This game would've been perfect, but I had a little problem at the end of the game where I couldn't see the screen because tears were streaming down my face.

This feels like an 'auteur' game, meaning that it looks like the designer is dead set on the player experiencing the game how they want it to be experienced, and I'm not entirely on board despite generally liking the first game. This glorified visual novel defaults to full screen and I haven't found any options to have it windowed for f* sake. This is a time management game where everything is on a deadline or countdown, and the player is limited to five dice or 'actions' per day. Fair enough, but the game almost feels like it's trolling the player in how it does everything possible to deny any strategy or take away any advantage the player may develop: Let's say you have an active assignment that you know will be hard as sh*, but you get a really good set of dice at the beginning of a day and decide this is a great opportunity to start the challenge mission, the dev says f* you and rerolls all your dice, leaving you with a trash hand in a mission you're unfamiliar with. The missions themselves love trolling the player as well, they genuinely feel like those 90s adventure games where the only way to succeed is having prior knowledge of the puzzle and instant death traps therein; I was on a salvage mission and decided to use my last two actions to try and scavenge some parts, unbeknownst to me both of those actions created crisis events that I didn't know about until I exited the window I was in, with no actions left, and found myself in a death spiral because I couldn't address the crisis events without advancing time to reroll actions, but advancing time with active crisis events greatly sped up the doom timer that runs down the mission. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if the game let you save or save scum, but, once again, 'auteur' game - only one save and it's autosaved every few seconds. If the dev won't let you play this game windowed, they sure as hell won't provide a save feature. Having played the first game, one thing I remember is that the writing style is extremely heavy handed and even the 'successes' were often written as demoralizing failures, but that was fine because the player at least had the sense of being mechanically competent. This iteration feels like both the writing and mechanics are waiting to shank you in a dark alley.

Complete DEI slop. Every character and story element is cliche. You already know everyone is fat and ugly.

Sleep on this one, citizen

I was smitten with the 1st game and here's the proof. Everything that I wanted to say about the things that made Citizen Sleeper successful is there, so check it out if you want. It was because of this love for Citizen Sleeper that I went into great detail about the game's narrative, made an attempt to interpret its nuanced premise and sought to understand the messages that it intended to convey. It's the same love that makes me want to avoid scrutinizing over the reasons why Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector failed to live up to my expectations. That being said, I don't want to beat around the bush: if you are going bigger, you should make sure you are going better too. To my dismay, I found Citizen Sleeper 2 to be a lackluster experience. When news of an upcoming sequel to Citizen Sleeper reached my ears, I was genuinely excited because I thought that its brilliant developer, Gareth Damian Martin, had something more to say with a second installment and to my disappointment I found out that he, in fact, did not. Gone are the deep philosophical debates and political frictions. Gone is that sweet, desperate feeling of struggling to survive. In almost all aspects, this sequel is a watered-down version of the original Citizen Sleeper, less potent and sadly, less meaningful. The rude awakening that came with Citizen Sleeper's world- and self-imposed moral dillemas was followed by a deep slumber with Starward Vector's dull platitudes. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3440642805 The only thing for which I can praise Citizen Sleeper 2 with ease, is its OST. Amos Roddy managed to surpass his previous creation for the 1st game, a commendable feat given its quality. Citizen Sleeper's 2 soundtrack is even more melodical, ambient and successful at conveying the right tone of emotion that each situation in the game requires. Most of the tracks are melancholic or worrisome in composition, while in some others, the soundscape is structured with empowering melodies and notes of a rising hope. Citizen Sleeper 2 is not inherently a bad game -it's the inevitable comparison with the first one that made me realise how shallow the experience is: don't expect to find the same level of intensity that characterized the first game. To quote my friend Vitlöksbjörn: "Citizen Sleeper 2 is a decent game in a universe where Citizen Sleeper 1 doesn't exist". The game left me with a poignant feeling. Perhaps, it won't be the same case for you but if you enjoyed playing the first, I cannot recommend this one in good conscience.

For those with disabilties. For those with trauma. For those railing against the entropic flow of time itself and the aging it inflicts on your body. Play this and feel, for a breath, for a heartbeat, for this one sacred moment in a ream of sacred moments... Feel that you aren't alone.

