Citizen Sleeper has all it takes to earn the outsider's spot in this year's best games list.
We’ve all been there – video games fatigue, or any other media. It happens to us all – especially if you write about them for a living.
Sometimes it comes down to unfinished business, a game I left behind without completing the story, leaving a hole that other games just can’t fill. Other times, the burnout comes off the back of some huge game that has completely emptied me. After working on Elden Ring for less than ten days for a review, I have a feeling it was just that.
A good remedy for it is typically relying on some smaller, more relaxing game. This year, that kind of game, and remedy, was Citizen Sleeper for me. Not perfect, but I love having the opportunity to mention it across our triple-A-filled games of the year list.
The same goes with Norco, which I’ve similarly enjoyed after a turbulent early 2022. These games were there when I needed them.
Making progress little step after little step, feeling protected by these intimate worlds in an industry obsessed with huge stories, huge hour counts, huge difficulty levels.
Drag a bunch of pixels from one side of the screen to another just to fill a bar or a circle, and you complete a quest and progress the story, or maybe make a decision. This is the minimalist design that has healed in such an eventful year.
All you need is a mouse and the ability to read if you want to enjoy Citizen Sleeper. It doesn’t demand your attention 100% of the time like Elden Ring.
That doesn’t mean Citizen Sleeper goes light on story, and themes. You go from taking care of a little child as her dad needs to work to give her shelter and some food, to hard sci-fi and cyberpunk philosophy – mind versus body, what does it even mean to exist? In a way, the game is closer to Edgerunners than Cyberpunk 2077, when it comes down to reflecting upon human life and death, AI, and soul.
Citizen Sleeper’s world is healing from capitalism, at times getting rid of its insane practices, at times mimicking them. We’re just a gear in the huge galactic machine, and us being jammed through it doesn’t mean we’re dismissed – we have a second chance to make things right, or maybe not.
The art style wrapping it up is sublime, and definitely raises the bar above In Other Waters – the previous game from the same dev, which you should also give a look at, if you like narrative adventures.
Multiple choices, paths and endings, characters and factions to fight or cooperate with – and a strong emotional impact that will stay with you hours after playing it. I don’t ask anything else from a game, and this is more than enough for Citizen Sleeper to grab an outsider’s place in this GOTY 2022 list.
Written by Paolo Sirio on behalf of GLHF.
