Review | Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - Bigger, Better, And More Existentially Challenging
I’ve got a confession: I sometimes put off playing sequels to games I love for fear that they won’t live up to my expectations or somehow do something so egregious as to take away from the experience I had with the previous game. So it was with trepidation that I launched Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector.
Luckily for me, that apprehension was misplaced and CS2 manages to expand on the first game both in its mechanics and its narrative to a huge degree of success. Building on a prior release (even something with as strong a foundation as Citizen Sleeper) is a risk, and Jump Over The Age has risen to meet the challenge and perhaps even exceeded expectations.
In Citizen Sleeper and its sequel, you play as a Sleeper — a fully synthetic body with the cloned but sanitised consciousness of a person stuffed inside. You are dependent on Stabilizer, a substance produced and controlled by the corporation that owns you, without which you will surely degrade into a useless pile of scrap, your artificial frame unable to sustain your mind.
This dependency served as the crux of the first game’s story, and I was curious to see whether CS2 would continue to trace the ebb and flow of need. CS2 manages to advance the story in this area, changing what it is that you need while keeping hold of the theme, which is integral to the story it’s telling. The change feels deft, skilful, and natural. So much of Citizen Sleeper (both the original and Starward Vector) works so well because it ties together its mechanics and themes with care and attention that few games can hope to achieve. This marriage is part of what elevates Citizen Sleeper 1 and 2 from good sci-fi stories into excellent, and often exceptional, games.
Starward Vector adds several new interconnected mechanics to its repertoire — contracts and crew, and stress and dice health. There’s a risk with a sequel that you’ll take something light and lithe and feed it new mechanics until it’s a bloated mess, but Citizen Sleeper 2 smartly builds on the original’s mechanics without overcomplicating or weighing itself down. It has certainly expanded on the scope of the first game (not just mechanically but the breadth of the story and what you can do is also larger) but it still feels tight and despite being longer, didn’t outstay its welcome.
Throughout the game, you will meet a huge variety of characters. Depending on your choices, some of these beautifully drawn folks will join your crew and you can take them along on contracts. They will lend you their dice for the actions they are skilled in but receive penalties for non-skilled checks, so choose your crew wisely. I did find that I had two crewmates I took along more often than others because their skills complemented my own well, and I definitely felt a greater attachment to those characters.
While out on contracts, certain actions can result in Stress — either for the contract overall, your crew, or yourself. If your crew are too stressed out, they will stop helping. If the contract accrues enough stress, things will start going wrong and you may find yourself in a sticky situation. If the player takes too much stress, rolling certain numbers will cause damage to your dice, eventually breaking them. You’ll then have fewer dice to use to complete your goals, which will force you to take risks — which could result in more stress and more broken dice. You can also take stress while not on contracts, but you’re much better placed to mitigate it, heal it, and fix the resulting broken dice when at a station.
The space Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector takes place in is also much more vast than the original game. You’re not confined to one space station anymore; you have a spaceship you can fly from place to place. Each location has its own vibe and cast of characters to interact with, different jobs to do, and different threads to unravel. It’s a masterful expansion on the original game, where different areas of the station Erlin’s Eye felt distinct but connected. Starward Vector’s space exploration allows for a broader depth of storytelling and worldbuilding, which only works in the game’s favour.
Speaking of the storytelling and worldbuilding, everything in the game is in service to the story, and it must be this way because the story is load-bearing in CS2. It feels almost disrespectful to write about the game’s writing — nothing I can say about it will really do it justice. The world, which is made out of speculative fiction, kindness, and characters, feels bigger than you, which it should. It doesn’t feel like things end at the bounds of the game. There’s a war happening, but you’re removed enough for it to be a kind of vague existential threat that could impact your world through supply troubles and unrest rather than bullets and active combat. Exploring this feeling felt extremely relevant as multiple conflicts rage on in our own world, imbuing each day with a sense of unease and distance.
I took so many screenshots of the game’s incredible writing. It manages to achieve some very difficult things. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it’s moving and resonant and connective within the game. The story that is told throughout Citizen Sleeper 2 is exactly the size and shape that it needs to be, with highs and lows and laughs and people in their worst moments and their best. At ten hours, you can’t really play Starward Vector in a single sitting like it is possible to do with the first game (ask me how I know), but I wanted to. I wanted to find the next story beat, meet the next person, have the next poignant moment. Conflictingly, I also wanted to savour it and take a long time over each and every encounter. I read everything slowly and carefully so as not to miss anything — each sentence carries weight here.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is brimming with themes, and every player will latch on to different aspects of it, depending on what is meaningful to them. It doesn’t shy away from discussing hard topics — the way it handles the “chronic illness” inherent in your Sleeper identity is just as thoughtful as in the first game, but with new developments added, both narrative and mechanical. Interpersonal relationships are a huge part of the game and the way you treat your friends, contacts, and crew matters. The war casts an uneasy pall over everything. Of course, these are just the things that resonated most with me, and I am sure that other players will pull other jewels from the crown depending on what they bring with them into the experience.
There was one element that I really hoped the sequel would build on from the first game, and that’s the look and feel of the environments. A huge amount of care and attention has gone into creating incredible character designs that feel distinct and complete, but the vastness of space has not received the same treatment. I firmly believe that space can be beautiful — just check out photos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope — but Starward Vector doesn’t expend its energy here. Given how good the characters look, this omission feels like a deliberate choice on the part of the game’s creators, and that’s fair — an indie game can never achieve everything. But as a fan of space generally, I wish I had more screenshots of the world rather than the dialogue and characters.
Don’t let that dissuade you, though. Overall, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector does a fantastic job of building on the first game without feeling bloated or stepping on its own toes. It shares with its predecessor a fascination for exploring deep themes, letting its excellent writing breathe and some truly stunning illustrated characters. All while continuing to fold in some plot beats that get your heart rate up. New mechanics keep things fresh without undermining the beautiful simplicity of the tabletop RPG-style gameplay. If you enjoyed Citizen Sleeper, it’s almost a sure thing that you’ll also enjoy its sequel, but it’s similar enough that it won’t change any minds, so if the first game wasn’t your cup of tea then don’t expect any different from Starward Vector.
The game has left me, nearly a week after finishing, still thinking about it, and I am sure I will be for a long time to come. January feels very early to start compiling “Game of The Year” lists, but Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector will be on mine.
