CITIZEN SLEEPER

Citizen Sleeper  is a 2022  role-playing   video game  by Jump Over the Age and published by Fellow Traveller for  macOS ,  Microsoft Windows ,  Nintendo Switch ,  Xbox One , and  Xbox Series X/S  on 5 May 2022. In  Citizen Sleeper , the player character is a "Sleeper," a human whose mind has been digitized and has been put into a robot body to be controlled by the Essen-Arp corporation. The player's Sleeper has escaped indentured servitude on a freighter and has arrived at a space station called the Eye, where they fight for both survival and freedom. The player meets a number of different people who represent different factions and interests. The game features multiple endings depending on the choice of the player. In order to progress the plot, survive, and escape the Eye, the player rolls a number of dice each in-game day. These dice are then placed into different tasks, where higher numbers generally indicate better outcomes. Lower numbers generally are useful on the data-cloud side of the station, which allow the player to gather intelligence on the activities of the various factions.  Higher numbers generally lead to better outcomes throughout the rest of the game. The player must constantly work in order to feed themselves and care for their degrading robot body which requires specialized materials to upkeep. Citizen Sleeper  was created and developed by Gareth Damian Martin, through their one-person game development studio Jump Over The Age. Character artwork was designed by Guillaume Singelin.  When Martin first began their work as a developer, they conceived of two games:  In Other Waters  and a game about being a thief in a fantasy city trying to survive hardships and poverty while getting involved in the political situation there. The latter changed to a sci-fi setting and became the basis for  Citizen Sleeper . During development, Martin focused on the intimate feeling of people coming together, and their own experiences as a  non-binary  person struggling to make ends meet in a city through the  gig economy . When playing science-fiction games like the  Mass Effect  series, Martin found themselves drawn to the side characters. "As science fiction stories drag the narrative toward explosive quests, I want to stay with these people living ordinary lives in extraordinary settings." They cited  Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor  as an example of the kind of story they were aiming towards, which showed how science-fiction could be a great space for  slice of life  gaming experiences. Contemporary experiences of  Uber  and other gig economy and debt experiences drove the direction of how Martin portrayed capitalism in the game.  Martin said, "I wanted to tell a story at  capitalism ’s periphery, where so many of us have learned how to exist." They also focused on how life can be incredibly precarious for people living at the periphery of capitalism, and they were inspired by  Anna Tsing 's  The Mushroom at the End of the World  among other works.