Space can be a dark, lonely place. Doubly so when you add in the dystopian backdrop of two hyper-corporations warring at a galactic scale, leading to mass suffering and a world where everyone simply wants to survive. That’s where we find ourselves, at least to start. As the game progresses and we make friends, crewmates, enemies, and more, a glimpse of light slowly becomes visible in the distance. Do we make it? Or do we fall to the wayside like so many before us?
Find out in the XboxEra Review of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector.
Wake Up Sleeper
Developed by Jump Over the Age, a one-person game development studio founded by Gareth Damian Martin, this second game in the Citizen Sleeper series, Starward Citizen, has you once again play as a “Sleeper”, a robotic shell imbued with a copy of someone else’s consciousness. You exist solely as corporate labour, the property of a mega corporation called Essen-Arp. Or at least, you did, as similar to the first game, this one also starts off with you on the run trying to claim your freedom in a world desperate to extinguish it.
The premise so far should sound pretty familiar to anyone who’s played the first game, but make no mistake, Starward Vector has its own unique characteristics and spins on what at first looks quite familiar. Before I dive into some of the gameplay changes though, I wanted to talk about how this sequel, at its core, is telling a different story. Rather than constantly feeling like you’re on the run, such as in much of the first game, this time you get more chances to breath, relax, and enjoy a journey alongside others.
You’re accompanied by a growing crew of misfits, each with their own story and motivations, onboard the Rig, your handy ship piloted by a close friend of yours, Serafin. This time around the world opens up a fair bit as you travel to different satellites, settlements, asteroid fields and more. I could go on and on here, but one of the best parts of the game was exploring new areas, meeting new people and slowly piecing together what they needed. So I’ll leave it to you to discover.
The gist of it is, if the first game was a more focused, solo experience, this one felt more like a ragtag crew traveling through space, making friends and enemies alike. All of these story beats told to you through a visual novel like method, where you also make your own decisions every so often.
Roll The Dice
The gameplay in Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is similar to the first game in its core concept, namely that you utilize pre-rolled dice (that are rolled at the start of every day) for almost every action you want to do, and how well you perform said action is determined by how high of a dice you’re using. If you utilize a dice roll of only 1 or 2, then you have a 50% chance of either failing or obtaining a ‘neutral’ result. If you use a 3 or a 4, you have a 25% chance of a ‘positive’ result, 50% for a ‘neutral’ one and 25% for a ‘negative’ one. Use a 5 and it’s half half either positive or neutral, with no chance for a negative result. And finally, if you were lucky enough to roll a 6 then it’s a guaranteed positive result.
As you can imagine, these rolls have their own elements of risk involved. Even the various actions you do will vary from ‘safe’, ‘risky’, and ‘danger’. The consequences for failure and the rewards for a positive result can differ as well, from simply losing energy to triggering a system failure, or from just gaining energy or getting through a task much quicker. This balance of risk and reward is what makes up the bulk of your gameplay and take it from me, it can get pretty addictive pretty quickly. There were times where I found myself making some pretty desperate rolls as I was running out of time to complete a task and sometimes it was worth the risk. Thankfully, this is where the various attributes and your Sleeper class come into play.
As I mentioned before, there are five attributes in this game and each action that you do is always linked to one of them. At the start of the game you can choose between one of three classes, the primary differences between them being in which of the attributes you have bonuses to and which one you have a penalty to. For example, I played as the Machinist class, where I had a bonus to the “Engineer” attribute, a temporary penalty to “Endure” and a permanent penalty to “Engage”. This forced me to pick and choose which actions or which paths to take during my playthrough, though thankfully you’re given ways to remove temporary penalties and increase your bonuses by spending skill points earned by completing the various quests throughout the game.
More Than Just a Fresh Coat of Paint
Now the above gameplay was for the most part present in the first game too, so you might be wondering what else did they add? And the answer is two additions to the gameplay loop, both of which I enjoyed a fair bit. The first one is straightforward, in Starward Vector you have access to The Rig, your ship and home which you’ll use to travel throughout the game. Utilizing the consumable resource ‘fuel’ (which you can purchase at most locations), you utilize the “Belt Map” to travel from one location to another. Each time you make it to somewhere new, it feels like the beginning of another adventure.
