The dice-driven sci‑fi sequel doubles its scope, adds a crew, and turns survival into a nail‑biting negotiation.
If Citizen Sleeper (2022) felt like learning to breathe inside a pressure cooker, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is holding that breath while piloting a barely‑legal ship through an asteroid belt of debt, danger, and hard choices. It’s a sequel that keeps the soul of the original—precarity, community, and kindness amid capital’s clamp—while tightening the screws in almost every system. The result is a tabletop‑tinged RPG that’s smarter, harsher, and (crucially) warmer than it first appears.
What it is (and where to play it)
Developed by Jump Over The Age, the one‑person studio of Gareth Damian Martin (they/them), and published by Fellow Traveller, Citizen Sleeper 2 launched on January 31, 2025 on PC, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with day-one availability on Xbox/PC Game Pass. The price lands at a refreshingly modest $24.99 USD. If you bounced off the first game because of platform gaps, note the macOS release here—and if you were waiting for a subscription option, Game Pass has you covered.
The setting shifts from a single station to the Starward Belt, a patchwork of habitats and hustles where you, an escaped android “Sleeper,” try to survive long enough to build something like a life. New locale, same existential vibes.
Roll, assign, survive: dice with teeth
Citizen Sleeper’s clever dice economy returns, but in Starward Vector the dice bite back. Each cycle you roll a pool and slot dice into actions; you also bring crew who contribute their own specialty dice. The twist is a new stress and dice‑health layer: push too hard and dice can break, potentially saddling you with a permanent glitch die that loves failure. The game also introduces dramatic Contract missions—set‑piece jobs that test resource management and risk appetite—plus the constant threat of bounty hunters to keep you moving. It’s tense by design, and deliciously so.
There’s nuance in how you mitigate that tension. Crew can “push” a die once per cycle—raising your lowest roll at the cost of stress—which feels like tapping the table in a real TTRPG and saying, “One more roll.” It’s a small, human act in a game obsessed with systems: a reminder that survival is a team sport.
The Rig, the Belt, the people
Your home is the Rig, a ship that’s more flying filing cabinet than sleek cruiser. It’s also a character: a fragile promise of mobility that keeps the story moving between hubs. Around it orbit a cast of strivers and weirdos with quiet depths—dockside botanists, spooked freelancers, ex‑gang fixers trying to go straight. The writing keeps that Citizen Sleeper hallmark: tender portraits of people trying to be good in a bad system. Polygon frames the sequel as a story about friendship as survival, and that’s exactly how it plays.
Artist Guillaume Singelin returns with those bold, comic‑panel portraits, and Amos Roddy’s soundscapes hum like life support—a blend of melancholy synth and quiet resolve. Together they tint the whole Belt with a tone somewhere between rust and hope.
Bigger, meaner, sometimes messier
This is a larger game—roughly twice the size of the original in places—and that scale brings trade‑offs. The upside: more places to dock, more stories to stumble into, and a new cadence of high‑stakes Contracts punctuating day‑to‑day hustles. The downside: a few hubs feel spread thinner than the bespoke intimacy of the first game, and sometimes your crew reads more like specialized dice than fully integrated party members. These aren’t deal‑breakers, but they’re present.
Difficulty can also feel spiky, especially early. Even on the gentler settings (there are three difficulty options), the stress/dice break loop can hit hard until you internalize the rhythms: rest when low rolls dominate, bank resources for Contracts, and resist over‑pushing on a bad day. The lack of manual saving also forces you to live with outcomes, lending decisions a bracing finality that suits the themes.
Systems that sing (and occasionally scream)
What’s most striking is how the mechanics serve the writing. The push decision is literalized empathy: risking stress to lift an ally. Contracts are the narrative’s pressure valves, rolling tension into set‑pieces that test your preparation without abandoning the slow-burn texture of small jobs. And the bounty hunter pressure—sometimes ambient, sometimes immediate—gives the Belt a predator’s heartbeat. The mechanical lesson mirrors the thematic one: you win by pooling luck and care, not by hoarding either.
When the systems overreach, they do so at the edges. A few Contracts can feel opaque on first contact, and there are moments where dice attrition plus time‑gating can close off storylines you were excited about. But even failure feels authored; the game is unusually willing to make “bad” outcomes interesting, encouraging replays not to optimize, but to see who you become under different pressures.
Crew chemistry and role‑playing
Beyond stat blocks, crew are the sequel’s beating heart. Their aptitudes nudge you into builds and routes you might not otherwise try: pair an engineer’s steady 4s with your operator’s spiky 6s and suddenly the job that looked impossible is merely dangerous. The Mass Effect‑ish “putting a team together” structure adds a satisfying arc to the midgame without turning Citizen Sleeper into a combat RPG; conversation, logistics, and timing are your weapons.
Character writing remains top‑shelf: prickly, humane, and often funny. Side stories rarely exist to shower you with loot; they’re here to complicate how you think about care in a harsh economy. Few games ask, as insistently as this one, who pays for your survival—and what you owe the people who spot you a better roll.
Accessibility, options, and “how to play”
If the first hours feel like a wall of systems, you’re not alone; the community has debated how quickly the sequel introduces permanent consequences. That said, the presence of adjustable difficulty (including a story‑leaning mode) and text size options lowers the friction, and the rhythm settles once you embrace rest as a valid tactic and not a wasted turn. The design is ruthless about autosave—no rewinding to erase a bad night—but that rigor is part of its identity.
Release status, language support, and value
At launch price, $24.99 is an easy recommendation for an RPG this confident. If you’re on Xbox or PC Game Pass, you can sample the pressure cooker without a new purchase. And while English is the default, the publisher has confirmed full localizations into Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and French are scheduled for late 2025 across platforms, which is great news if you’ve been waiting to play in your primary language.
For platform planners: the macOS version arrived day‑and‑date alongside PC, which is still uncommon in the indie RPG space and worth underscoring.
Reception snapshot (and where this review lands)
Early critical consensus has been broadly positive, with “generally favorable” scores and mid‑80s averages on major aggregators. That tracks: Citizen Sleeper 2 is a sequel that knows what to preserve (empathetic writing, sharp worldbuilding) and where to push (bigger canvas, harsher survival). If the expanded scope occasionally dilutes the intimacy that made the original a cult classic, the trade buys a richer sense of movement and a sharper articulation of its ethics.
The verdict
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is a deft evolution—a narrative RPG about scraping by, finding a crew, and deciding how much of yourself you can spend to keep them safe. The dice are not randomizers so much as ethical provocations; the ship is a home you can only hold together with other people’s help. It’s bigger and rougher than the original, but also tougher, kinder, and more memorable. If you can embrace the stress—and learn when to sleep instead of squeeze another roll—you’ll find one of 2025’s most distinctive journeys.
Play it if: you love tabletop RPGs, narrative‑first design, and stories about community under pressure.
Pause if: you need manual saves, hate time‑gating, or prefer power fantasies over precarious ones.
Either way: bring a crew. You’ll need them.
Alternate takes & practical notes (for skimmers)
- Release date & platforms: Jan 31, 2025 on PC, macOS, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S; day‑one on Game Pass.
- Price: $24.99 at launch on Steam.
- What’s new: crew dice & push, stress/dice health, Contracts, multi‑hub travel on the Rig.
- Art & audio: Guillaume Singelin (art), Amos Roddy (music).
- Localization update: JP/SCN/FR planned for late 2025.
