How Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector Builds on an Indie Game Pass Hit
Hi! I’m Gareth Damian Martin, also known as Jump Over the Age, creator of Citizen Sleeper. It’s been over a year since we launched on Game Pass and I have been so happy to see the positive response, and the sheer number of players that have given the game a try. I hope you’ve enjoyed the game and its three DLC episodes too!
But if you haven’t given our unique RPG a try, I’m happy to share that Citizen Sleeper will be staying on Game Pass, giving you plenty of opportunity to experience it for the foreseeable future. But that isn’t all; thanks to the massively positive response to Citizen Sleeper, the game is also getting a sequel – Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, and it’s coming to Xbox consoles.
And, just like the original, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector will be a day one Game Pass release, meaning subscribers will be able to play on Xbox Series consoles and PC from launch.
When we announced the sequel earlier in the year, we introduced a new sleeper, a new ally named Serafin, and a new antagonist in the form of sadistic gang leader Laine. In our animated reveal, our new sleeper attempts to reboot their system in order to break their reliance on Stabilizer, the drug that their artificial body is programmed to require. Laine interrupts the process, however, leaving our sleeper with a malfunctioning body, on the run, and reliant on a ramshackle ship, stolen with the help of Serafin.
This sets up Starward Vector’s fresh take on the dice-based, RPG gameplay of Citizen Sleeper. Keeping the same freeform gameplay and richly drawn world, the sequel deepens the formula through its biggest addition, your own spaceship. This ship doesn’t just allow you to travel around our new location, the Starward Belt; it also means you can take on contracts: High-risk, high-reward jobs, like scrapping a derelict freighter or repairing a stranded ship. To take on this work, necessary to keep your ship running, you’ll need to build a crew, and make the most of their abilities to maximize each job.
But as with the original game, the narrative and characters are at the heart of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, so you can expect contracts to have unexpected twists and difficult choices, for crew to bring trouble to your door, and to find compelling slice-of-life stories wherever you choose to take your ship.
Finally, I want to share a little more about one of the first locations you’ll visit, Hexport. This bustling port is one of the game’s hubs: Stations from which you’ll take on contracts and gather crew, each with its own unique locations, characters and stories.
Built on the back of three vast, hexagonal solar panels that were left behind when the Solheim corporation collapsed and fled the system, the station has taken advantage of the massive flow of power from this old tech. This helps drive both the Hexport Exchange – a trade hall filled with data-brokers and hackers – and Factory Row, an industrial sector packed with small factories turning out ship parts and habitat modules. It’s a great place to get hold of scrap contracts or find crew members, especially at the Bends bar, a popular spacer haunt.
You’ll see a lot more of Hexport soon, but for now I want to thank everyone for playing and supporting Citizen Sleeper and its DLC. I’m so happy to be returning to this universe for the sequel, and that never would have happened without everyone who has championed the game.
If you want to keep up to date, head over to https://citizensleeper.com/Helion-Dispatches to sign up for our newsletter, where you’ll also find the Helion Dispatches, an ongoing episodic narrative series that I’m writing which bridges the gap between Citizen Sleeper and Citizen Sleeper 2.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
Fellow Traveller
ON THE RUN / ON THE EDGE
You are a Sleeper, a corporate-owned android hiding out in the Starward Belt at the edge of the Helion System. After a desperate attempt to free yourself from servitude by rewriting the very code that governs your system, you are on the run with a malfunctioning body, a price on your head and no memory of your past.
YOUR SHIP / YOUR CREW / YOUR FUTURE
You stole a ship and left the past behind. Keep it running, maintain it, even upgrade it, and maybe it will carry you away from all this. But you can’t run it alone. You’ll need a crew, and while the Belt is full of those looking for work, it’s also full of trouble. Can you hold the ship together through this crisis? Can you build a refuge here, among the stars?
A SYSTEM IN CRISIS
There is a crisis unfolding in the Helion System. Two vast corporate entities are fighting a bitter, covert war, touching everything, even the Starward Belt. Waves of refugees, shattered hulks of warring ships, strange new technologies, all are washing up on the shore of the Belt. Navigate this shifting territory, take on contracts, get paid, and survive to see the next cycle.
ROLL YOUR DICE
Citizen Sleeper uses Tabletop RPG inspired systems to create a unique player-led experience. Each cycle you’ll roll a set of Dice that you can then spend to complete actions. The higher the die, the greater the chance of success.
This award-winning and acclaimed system will return in Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector alongside all new systems and mechanics that will offer more depth, complexity and challenge.
Citizen Sleeper
Fellow Traveller
$19.99
$11.99
PC Game Pass
Xbox Game Pass
CITIZEN SLEEPER EXPANDED
With the release of Episode PURGE, Citizen Sleeper’s three episode post-launch DLC expansion is now complete and the game has even more to offer with a thrilling late game storyline that delivers an immersive new narrative arc introducing additional characters, lore and locations. Players returning to Erlin’s Eye might even find themselves running into some familiar faces!
ROLEPLAYING IN THE RUINS OF INTERPLANETARY CAPITALISM
One of 2022’s most acclaimed indies, the Game Awards-nominated Citizen Sleeper is a Tabletop-inspired narrative RPG set on Erlin’s Eye, a ruined space station that is home to thousands of people trying to survive on the edges of an interstellar capitalist society.
You are a sleeper, a digitised human consciousness in an artificial body, owned by a corporation that wants you back. Thrust amongst the unfamiliar and colourful inhabitants of the Eye, you need to build friendships, earn your keep, and navigate the factions of this strange metropolis, if you hope to survive to see the next cycle.
ROLL THE DICE. DO THE WORK. GET PAID. SURVIVE.
Inspired by Tabletop Roleplaying games, Citizen Sleeper uses Dice, Clocks and Drives to create a player-led experience, where you choose your path in a rich and responsive world. Each cycle you use the dice you are dealt to choose what to do with your time. Make or break alliances, uncover truths and escape your hunters. Survive and ultimately thrive, one cycle at a time, and sometimes against the clock!
TURN UP FOR YOUR FRIENDS
The station plays host to characters from all walks of life, trying to eke out an existence among the stars. Salvagers, engineers, hackers, bartenders, street-food vendors, each has a history which brought them here. You choose which of them you wish to help, and together you will shape your future.
ACCESS THEIR SECRETS
Eventually, you will learn to use your dice to hack into the station’s cloud to access decades of digital data, uncover new areas and unlock secrets. This is your unique power, and with it you can change your future. Corporate secrets, rogue AIs and troves of lost data await those willing to dive into the depths of the station’s networks.
YOU WERE MADE TO DIE
Essen-Arp: to them you are just property, one more asset in a portfolio that stretches across the stars. You are the product of an abusive system, in a universe where humanity’s expansion is marked by exploitation and extraction. Escape the makers of your decaying body, and chart your own path in a richly imagined, deeply relevant sci-fi world which explores ideas of precarity, personhood and freedom.