I loved the first one so much—great gameplay and narrative, and it truly captured the essence of science fiction, making us ponder philosophical and existential questions. Yes, I find the new gameplay with the crew and the contracts interesting. However, the "intended difficulty" might be too frustrating for this type of game. What really spoiled my gaming experience, though, was the constant teenage LGBTQ+ drama and anecdotes surrounding all the characters, which became nauseating over time. It feels like the game had to follow an agenda. Not sure I am going to finish it because of this...

Story is mediocre/bad. Progression is mediocre. Characters are uninteresting. Citizen Sleeper was a decent and enjoyable game. Whilst the game used the word "They" incorrectly in a couple of instances you could ignore that idiocy for most of the game. Here you're forced with a guy whom the game classifies as "They" in spite of never mentioning he would like to be thought of that way your character just does. Note I use "he" because in English that is the appropriate singular gender neutral pronoun. Doesn't matter if he is actually male or female. Also your "sleeper" is referred to as "they" which is highly insulting since the characters referring to him as such supposedly see him as a person, but deny he is actually a person and more so an individual by referring to him as such. I bring this up first of course because it simply makes the story incredibly irritating to read as you never know when "they" is being used correctly or idiotically. Next the characters were simply boring. I try to think of anyone who stands out. Seraphin I guess would stand out the most as someone somewhat interesting, but he doesn't meet the bar. The Overseer does the same. You expect more interactions with him or it, but you don't get much. There is little to no purpose to gathering wealth. Communism is pushed. Stories are left without proper conclusions, and the ending is very dissatisfying. You never feel truly threatened beyond the beginning and there aren't multiple endings. You're just forced into one end with multiple dialog strings you can play through for it, but all of them boring. A game like this lives or dies based on story and how likable the cast is and this is not written well, not interesting, and the characters are all just boring. So I very strongly recommend not bothering with the game as if you play the game properly you'll think the game has potential for a few hours only to end up disappointed. So past the point of being able to return it. Thus just pass on this game. It does not live up to the first even marginally.

I feel like such an ungrateful f*ck. In my review of Citizen Sleeper I wished for a sequel about being a group of tight-knit space travellers. Well, I got what I wanted. Hell, even the fact that focused is spelled as "focussed", which I found weird, is changed (even though it's a totally valid spelling)! Unfortunately, it feels too much like the same thing, with very superfluous changes. And the stories themselves simply don't cut it, for reasons I'll get into later. Actually, scratch that, that's probably the most important part, so let's talk about it now.

Virtual Machines in Docker Containers

The stories are awfully, awfully isolated from each other. This model worked in the first game, because you were a lone survivor. You'd go, alone, to a given location, so naturally you'd only meet characters that are already there. But in this game you have a ship. And this ship has a crew - of at least 1 person other than you (Serafin best boi). But by the end of the game it's entirely possible to have a small crowd on your Rig - 5 or even 6 people. And they go with you pretty much everywhere you go. But it doesn't feel that way. It's very easy to forget that some people are even on your ship, considering their lack of participation in the vast majority of story events (outside their own quests). This also works the other way around: if you reject a crew member, you lose all access to whatever lofty goal they might've told you about. Everything is just so... bottled.

Player is not in the sudoers file

This incident will be reported. What, you thought you have some meaningful choice? Well, the sysadmin didn't grant you access. Okay, that's a little mean; you have -some- choice, but during the story events it feels like you can merely affect the flavour of the course that is generally immutable. There are some decisions which actually are meaningful, but these are locked in to the character/location questlines. I don't think these have an effect on the larger plot, even in cases where they clearly should. Things happen to you, whether you want it or not. You can add some side ornaments to the totem that someone else built, if you like. Which, let's be honest; games often trick you into thinking that you have more agency than you actually do. That's fine by me. But Citizen Sleeper 2 does that trick badly, it's trickery transparent. I'm not sure if that's better than having no trick at all, but it certainly did leave this kind of impression on me.

cp ./CS1/gameplay ./CS2/gameplay

Then again, CS1 was like that as well. And back there, I didn't mind. But perhaps because this game is just so similar to the first one when it comes to general gameplay structure, I actually mind it here. When I was finishing up CS1, I felt like I'm just going through the motions; rolling dice to increase event counters, which felt soul-crushingly hollow. Here, I started with this feeling. Because I've already played an entire game of such systems. If you played both Switch Zelda games, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, the first game kept things spicy by having you try to scrape a living and maintaining a dying body. And looking at it now, it feels like it was adding chili flakes to tofu; hiding bland taste with manufactured urgency. Here, there's no chili flakes. Instead, we have cayenne pepper Laine.

