Here comes again: Void. The game has found countless reasons to push players into an unknown vast space, and Citizen Sleeper embraces this emptiness. My demo opens in the dim, and my player character tries to piece together memory and time fragments.

Citizen Sleeper is Jump Over The Age's upcoming independent adventure game, which is a developer of underwater exploration adventures in other waters. One abyss swaps for another, and the citizen sleeper enters space, where you play as an out-of-control sleeper-a person who has digitized himself and is put into an artificial body. While escaping from a company that wants to reclaim its property, you find yourself in Erlin's Eye, a circular station on the edge of the system.

Back in my demo, I was awakened by a friendly mechanic. He is very helpful. But I will be at work soon. I am seeking to survive, and when I try to find some stability, money can protect my declining electric meter. Piecemeal work will be crucial.

Here, I can start rolling dice every day and put these dice in various activities. High rolling means successful or neutral results, while low rolling means neutral or negative results. This is a system that reminds me of board games. Developer Gareth Damian Martin told me that it was a big inspiration.

The eyes are full of exploring activities, characters and storylines. Helping strangers near the pier may result in lucrative odd jobs, and becoming a bar patron may result in friendship with local bartenders. Maybe you can get a stable performance from it. Or maybe you would rather spend time working in the shipyard to help wake up your mechanic, lest he lose business. Similar to the way the desktop RPG Blades in the Dark takes downtime into account, Citizen Sleeper asks players where they want to go and what they are interested in, and Martin's virtual DMing can guide them in all directions.

Martin told me: "I do think that when it comes to "Citizen Sleeper", a lot of development is in the pre-production stage." "It's like DMing from a very long distance in time and space, just like people in different countries, It’s the same in different years. But to a certain extent, the relationship is still the same. I still try to seduce people with hooks. I still try to surprise people by appearing narratives at some unexpected moments."

Dice is part of the narrative toolset, which creates a constant balance of risk and reward. Some days, I have to consider where to spend my best time; 6 is a guaranteed positive result, which is very useful for making progress on certain tasks or getting some foolproof cash. However, 6 may also be more suitable for my hacking, and I need a specific roll of dice to unlock the information door and obtain data. Or maybe I can burn a roller in a trivial task, or risk a potential net neutral result.

All the time, hunger has been declining, and my state is also depreciating. One of the earliest problems to be dealt with is that sleepers need special drugs to maintain themselves, as the organic soul in the inorganic body, and these are controlled by the company. An early task that was vital to getting through every day allowed me to reach an agreement with a back alley doctor who could provide me with the medicines I needed. What needs to be clear is that the drug has some side effects. But they prevented my appearance from bleeding slowly. It's worth it.

However, this does not completely prevent starvation and death. One of my favorite systems is the clock Martin uses to keep players going. The mission will have a radial clock ticking over time, resulting in a new storyline. At first, they may look like simple schedules. But in reality, they seem to me like a reward for time spent in one place.

I mentioned the bar story before, but in essence, if you stay in a bar long enough and become a "frequent customer", you will have a story event popping up. After a conflict with some locals who are not treating you well, the bartender will support you and you can start to establish contact with them. I went from being a bar owner to being a bar worker, and over time, I finally won a new place for myself. We are used to being rewarded for doing something in the game, but exposing the system to the radial clock makes these actions more tempting and interesting.

"I think it's really interesting to let players know by making a public process,'If I do this action, things will happen closer and closer'," Martin said. "This is a very good hook."

Comparing destiny missions with destiny missions such as thorns, Martin told me how mediocrity becomes interesting in storytelling. Even if you are doing very simple tasks and trivial tasks, a progress bar constructed in the right way will feel effective and powerful. This is what I felt during the several broadcasts of the "Citizen Sleeper" demo.

On some days, I will have the money to eat at a delicious food stall with a friendly chef instead of buying basic things from the machine. Some mornings, I wake up five or six chins, with bright eyes, ready to welcome a new day. And in one run, as the end of the world clock counted down to the last digit I needed, I rolled so low that I couldn't advance.

"Similarly, it comes directly from my own experience, about what it's like to work in a bad job. What it's like to be in trouble," Martin said. "It's like, a few days you wake up and roll everything up, right? It's like, that's how it feels, you know. It doesn't matter what you do that day."

However, it is not necessarily a survival game. Really, to me, Citizen Sleeper feels like a living game. I know it sounds tacky, but it's about community life. Erlin's Eye is the home of wanderers and willful souls, full of hooligans and liars. But wanting to escape the life under the thumbs of the company has a sense of unity.

In this community, family members can be found. It can be built through hard work. Repeated attempts, failures and successes, and unwavering visits can avoid eroding the timer, which may eventually cause you to gradually degenerate. The choice is not terrible, and there is no apocalyptic disaster to uncover—at least, not in my presentation. It just determines where my time should go.

"It's like you either come to help others every day, or you don't," Martin told me. "If you don't show up every day, it will have an impact."

Coupled with Guillaume Singelin's absolutely wonderful character art and exquisite interface (with a click and drag rotatable ring), Citizen Sleeper already has many functions. It resonates well, yes. Its look and feel are deeply integrated into its depiction of the "eye" as the home of the willful astronaut. Its instrument hanging overhead conveys the looming horror of corporate revenge.

Also, I want to return to Erlin's Eye just to hang out. Just to fill the stools of my favorite bar again. Chat with a local street vendor to learn more about this kind doctor, who rescued my soul from the man-made shell in a less delicious way. Perhaps in the end, more secrets of the eyes will be discovered in the process.

Even in the demo, there are beats that I didn't find. A topic I didn’t pursue, even though I saw some different changes in the ending. Maybe I haven't touched them yet, or really, I don't want to exhaust all the options yet. It is a very happy thing to uncover the secrets of "Citizen Sleeper" through work, rest and relaxation. I will leave some on the launch day.

Citizen Sleeper will land on PC in 2022. You can find the Steam page and wishlist buttons here.

Filed in... #adventure #Citizen Sleeper #Hands-on #Impressions #indies #Interview #Jump Over The Age #PC #preview #RPG #Tabletop

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