Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is an immersive sci-fi tale about the strengths of community

Rather than just the bombast of dizzying intergalactic battles, modern science fiction tales are imagining futures shaped by pervasive inequality and technological conquest. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, a roleplaying game by Gareth Damian Martin and one-person studio Jump Over the Age, is a science fiction tale of that pedigree.

It also brings to mind a New Yorker profile of science fiction writer Liu Cixin from a few years ago, who achieved international acclaim for his book, The Three Body Problem. Liu insisted science fiction merely allows readers to indulge in escapism rather than serve as metaphors for real-world affairs. Perhaps this reflects his perspective that Chinese people are more concerned about immediate needs like healthcare and the economy, as opposed to more altruistic concepts like individual liberty - a nice to have, but not a necessity.

It’s an outlook that’s difficult to reconcile with, especially when confronted with a tale as introspective as Starward Vector that carries shades of moral complexity. For instance, an early contract - the game’s more treacherous gigs - involves preserving a data core with immense historical value, or selling it to a mercenary who’ll inevitably scrap the relic, so as to get the fuel you need to escape your captor.

It’s a choice between addressing immediate needs versus pursuing a more humanistic goal for the far future. But while most games would clumsily nudge you towards the latter, presenting this quandary as a form of delayed gratification by promising better, future rewards, Starward Vector tackles this choice more elegantly, gently suggesting that you lean on community in times of need.

On the run again

Like the first Citizen Sleeper, Starward Vector puts you in the shoes of a Sleeper, an indentured android and an emulation of a flesh-and-blood human being who owes a tremendous debt to a corporation. This time, however, you’re on the run from a sinister figure named Laine who wants you - his property - back. What this means is that you’ll need to stay one step ahead of his relentless pursuit, as you trawl the Helion solar system on your ship (which is also stolen from Laine) to eek out a living.

Of course, this is a perilous journey. For those who have played Citizen Sleeper before, Starward Vector will largely be a familiar experience, but for the uninitiated, this cadence will take a bit of getting used to. The game progresses through cycles, with dice rolls determining how well you perform your tasks; the higher the number, the better the outcome. That said, there are a few key differences from the original, such as a distinct lack of a condition bar, as this particular Sleeper is no longer reliant on drugs to prevent their body from decaying.

But instead of a failing artificial body, you’ll accrue stress from, well, almost anything. A poor outcome from a dice roll can induce stress, as well as having to plow through work while starving. Accumulate too much stress, and your dice can disintegrate. Once broken, they cannot be used, limiting the amount of actions you can take per cycle until you garner the right components to repair them.

Occasionally, you’ll also need to embark on contracts, which are high-risk jobs that offer a significant amount of cryos (the game’s form of currency). Make too many mistakes during these contracts, and you can set off crises, events that put you in pressure cooker conditions; the longer you take to complete contracts, the more stressful the gig will be.

This is how Starward Vector reminds you of the precarity of your situation. Even a streak of utterly perverse luck can derail your cycles, like a horrid day when Murphy’s Law is in full swing. For a Sleeper, the stakes are infinitely high, the specter of certain failure ratcheting up the tension at every turn.

A motley crew

Fortunately, you’re not alone. A ragtag crew of spacefarers will join you over the course of your expedition, with the first being Serafin, a close friend who’s instrumental in breaking your oppressive servitude under Laine. Then there’s Juni, a quiet character you’ll meet during the game’s earliest contract with the data core. These crew members have skills they are particularly adept in, and that you can leverage during contracts.

Your crew will have their own dice rolls, which you can select to perform tasks they’re inclined towards. Juni, for instance, gets a bonus to her Interface trait, so you’ll do well by assigning her to a task that requires that particular skill. Doing so effectively is vital in helping you complete contracts without burning yourself out. That’s because, unlike most RPGs, being self-sufficient isn’t the point; depending on your class, some skills cannot be maxed out or even unlocked.

But rather than frame your companions as additional resources to exploit, the game’s impeccably polished prose helps to embellish the crew’s growing kinship with the Sleeper. Serafin, for all his dour cynicism, is a welcomed presence, his steely visage betraying a deep affection for the Sleeper - and all these are inferred just from the game’s pithy, yet ornately penned paragraphs.

Thus beyond just matters of survival, your relationships offer something more: community. Take the data core contract; Juni, a relative stranger then, asked that you give her the data for archival purposes, in exchange for nothing more than a promise of assistance with your fuel problem.

Despite initial misgivings, you can hand the data to her, with her later returning the favor in unexpected ways. Another branching story, which involves potentially assisting a union leader, also feeds into this sense of camaraderie. Such instances of solidarity suffuse your ill-fated journey with something perhaps resembling hope, an aspiration of not having to struggle against the hegemony of corporate power over the working class alone.

That said, it’s possible to make a comfortable living and save a handsome sum of cryos, the cycles of stressful resource management a thing of the past. Eventually, you may become adept at gaming the very system itself.

Even a single cycle marred with sheer, unbelievably bad luck - a series of shoddy dice rolls, perhaps leading to an exhausting, energy-draining day of labor - becomes easier to recover from. What you do with this excess, however, is up to you, such as choosing to pay another crew their fees, turning down the payment owed to you by another worker, or just burning all your cryos at a gambling den.

Tinged with hope

The game’s onerous system points to a reality that’s attuned to our wretched times: a pandemic that has exposed structural inequality, governments that are slipping into authoritarianism, and countries that refuse to acknowledge genocides. But Starward Vector is more than just a bleak universe writhing with doom and peril; its bright spots are undoubtedly its well-written, likable characters, whose aid and support you’ll learn to lean into even as structural oppression looms.

It has achieved the rare feat of balancing its narrative with a multi-faceted system without drowning its humanity in these details - all the while imparting the value of collective action and mutual aid. For a tale set in a cyber dystopia, it’s an uncharacteristically hopeful tale.

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Accessibility features

Starward Vector offers three difficulty settings: safe, risky, and dangerous, which can be changed at any time during the game. This changes the penalties from poor dice rolls, such as increased energy depletion and permanent death in the dangerous setting. Scene text can be enlarged, while the text scroll speed can be increased and reduced.

How I reviewed Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector

I spent around 16 hours on the game, completing the main quest, exploring its extensive solar system and planets, and experiencing its side content in the form of its contracts. I also reviewed the game on an original LCD Steam Deck, playing the game in handheld mode, with the device providing hours of seamless gameplay.

First reviewed January 2025