Daddy Dom Mafia Boss Twink Wants You (NON-CON)

It's actually a nice deconstruction of this trope. Yes, sure, you might be into it and then it's hot, but when you stop being into it... it becomes an absolute nightmare. Or at least it's supposed to be. Because he's insanely easy to outrun, I never felt threatened by him as far as gameplay goes. Okay, let me explain. You don't need stabilizer here, and your food needs are much, much easier to maintain. Instead, urgency is added by Mr Mafia Dom Laine on your tail. This all makes narrative sense, no worries; but the story clearly wants you to worry about this far more than it gives you reason to. Think slasher villain who gets stuck on the door frame; you just watch him ineffectually walk in place, unsure if you should feel bad for him or laugh.

class Middle extends Working {

I said that you don't need stabilizer and survival is trivialised. In CS1, you were locked into perpetual poverty, at least from a narrative standpoint. But here you have a ship. A crew. Went from the lower tiers of the working class into the solid middle. Gentrification. The game is self-aware about this, too. At some point, one character points out to you: "You have a ship. A crew. And yet, you're doing menial jobs. What the hell, man?" And to be honest, you don't even need to do it in the latter half of the game; but there's really nothing else to spend your dice on. Unless you're on a contract.

CPU_TEMP=96 // CPU_FAN_RPM=4000

Now we're talking. Contracts are tense, your resources are severely limited, you're almost always under some kind of time pressure, and these things actually do have meaningful effects on the story! It's still rolling dice and putting them in slots to progress clocks, and that sucks, but if the first game put chili flakes on tofu, then this is an equivalent of a ghost pepper. It's VERY spicy. These moments really carry the rest of the game. Too bad there aren't that many of them. It feels like the dev originally wanted to put more, but life tends to happen. And that's a shame. And yet, there's still a pretty significant design issue here. Negative outcomes (and sometimes neutral ones too) give you and your crewmembers stress. For you, that means that your dice can take damage, and eventually break. Sounds fine in theory, but there's a problem: you can't repair half-damaged dice. You can only repair them when they break completely. In practice, this means that there will be points where no amount of preparation will protect you from the danger of running out of dice. Let's say that all your dice have 1-2 hitpoints left. So on the contract you can try to play it safe and avoid stress at all costs... but that merely pushes the possibility of having all dice break to the next contract, one that might be far, far more demanding. And because of the way stress works, it's quite easy for things to just snowball out of control.

SELECT * FROM People

My final complaint would be that the characters just aren't interesting - even if many of them you've already met in the previous game. Still, I barely cared for any of them; there were some exceptions, but ironically, almost all of them weren't human. I somewhat cared for Serafin, and I tried to like a certain sneaky archaeologist, but eh. One character I cared for was a cat, another was a lost program, another was yet another lost program, and finally, there was a fellow sleeper. And honestly, they're the best. The game managed to showcase the fellowship of the "others" in a really excellent way. This person is weird. That's how they see me, too. And yet, they're the only one who can really understand how I feel. Human, yet not. Machine, yet not. This dychotomy was the highlight of the first game, and here it's simply not as pronounced. But what little is here is a worthy contination of the best parts of the first game.

sudo shutdown now

Despite all that, I kept playing. The feeling of disappointment only hit me when I reached the ending. Did I have fun? Or was it some kind of compulsion? A wish to see when it gets good? All three? I can't say. Goodnight, Sleeper. We won't be seeing each other again. if(reader.interested) { reviewer.GetCuratorUrl(); console.log("more like this"); }

Not as good as the first one. The first game had a lot of poignant stories about making the best of a bad situation and finding a new home. In this game you shuffle from crisis to crisis while a cartoonishly evil villain chases you. Meanwhile to the extent there are still some decent stories in here you're prevented from fully enjoying them by having to grapple with the game's annoying new stress mechanic. Who played the first game and thought "you know, this would be better if my die were breaking all the time and I couldn't fix them until they broke"?

