You embody a sleeper here (sleeper), an android in which a human mind was downloaded, intended to perform ungrateful tasks while the original remains in cryo-sleep. But, tired by this slavery under the yoke of the Essen-Arp corporation, you run away aboard a container. The game begins as you fail on the independent space station "L'oeil de Erlin". We must therefore survive in these places; For that, you have to embark on odd jobs, but also tie contacts with the locals.
Alea JACTA is
The whole game system revolves around six -sided dice. At the start of each cycle (the equivalent of a day on the station), a series of dice is randomly drawn. These values must be used in the various tasks available. The outcome of an operation can be neutral (reports the promised gains), a success (can pay more than expected) or a failure (does not bring anything, or add a penalty as a loss of energy or the risk of blocking the whole task). The operation itself can have various levels of difficulty: safe (no negative effect), risky (possibility of having negative effects) and dangerous (large risk of negative effects). It is therefore necessary to choose judiciously what value to affect in order to put the most chances on your side, knowing that the more the value is high and the more likely it is to succeed with brilliance. Whatever happens, there is always a part of chance in the company and the probabilities are clearly displayed before validating the action.
Two other parameters are to be taken into account for your progress. Your body deteriorates over time and the more its level drops, the less you have any dice available for the current cycle. Fortunately, ways to go up this level are offered over the adventure, but know that nothing is free at this bottom (high?) World. You also have to think about feeding: the level of satiety drops at the end of the cycle and sometimes in the event of failure; Being in a state of famine accelerates the deterioration of your body. So you should regularly find something to sustain.
The characteristics of your character make it possible to influence the result of these actions: engineering, resilience, intuition... At the start of the game, the choice is given between three classes which have different strengths and weaknesses. This is important at the beginning, but all of this is smooth with the possibility of improving the whole: competence points are indeed won after certain actions. On certain levels, the character also wins new faculties: bonus gains, possibility of relaunching the dice...
The sleeper must wake up
Most of the adventure therefore consists in accomplishing these different tasks, in fulfilling the various objective dials. Some actions are purely food: they bring in money or resources that you can use in quests or on the markets. Others allow you to explore the station and ultimately unlock new possibilities. Finally, some are intended to advance the various narrative threads which are proposed. You meet many individuals on the eye and they all have something to offer you; It's up to you to choose if you want to help them or not, if you want to go to the end of the process with them or just drop them.
Each narrative action is in the form of long successions of text in which certain choices are given: this may be simple questions to ask the interlocutor or much more impactful possibilities for the rest of your relationship with the other.
Finally, everything is choice in Citizen Sleeper : In what actions to use your best dice, what to buy first, how to manage your resources or what turn can take your relations with the locals.
Rosebud!
The progression in the adventure is interesting, we take pleasure in discovering the history and the cogs of the various communities that occupy the eye. There are all the tropes of science fiction: dehumanized corporations, idle settlers, various plots and cyber networks where artificial intelligences run. The texts are rather well written, despite this strange fetishism that most interlocutors have always wanted to fiddle with your shoulders. On the other hand, the whole is in English, sometimes a little technical.
The adventure is not very difficult. The money is certainly sorely lacking in the beginnings, but the multiplication of the means to earn a living means that it ends up being no longer a concern. The only constraint then becomes the time: certain actions must be performed in the time limit, even if the latter are generally rather wide.
Navigation in the game is rather intuitive, except that it is not always easy to navigate between the different action points on the eye, especially in the places where they are a little grouped. Visually, it's simple, but very clean. The illustrations of the very successful characters are provided by the French Guillaume Singelin (PTSD, Doggybags, Mutafukaz 'Loba Loca...). The sound design is also very neat, alternating atmosphere and short musical flights.
In itself, the progression lends itself well to the Nintendo Switch : it is possible to do small sessions, the time to distribute the dice for a cycle or to read the story on a stage in the narration. But we must then take into account certain faults. First, the font: the game offers two display sizes for the texts, small and very small. If it goes well on a television, it can be less obvious on the small nomadic screen. Then the game takes a while to get started. You will tell me that this is not really a problem, since we can leave the console on standby. But it was found that, in these cases, there is a time when the dialogues begin to become slow, almost three seconds between two lines, if it is not the outright disappearance of the decor itself. In these cases, just restart the game so that it works again perfectly. Note that the touch screen is not exploited; We are certainly doing very well with the Joy-Cons, but it would have been a more appreciable with this type of interface.
Citizen Sleeper is a pleasant narrative game that lends itself very well to small sessions. It is a shame that the constraints of its game mechanics diminish as you progress, but it remains its choices which can lead to various ends and above all its whole universe to discover.
Test made on Nintendo Switch by Neogrifter from a version provided by the editor.
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