What if Mass Effect‘s gameplay focused on surviving and inciting change in an interplanetary, corporately wrought dystopia instead of shooting things in the face? I imagine Jump Over the Age’s solo developer, Gareth Damian Martin, asked a question along these lines when planning the development of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector. Not that there’s anything wrong with shooting things in the face in a videogame, but I appreciate the growing trend of RPGs that choose the pen over the sword, or gun, or explosive science magic. The comparison is still the key here, though, because what ultimately distinguishes this sequel from its already great predecessor is a thematic focus on camaraderie. In other words, you get to fly around space recruiting and working with a crew of compelling characters as you see each other through interesting story arcs steeped in imaginative yet purposefully grounded cyberpunk fiction.
The first Citizen Sleeper was about survival. The questlines surrounded individual characters looking to make the most of their lives in a broken and unforgiving vision of colonized space. Playing it felt appropriately alienating. As an emulated mind in a robotic body, Sleepers occupy the boundary between human and machine. This otherness is something you felt around every corner of the game’s interactions. Survival was also foregrounded mechanically through the Condition stat and the Stabilizer item required to restore it: a necessary antidote to the planned obsolescence designed to keep Sleepers dependent on their corporate owners.
Citizen Sleeper 2 is about groups, trust, and change. It challenges its characters to push aside their individual concerns and strive for a better future—as fruitless as it might be in the long run of perpetual corporate power struggles. Due to an unconsensual experiment gone wrong at the game’s outset, Starward Vector’s Sleeper becomes an anomaly who is no longer dependent on Stabilizer. The escape from this physical need allows our Sleeper to form a community of straggler companions to associate with as equals, despite some unfortunate caveats from said experiment.
The person responsible for your new condition is Laine, an unnerving control-hungry psychopath determined to make Sleepers like you an extension of his will by modifying your hardware and overwriting your remaining autonomy. You manage to escape from his clutches with help from a human captive, Serafin, and the two of you steal a spaceship and go on the run. This ship, referred to as The Rig, is your mobile home throughout the game; the hard-headed yet endearing Serafin is the first of many companions you can welcome aboard as you travel across the Starward Belt’s collection of stations, colonies, and other floating piles of dilapidated machinery and space rocks that humanity now calls home. Compared to the single explorable settlement in Citizen Sleeper, the sequel’s world feels delightfully vast without sacrificing a detail-oriented sense of place.
Citizen Sleeper is a slick, intuitive blend of visual novel presentation and tabletop-like RPG systems, and its sequel sticks to this foundation. The game is structured in days (or “cycles,” since there aren’t conventional days in the middle of space) that give you a randomized roll of five six-sided dice. You click on icons to navigate points of interest across the settlement where you’re stationed and slot dice to perform actions in those locales. Each action can have a Negative, Neutral, or Positive outcome. The likelihood of the outcome depends on both the number on the die you slot and any modifiers from your Sleeper’s skill proficiencies (or deficiencies).
Each action ties to one of your character’s skills: Engineer, Interface, Endure, Intuit, Engage. The three Sleeper classes from the first game return, and each excels in one skill and cannot grow in another. Character building is simple, yet every upgrade feels impactful. Short text descriptions accompany every action and outcome from your roll. So, although no on-screen animations accompany your roll-based gameplay, the punchy text makes it easy to visualize you and your companions working through a problem, encountering hiccups, and (hopefully) persevering. While your satisfaction with descriptive text may vary, I enjoyed putting my imagination to work with each dice roll.
Laine clearly feels a sense of ownership over you, so he constantly pursues your Rig. This means you can’t linger in any one of the Starward Belt’s settlements for too long. When you dock at a new settlement, you have the opportunity to discover new locales, work to fill up on key resources like gas and supplies, meet NPCs who can give you minor and major quests, and take on Contracts in the surrounding area for personal favors and/or big paychecks. Laine’s pursuit keeps you motivated to progress efficiently and smartly manage resources, but the high-risk, high-reward Contracts are the main platform for the chance-driven gameplay systems this time around.
Contracts are the most significant addition to Citizen Sleeper 2. These missions take place in varied one-off locations that push the action dice system and your companions to a thrillingly stressful limit. While you navigate settlements on your own, Contracts allow you to take up to two companions as support for the job. Unlike the Sleeper, companions only have two action dice per cycle and are only proficient in one or two skills. Their effectiveness is situational yet essential. There were moments when my Sleeper was already overburdened with Stress, but a positive roll from a companion bailed us out of a disastrous outcome.