Intensely frustrating. The writing is good as it had been previously, but now with the fun new mechanic of not being able to complete a contract mission, not being permitted to abandon and *leave* the mission, and being stuck there cycling over and over again needlessly until starving to death, even on the lower levels. A great game wholly ruined by one active decision not to permit that, and getting warnings when you try to say "well this is clearly not going well I need to cut my losses". May as well start the game again. I have, twice now.

Game should be considered false advertising. first five minutes of the game is reading someones bad dystopian fiction. then it feels like a visual novel... hard pass

beat the game before i did half the content needed to do so.. never had the required ship upgrades to even get to the area where the end boss is but could go in the area anyways... map fully unlocked and boss fight was over in minutes. the area was all unlocked. the end game was with allies i had never met... talking about stuff i never did.... so after it was beat. i was sent on missions to meet people i just end gamed with talking about planning to do what we had just did... for hours.

While I typically enjoy story-rich cyberpunk games, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector misses the mark with its unbalanced gameplay mechanics. The game attempts to create a sense of distress and urgency, but instead delivers an experience that's simply frustrating. The constant resource management feels punishing rather than challenging. I perpetually lack food, sleep, and fuel, while dealing with broken dice that make progression nearly impossible. Most of my advancement comes through failing rather than succeeding, which quickly becomes demoralizing. The mission structure is particularly problematic. Tasks are introduced when you lack the resources to complete them, creating a cycle of stress rather than satisfaction. Just when you think things can't get worse, the game introduces permanent dice glitches, resulting in continuous negative outcomes and broken systems. What could have been an engaging narrative experience is overshadowed by gameplay that's unnecessarily stressful, uneven, and ultimately painful. While a second playthrough might offer a better experience with foreknowledge of these mechanics, the significant time investment required makes it difficult to justify giving the game another chance. For fans of the original Citizen Sleeper or the cyberpunk genre, I'd recommend approaching this sequel with caution. The interesting story elements that might exist are buried beneath layers of frustrating gameplay that detract from, rather than enhance, the overall experience.

Played for less than an hour, but this game didn't manage to hook me. It's missing what I think is really important aspect to any narrative game which is establishing in the first 60 seconds, what is it that I want to do as a character and why. It throws you into the game with some lose objectives to run around the station rolling dice, which, I'm sure is a great mechanic, but without tying me to as strong reason why I'm trying to do this immediately, I quickly lost interest. The mechanic is essentially just pushing your luck, which can be really fun with the right narrative context, but that was missing off the hop.

I finished the game on danger difficulty as an extractor. Played in other classes and have 100% of achievements. And I want to share with my thoughts. Minuses <*>The antagonist has small screen time, he is evil because he intends to get the power. <*>I felt cognitive dissonance because on danger difficulty missions hard and often have tough time limits or small space for mistakes, which I really like. At the same time, on stations ( except Helion Gate, especially when you are Operator ) the game doesn’t provide any challenge at all, main negative timer "A Brief respite" can be decreased by elementary actions like flying into mission or change station. The current system of Glitches makes nothing `cause at stations we can skip cycles (cryo and negative timer aren’t problem) and on missions usually we don’t have Glitches. <*>At the end of the game I had 1400 cryo. It's sad that after the prologue, players can't use the currency for finding alternative solutions to difficulties ( like buying Feed Lines in Hexport ). For example, we can stop reducing glitch during cycles and create the ability to reduce one level of glitch for 20-30 cryo. It makes cryo more valuable and makes system of glitches more dangerous and impactful. <*>Let’s compare RPG systems from the first game with the sequel. In Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, we can increase stats and buy upgrades for special ability (PUSH mechanic unique for every class). On dangerous difficulty, after first push health of our dices will be in dangerous, so isn’t profitable to use active ability often. According to that, better way to progress will be to increase only stats. Except Machinists’ active ability which provides opportunity to player to decrease stress, also his ability in the second half of the game can be used every cycle without negative consequences.  Summarize, I more like perks from the first game `cause it was possible to combine them uniquely and usually, they worked more regularly than the alternative active skill from Citizen sleeper 2 on dangerous difficulty. Pluses     <*>In general, the story and characters aren’t bad. After culmination, we have a lot of time for epilogue. I understand why it can be a problem in pacing for other players, but I think that it suits for that story.     <*>I like the quality of text, art style, user interface. From my perspective, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is an okay game, but it could be much better. If Steam allowed neutral reviews, I would make a neutral review. But according to my text above, I will choose a negative.

