Citizen Sleeper is a sci-fi role playing game where your choices decide if you live or fall.
World and Premise
You begin as a “Sleeper” — a copy of a human mind placed inside a synthetic body by a large corporation. That body is owned, and your freedom is limited. Eventually you escape and land on a dying space station called Erlin’s Eye, often short “the Eye.”
The station was once run by a company called Solheim, but when it collapsed, control fell into the hands of a union-government called Havenage and a gangster group called Yatagan. You must live amidst this fragile balance.
Your goal is to stay alive, keep your failing body from collapsing, build relationships, and find a way to be free.
Dice and Cycles
The game runs in cycles (days). Each cycle, you roll between one and five six-sided dice depending on how good your body condition is. The better your health, the more dice.
Each die has a number from 1 to 6. Higher numbers give better results; low numbers may fail or offer weak gains. A roll of 6 often guarantees success. A roll of 1 or 2 often gives poor or neutral outcomes.
You assign dice to tasks: working, gathering information, hacking, exploring, making repairs, or helping others. The value you roll affects how well you perform that action.
You cannot use all dice for everything, so deciding where to apply them is a constant tension.
Body, Stability & Resources
Your synthetic body deteriorates over time. You must use stabilizers (special medicine) or parts to keep it working. If you fail to maintain your body, you lose more condition, which means fewer dice in future cycles.
You also need credits (money) to buy stabilizers, food, parts, or information. You can get money by doing jobs, helping people, or exploring.
Balancing your body’s stability, money, and time is key.
Characters & Relationships
On the Eye you meet many characters. Some are broken, some are ambitious, some are kind. Each person has goals and secrets. Your decisions about them change how they trust you, help you, or oppose you.
You meet Sabine, a doctor tied to Yatagan, who sells stabilizers. You meet others trying to survive in LowEnd (the poor zone of the Eye). Some may become allies; others may betray you.
These relationships affect side missions, aid, or even story paths.
Story Paths & Endings
Citizen Sleeper is strongly choice driven. There are many story paths and endings based on your decisions and how you handle resources.
You might align with factions, act as a lone wanderer, or try to change the system. Some endings focus on escape, others on building a place to belong.
No one path is “correct”—the journey is about what kind of survivor you choose to become.
Themes & Feel
Though it is sci-fi, the game often feels intimate. It shows what it is to live under pressure, always making hard trade-offs. It explores identity, debt, control, and what it means to be “free.”
There is little flashy combat. Most tension comes from dwindling resources, relationships, risk, and the weight of every choice.
The writing is careful, the mood often bleak but hopeful.
Player Tips & Strategy
- Prioritize keeping your body stable. Losing stability hurts your options.
- Use high dice on critical tasks; use lower dice for safer, lower value tasks.
- Talk to as many people as possible. Some will unlock opportunities.
- Failing a task is not always bad — sometimes it opens other paths you didn’t see.
- Manage money and parts smartly. Overextending your resources leads to collapse.
- Plan two or three steps ahead: a decision today can lock or unlock future paths.
