Seven games to play after you finish Citizen Sleeper 2
Inspiration, homage, or simply solipsistic evocation? Here are some other works that you can jump into right now
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is finally out, and guess what? It’s really bloody good!
So good, in fact, that even though I've only fired a couple of hours into it, I already have something brewing for the Youtube Channel in the near future.
With this in mind I still wanted to take a moment to reflect on some other titles that came to mind while playing this galaxy hopping sequel.
Whether as a direct line of inspiration or simply a product of my unconscious need to compare apples to oranges, here are seven games I think you would really like if you loved Starward Vector.
Opus Echo of Starsong
Good worldbuilding, to me, is less about details and more about evoking a sense of place, and it's surprising just how little you need for this to be achieved. One of the triumphs of Opus Echo of Starsong is that it manages to be so very economical with its lore, and yet it still feels like a massive, sprawling universe.
There’s a lot going on in implication and a handful of cursory remarks from the central cast as they navigate this fraught, lonely galaxy. With a story that ultimately boils down to just a handful of characters and a mystery to unravel, its part visual novel, part navigation puzzle.
Resource management is a key anxiety, as fuel stops are few and far between, but it's in these unpredictable jaunts that the spirit of the whole endeavour really comes to life. When I saw that fuel was a resource in Starward Vector this game immediately came to mind, but the similarities don’t end there.
Before the Green Moon
Landlocked and frugal in its use of words, Before the Green Moon inhabits the spirit of that evergreen wealth divide and structural inequality that’s so very present in Citizen Sleeper’s myriad decaying empires.
Mechanically a very different experience, you’re a farmer, building up savings for a ticket on a space elevator to a better life, but along the way the culmination of that goal becomes increasingly bittersweet as you get to know and love those left behind, knowing full well that you too will one day leave.
Extremely dystopian, unspeakably beautiful. It's like a video game adaptation of The Dispossessed, and perhaps the most heartfelt version of this idea that I’ve ever personally experienced. While on paper it has very little in common with Citizen Sleeper, I feel like the thematic similarities speak for themselves.
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
The endless cycle of toil on the bottom rung of the social ladder. Spending all day picking up shit only to barely afford to be able to eat let alone find your way out of this mess.
Really the screaming cursed skull that follows you around at all times is the least of your worries, and the thing I think Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor evokes so well is this sense that there's never really enough time to do everything you want to do.
Something Citizen Sleeper 2 evokes in droves. You can never really save up anything because there’s always an expense screaming at you from around the corner. You can never feel fully energized and ready to take on the day because every action and every revolution of the sun takes away from you something you never feel like you’ll be able to get back.
I see in Starward Vector, through its obscenely tight deadlines and unforgiving dice system, a more forward and explicit version of the ideas found in this elegaic indie hidden gem.
Norco
Norco is unusual in that it's a sci fi fable that doesn't feel very sci Fi. You aren't Galaxy hopping or defeating evil empires, you're having a punch up outside your hometowns only gas station. You’re visiting dive bars to get information from sleazy detectives. You're diving into the past to discover what really happened to your mother as the future quickly erodes, but everything feels just a little bit too real.
Norco’s quite a surreal tale, for sure, and starts to evoke more the works of Philip K Dick as it progresses, but at its heart it's a story about people struggling in their day while under the thumb of a great, poisonous evil. Like other titles in this list, it also has a very stark relationship with choice, and the sense that in order to progress you have to leave something that once was dear to you.
Disco Elysium
You’ve probably played this. You probably know why it came to mind playing Citizen Sleeper.
A cracked echo of a civilization, centuries after free fall. Complicated lives dealing with complicated politics. Conflict at the heart of every action even when kindness is also present. A portrait of another world, yet one eerily like our own. The same people. The same problems.
It's all allegorical, the spaces are all a prescient warning for what will happen to us. What these two games have in common, besides having a vertical text box (which honestly I don’t know why we didn’t do this sooner, because it’s so much better a way to read), is this idea that failure should not be a full stop on the adventure.
In fact, more than this, the inability to succeed at a particular thing being the springboard to a more inventive and sprawling idea of narrative is something that carries across both titles.
Tharsis
You're on your way to Mars and everything is fucked up. Bits of your ship are exploding, your life support is on its last legs, you've had to eat Jimmy because there’s no more food left. And there’s still nine weeks to go!
Tharsis is a game about the hostility of space and the triumph of the human spirit in doing what needs to be done in order to stay alive. Every action takes place under tremendous strain, having to think laterally across more dimensions that the average human being is capable of comprehending in order to future proof against some ungodly disaster that’s no doubt hiding in the wings to make you regret ever being born.
This much is present in Citizen Sleeper 2’s newest addition: dice cracking under stress, which feels like a wholesale homage to the kind of evil bullshit that Tharsis throws at you every round. Starward Vector is at least kinder about it, but if you want that extra bit of fuck you to your game, Choice Provisions devious strategy roguelike will give you that extra push into the depths of hell.
FTL
On the other side of the coin we have another stark, difficult strategy roguelike, except this one is all about being hunted.
FTL’s modus operandi is that you cannot stay in one place forever. There is always impetus to keep moving and that sometimes will dictate the kind of experience you end up having with the game.
The anxiety of not being able to linger might encourage you to press on faster than you actually need to, and perhaps in that you risk losing out on valuable upgrades, but in that same breath it could also be something that will wholesale ruin your life.
That’s the great gamble with FTL, the blind choices you have to make because you simply cannot dawdle. In Citizen Sleeper 2 you have a similar sense of being hunted, in that there is always a countdown to interception, where the timer can be reset by moving to a new location but only for a little longer.
It's not always that simple, of course, but I can see a clear throughline between it and Subset Games’s seminal space faring title.
Final Thoughts
Of course these are but a drop in the ocean when it comes to great, thoughtful, mechanically interesting sci fi games and narrative experiences. None of these ones are exactly like Starward Vector, and I think that’s what makes this sequel so special, but at the same time those kernels of something familiar within its systems and narrative structure call to its' strength at understanding what does and doesn’t work within that genre framework.
What other games does Citizen Sleeper 2 evoke for you? Sound off in the comments!