Playtime isn't this long, I just left the game running cuz I passed out playing, like reading a good book and picking it up later. I finished this good book, and now I'm sad, because I didn't want it to be over. This is a great game.

This game has the JUICE. I thought the first game had the juice, but this one truly has the JUICE. If you enjoyed the first game, please play this one. It's better in every single way.

I'm a huge fan of the first game - I've completed it three or four times, have 23 hours in it, and I've enjoyed the variety of the flavor of the stories it told. Personal stories - characters you could get invested into and characters that stuck with you. Unfortunately, the sequel chose to eschew personal touch in favor of expanded mechanics and expanded scope and I don't think the writing's style is quite suited for that. That isn't to say that it's bad - the quality is still there, but it's much harder to be invested in locations rather than people - especially locations as vague as these. The Eye worked because you spend the whole game there, enmeshed among its people. Here, you cycle through a dozen locations - each with barely any distinguishing characteristics and with a barrage of characters that come, say their lines, and exit the story as quickly as they came in. Meanwhile, the crew of your ship - which, I think, is meant to be the main source of personal storytelling in this game - is extremely one-note. Some are more fleshed-out and have a role in the overarching story, but most of them follow a routine pattern of having an arc, that arc being quickly and roughly resolved and then fading into the background in a way that feels extremely abrupt. The overall effect of this is that aside from several characters, there's barely any tangible thread to hold onto in a meaningful way and that makes everything feel so much more muted and disconnected - even as this game's main threat to your character is meant to be much bigger and much more insidious than the first one's. Now, this is mostly a story game, but there's definitely an emphasis on the mechanics being expanded for the sequel and, while there are more of them, they also feel fairly unfocused - just like the rest of the game. There are more variables and more penalties - you have to contend with more difficulties and more timers. However, just like before, all they add is stress on the first playthrough. Once you have a handle on how the game works, it's likely that you won't have any real difficulty completing it - at least, on base difficulty. What is more vexing is the fact that some ideas feel at best unfinished and at worst squandered. Your crew has skills, but they are limited and there is no way to meaningfully alter or improve them which feels like a lost opportunity. Meanwhile, the item system has you gather five different kinds of scrap and other items but most of it is only useful for getting a bit of extra money which you probably won't need as long as you are frugal with what you get from the contracts. The number of times they played any role in the game's drives can be counted on one hand. So, in the end, the main theme of this game is "bigger and better" and while it certainly does "bigger", I really miss the kind of stories the first game told and the atmosphere it had. I was very disappointed to find very little of that in the sequel. It feels like the game has been rebooted into something shinier, but much has been lost in transition - a real shame, considering how much I looked forward to this game.

I enjoyed the first game, but this very much a derivative sequel without innovation, and a buggy one at that. A few CTDs, missing dice, bugged UI, poor controller support. The game is also packed with negative mechanics in a way that I don't remember the first one being: stress, broken dice, glitch gauge and dices, starvation, fuel requirements and inability to repair partly broken dice. It's tedium over tedium. Instead of facing challenges and becoming good at overcoming them and being rewarded, success in this game is really just keeping yourself from being hobbled by the plethora of negative mechanics. The story is ok, but pretty much a rehash of the first one. "Oh, who am I? what's happening to me? Mystery, angst, blah blah blah." The writing also use "they" to refer to single individuals all over the place, including the MC, making the writing confusing and tedious. Combined with the cast of character and mandatory TS companion who makes the mandatory speech about his identity/change, this reeks of a political agenda. All that attention and effort would have been better placed focusing on squashing bugs and making the experience fun and/or rewarding. I'll try to push myself into getting through it, but it's a clear disappointment. Probably my expectations were too high after the first one.

