2 is incredibly text-heavy. I know it's an RPG, and they naturally tend to have an emphasis on story and text, but this falls into the realms of Visual Novel territory that sees you spending several minutes reading the non-voiced dialogue as it's displayed on the screen, with some occasional crucial choices through the dialogue screen.

Unfortunately, I wasn't a huge fan of the way this was handled. The fact that there are no voices for the characters is strange, considering that the game's main emphasis is the story, the characters, and their background. Perhaps even more strange is that there seems to be very little use of music or sound effects to match the situation. Something tense happens in the text on-screen, and the music carries on being a calm space ambiance. All characters are also represented by a still image, which doesn't alter depending on the situation.

While the text is fairly well-written from my point of view and can cause tension and sometimes make you think, the utter lack of atmosphere-building from a sound design and often visual perspective is quite baffling to me and harms the game's ability to tell its story.

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The story itself is... Well, it's fairly straightforward. You are a "Sleeper," a humanoid who emulates a human mind in an artificial body on the run from a corporation that built you and seeks to maintain control of you. Someone else enslaved by the corporation helps you escape, and the game is then focused on staying one step ahead of the corporation pursuing you by making sure your "Rig" (spaceship) is spaceworthy and assembling a crew to take on new contracts and earn that coveted Cryo (the game's currency).

The story isn't anything outlandish, and to be honest, I found many people online saying that Citizen Sleeper 1 was quite an emotional game, and I didn't find that to be the case with Citizen Sleeper 2. The writing is descriptive, but I wasn't finding myself getting attached to any of the characters, possibly due to the already-mentioned issues. You also don't get to dive deep into the character's backgrounds, so they can sometimes feel shallow.

You can't name yourself in the game either; everyone merely refers to you as "Sleeper." This made me start to wonder whether people were just saying it as a kind of derogatory term at points; it seems like an alienating design choice for the player. It really made me struggle to care about a player character who seems inhuman and essentially has no dialogue in the game beyond the actual choices you are given.

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As for the gameplay, Citizen Sleeper 2 employs an interesting mechanic where the dice that you roll at the start of each "cycle" (day) can be used to perform certain actions. It goes a bit more intricate than that, with certain characters having dice that can use their skills to boost the value of their dice. Still, ultimately, the gameplay hinges on RNG, with the random numbers on your rolled dice at the start of the cycle largely dictating how your next few actions will go.

It's a curious choice to add RNG to a largely story-based game, where players might feel that they lose the game through no fault of their own, especially considering the game has a hardcore mode where your save is lost upon death. As I said above, you can mitigate the RNG by leveling up your character and giving yourself an advantage, but there will always be a reasonable amount of randomness that impacts your gameplay and the choices you decide to make.

Aside from the dice rolls, you'll also be doing resource management. Citizen Sleeper 2 has key resources for you to balance, such as fuel, supplies, and Cryo. Fuel allows you to move around the map and increase the timer before your pursuers catch up to you. Supplies are used to keep your energy levels up and thus stave off "stress," which is a mechanic that can negatively impact your dice rolls. Cryo is money, which is used to buy fuel, supplies, and other resources, such as components that can fix dice that have been broken by stress, for example.

This does add some amount of strategy to the game, requiring players to prioritize what resources they want to gather at that particular time, mostly to keep extending the number of cycles until you are caught by your pursuers while still having crucial resources available to progress the game's storyline. In my opinion, this is the most well-executed part of the game, and having to think about your next few moves helped keep me engaged, even if it was disappointing how much RNG could affect my plans.

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In terms of presentation, Citizen Sleeper 2 is pretty basic. The UI is laid out clearly and boldly, which I was thankful for. The "background" is a 3D rendered environment that is pretty low poly, but it does a decent job of representing your world. The sound design, as I mentioned before, is a little lackluster. The game's audio is largely just space ambiance, with the occasional slight adjustment depending on what's happening on screen, but there's no real music or sound effects present in the game.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - Steam Deck Performance

Citizen Sleeper 2 works well for the most part on Steam Deck. The game supports 1280x800 as a resolution, so there are no black borders around the screen. The game also has controller support, although sometimes navigating the UI on a controller can be a little frustrating. Some text is small but generally readable. You can also increase the size of dialogue text, which I recommend.

The graphical settings are non-existent, so we cannot adjust them. I recommend you limit your Steam Deck to 30 FPS in the SteamOS frame limiter. Otherwise, the CPU goes into overdrive to hit 60 or 90 FPS, and at points, I dropped below 60 when playing. Given the game's style, 30 FPS is perfectly fine.

A TDP Limit of 5W generally works fine, but you may need 6W for some environments.

With a 30 FPS limit, the game tends to use around 8-10W on my Steam Deck OLED, meaning you should see around 5 hours of battery life, while the Steam Deck LCD would manage around 3.5 hours. Temperatures largely stayed around 55C.

Accessibility:

There is an ability to increase the text size of dialogue in the options menu, which I recommend, as well as the choice of 3 difficulties, Story mode, Normal, and Hardcore. Aside from that, there are no accessibility options in Citizen Sleeper 2.

Conclusion:

Citizen Sleeper 2 is a curious game. While billed as an Adventure RPG, it plays far more like a Visual Novel with light RPG elements. Is it well-written? Absolutely. The text is descriptive and does help build some word pictures in your mind, but that's not a replacement for the lack of graphic and audio design that lets the game down. The story also failed to grab my attention, as I struggled to care about the player character due to how "inhuman" the game portrays them and their interactions with others.

Making the game quite reliant on RNG was also a curious choice for a story-based game, particularly one that penalizes death heavily. While it can add some extra tension to the game, it can also feel cheap when your "25% chance to fail" keeps failing repeatedly. It can make you feel helpless through no fault of your own.

As for how Citizen Sleeper 2 runs on the Steam Deck, aside from some control issues selecting the right buttons on the UI and some overly CPU-intensive scenes, the game runs well when locked to 30 FPS, and you can fully enjoy the game on the Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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SDHQ's Build Score Breakdown

Citizen Sleeper 2 didn't really hold my attention, but the game does run well on Steam Deck aside from a couple of issues.

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Noah Kupetsky
A lover of gaming since 4, Noah has grown up with a love and passion for the industry. From there, he started to travel a lot and develop a joy for handheld and PC gaming. When the Steam Deck released, it just all clicked.
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