The second addition was something I thought greatly added to the overall experience, and this came in the form of “contracts”, isolated missions that change up some of the mechanics. I mentioned how this game has you travel with a crew, right? Well, this is where they come in handy, gameplay wise. Every so often you’ll get either a quest or an optional contract where you travel to somewhere specific. Over here you almost always have some kind of timeline to get whatever you need to done, either in the forms of limited supply (another consumable resource you can purchase), which determines how many cycles you can remain there, or sometimes you have another, more immediate, timer ticking down, such as being on an unstable ship that may blow at any time.
Each crewmember you bring has their own affinity (and lack of) to certain attributes, and they each roll two die of their own at the start of every cycle while on a contract. You can utilize these die just as you would one of your own, but you need to keep an eye out for what makes and what doesn’t. The final thing that only comes to play during these contracts is your chosen Sleeper’s “Push”, an ability you can only use once per cycle while out on a contract. Each class has a slightly different ability, such as increasing the value of your lowest dice roll or maybe rerolling the whole thing instead. These can be quite handy in sticky situations, especially when you upgrade them into being even more beneficial (or less harmful).
There’s more I could talk about, such as glitched dice, stress, and energy, but none of the systems in this game are particularly complicated and each are explained well. The game is also more than forgiving enough, even on the normal difficulty, in that a little experimentation doesn’t hurt you.
We Each Have Our Story
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector carries the beautiful art and style from the first game. Each major character is given their own portrait, often changing at least a few times throughout the game, and the 3D design of the various locations you visit are as visually striking as ever. The mix of these visuals and the mostly subdued soundtrack help bring the somber, dark, and desolate world in which the game takes place alive. One character in particular, near the end, took me by surprise and the way they were drawn was a very big part of it. I’m also happy to report that I had little to no bugs at all in my playthrough. There was a time or two where I’d lose my cursor, but pressing the d-pad a few times in any direction brought it back soon enough.
Starward Vector certainly has a gameplay loop that is immensely satisfying to play, something it shares from the first game, but there were a few areas where I felt the game didn’t succeed quite as well. Namely, I thought the game this time around was a little too easy. There were only maybe one or two times in my entire twelve-or-so hour playthrough where I was even close to failing a major objective, or, to be honest, even a minor one. This could be because I was used to the mechanics already from the first game though.
Another aspect where I was really hoping for more was in the contract quantity. I had no issues at all with the gameplay in the various focused missions, in fact, they were almost always fantastic. I just wanted more. I was hopeful when I first saw the mechanic that it would mean more optional contracts to pick up, or maybe some at a much higher difficulty, but for the most part, they were only used for either central story moments or for crew member quests. This wasn’t the biggest deal, but I certainly would have liked even more to do.
A Worthy Successor
You’ll notice that I haven’t touched too much on the central plot of the game, and I’m going to keep it that way, but I will mention that those who’ve played the first game may recognize a character or two… The narrative, character interactions, and the decisions you make throughout, all come together to form a touching story about identity, existence, and sheer perseverance in the face of terrible odds. The game didn’t try to hide when the credits would roll at all letting me prepare a fair bit before saying goodbye, and yet when that moment came it hit me emotionally all the same. I’d urge anyone playing the game to do so with an open mind, one where you try your hardest not to judge those you interact with right away and to give others the time they need to truly open themselves up. Heck, I think that’s a good way to judge people in real life too, let alone a videogame.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a worthy successor to one of the best indie games of the last few years. With it’s addictive gameplay loop, compelling and touching story, great art design, and more, I’d say anyone even remotely interested should give the game a look. Especially considering it’s releasing on Xbox Game Pass, and heck, is one of the best games for cloud gaming there is!
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Touching and compelling story
- Gameplay loop that remains as addcitive as ever
- New additions to gameplay fit well
- Diverse and interesting cast of characters
- Traveling through space with a ragtag crew
CONS
- Contract system could be utilized more
- Not as intense as the first game
