Pulling from its tabletop inspirations, Citizen Sleeper has a range of three character classes. It is possible, though, to partially repair the Sleeper’s body, which is more than can be said for many electronics today. For Essen-Arp, these frames are a failsafe to prevent escapees like me from getting too far before they can send someone to bring me back. The player controls a Sleeper - an emulated “person” fleeing from the Essen-Arp megacorp in a proprietary body frame designed for “planned obsolescence.” It’s not far off from consumer tech now - hardware purposefully designed to wither in the face of endless updates and opaque new operating systems (or in the case of bionic eye company Second Sight, hardware that bricks itself in the face of bankruptcy).

Ĭitizen Sleeper is the new narrative-driven, text-heavy role-playing game from Jump Over the Age (aka Gareth Damian Martin, the creator of 2020’s In Other Waters) that uses a dice system inspired by tabletop games.

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