Contracts are a vehicle not only for the game’s most exciting gameplay but for unfolding dramatic narratives. For the most part, you get to pick which companions accompany you, and I loved seeing the small, unique interactions between them during the evolving scenario. In some cases, who you bring can even impact story developments. It’s also possible to fail a contract. Rather than prompt a retry, the game autosaves and you must live with the consequences of the failure. This can be as minor as losing out on a paycheck or as major as determining whether you get to recruit a companion. I don’t normally like to gamble—but turns out that in the context of high-stakes storytelling, I can’t get enough.
Although Condition is no longer a factor for your Sleeper’s survival, a new mechanic replaces it: Stress. While you can gain Stress any time if you’re not eating enough (who hasn’t been there?), the stat mostly comes into play during Contracts. Bad dice outcomes can quickly accumulate Stress for your Sleeper or companions. If companions max out their Stress gauge on the job, they are out for the remainder of it. The Sleeper has the highest Stress tolerance, but every two points will start to take a toll on your dice. Unchecked Stress depletes your dice’s health to the point that they can become temporarily destroyed until repaired with rare materials.
I don’t want to get too bogged down explaining Citizen Sleeper 2’s many interlocking systems or give the impression that the gameplay is convoluted or overbearing. Suffice to say that Martin implemented them smoothly and smartly to keep you consistently engaged as a player. Starward Vector is a bigger game than its predecessor and effectively balances intense and more laid-back variations of its gameplay. The isolated stress-inducing gameplay during Contracts means that the rest of the game can afford to be more chill. You’re always encouraged to make considered choices without the tedious pressure of constant min-maxing.
Citizen Sleeper 2‘s standard difficulty will put you through occasional nerve-wracking moments, but it ultimately makes for a story-friendly experience. I was invested enough to complete all the game’s quests—and the endgame was perhaps a little easier than I would have liked—but that’s maybe to be expected for a completionist run of an RPG. With that said, I’m already itching to do a full DANGEROUS difficulty playthrough, which has more significant Stress penalties and permadeath. Now that I’ve already seen most events turn out the way I want, I’m ready to embrace chaos for a run where more things go wrong.
While the game world is still represented through relatively static 3D models, each place you visit (including settlements and Contract locations) is visually distinct enough to provide a unique sense of place. The smaller location sizes also help keep navigation simple. In Citizen Sleeper, I would occasionally get tired of scrolling through the sole settlement and get lost in the ever-expanding maze of icons. Starward Vector’s world solves that issue while providing more variety and world-building.
Settlements are not only visually distinct but distinct in their offerings. One station’s economy might depend on its surplus of fuel, so you get it at a discount there. Another’s workers are in dire circumstances so you have to buy supplies at an upcharge. One fringe commune doesn’t sell fuel or supplies but allows you to extract them freely if you put in the labor. This imparts each settlement with a more distinct character that creates the sense of a larger world full of small communities dealing with economic and political crises in various ways.

Musically, Starward Vector takes the same approach as its predecessor. A shuffled playlist of chill electronic instrumentals provides a moody and tech-steeped atmosphere for gameplay. The songs make for pleasant and fitting background music, but perhaps this aspect of the presentation could have used a switch-up the most. Spaces and events don’t necessarily need more visuals when the prose descriptions are so evocative and vivid. However, a more deliberate use of sound for scene-setting could go far toward making me feel present in this fascinating world and the story’s compelling scenarios. Starward Vector can be almost double the length of the original, so despite the consistent quality of the music, the shuffling playlist somewhat overstays its welcome.
If you skipped the first game, you might be wondering if you’re missing out on tasty continuity by starting your Sleeper journey with Starward Vector. My answer: sort of. Aside from general (quite detailed and interesting) worldbuilding, several major characters return in equally major roles, usually in a new phase of their life. It was compelling to think about what they went through between the two games to put them in their current position, but this also makes encountering them as new characters easier. There’s enough connections and callbacks to make a returning player feel rewarded for investing more time and emotion in the series without alienating players coming in fresh.
Despite fundamental similarities between the two games, Starward Vector builds on its predecessor in a way that feels perfectly logical: a reframing and culmination of the design philosophy that defines the series thus far. You could easily look at screenshots of either Citizen Sleeper game and think them a niche interest, but I don’t think that’s true. It may resemble a visual novel in some ways, but the overall experience it offers feels like a full-fledged RPG. As long as you aren’t opposed to reading a lot of good writing, Citizen Sleeper 2 is an indie investment worth considering. With an endearing and well-rounded cast, tight and expressive game systems, and a visionary sci-fi world to get lost in, this is an early frontrunner for 2025 RPGs.