I finished CS2 on day one—not because it was short (it took me around 12 hours to complete), but because it had its hooks in me the whole time. If you enjoyed CS1, you will love CS2—it's a traditional sequel in the sense of expanding on what was already good. The writing is great, the systems with the added crew missions are tense and fun, and the relationships are compelling and character designs are amazing. My only complaint is that I think the lack of VO is really holding this back from being more popular - even a single narrator would make it so much more enjoyable.

While the first game avoided being overtly woke, in the sequel you get peddled THE MESSAGE a few hours into the game, implying that the whole of the Sleeper's journey is a metaphor for the trans plight. What more could you ask for, right? It's truly innovative and ground-breaking to do this in contemporary Western media. The overall tone of the story also attempts to be more virtuous than last time. The actual gameplay has improved a lot from the first game, and while far for from perfect, it provides a more engaging experience. As a result, this can be considered more of an actual video game, better justifying the medium through which the story is being told. Dice breaking and so on is interesting. 8 hours in: the plot has too much of the "but thou must" trope, which feels annoying. At one point later in the game you are forced into a long mission with consequences for no real reason, seeing as the adversary's clock gets halted just fine in a different planet. A simple "do you want to get this mission started?" prompt would have been very helpful. Game beaten: Citizen Sleeper 2 is decent. Not great, but decent. The increased difficulty is very welcome, but the plot of the first one is better. Another downgrade is that by mid-game you are already swimming in cash, which takes away a lot of the challenge. Money acquisition needs to be nerfed at higher difficulty levels so that currency actually has any value.

Juni has ruined me

Citizen Sleeper was perhaps my favourite game of 2022 and its long-awaited sequel is just as excellent so far. Congrats on rolling all 6's on the launch!

Sum-Up

In-depth analysis further down.

🟩 Pros

🟥 Cons

• Exceptional writing quality: each character feels unique, relatable and realistic, while all the interactions through the locations you visit are described in minute detail. • The gameplay system has been refined and mechanically overhauled compared to the first chapter, providing an even better, deeper experience. • Despite its narrative focus, the elements of management and strategy in completing your tasks are significant; they add variety, but are never overbearing. • Well-paced content that alternates tense, high-risk sections with narration and more relaxed roleplaying segments.

• It becomes too easy to survive in the Belt, especially later on, when you can use certain interaction loops and pipelines to get virtually unlimited resources with no risk involved. • Companions are of limited usefulness during high-risk sections, don’t evolve their abilities, and are little more than tools without additional quirks gameplay-wise. • There’s an annoying amount of deus-ex-machinas on failed interactions and skill checks during the main quest: luck seems to be on your side a bit more than it realistically should.

🟨 Bugs & Issues	🔧 Specs
• Map tracking for specific side quests doesn’t work correctly.	• i9 13980HX • 64GB RAM DDR5 • RTX 4090 • NvME SSD • 3840x2160

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Content & Replay Value:	It took me around 20 hours to complete Citizen Sleeper 2 on the Standard difficulty setting (the hardest one has Permadeath, no thanks), taking extra time to complete all side-quests and optional content I could find. Despite some branching choices, most of the content stays the same unless you purposely fail certain interactions; replay value is limited.
Is it worth buying?	Yes. The price of 24,99$ is fair for this amount of content and quality, even if the replay value isn’t much. If you like narrative-driven RPGs with a bleak, dystopian setting, and an original gameplay system, this one is a good pick.
Verdict: Very Good Rating Chart Here	An almost straight improvement compared to the first Citizen Sleeper, except for the survival aspect, which is instead more tame and forgiving. Still, a solid entry in the narrative RPG genre.

In-Depth

Writing & Worldbuilding

From the first moment it’s clear you’re chased by relentless enemies, in the inhospitable, bleak pile of ramshackle stations and struggling denizens that is The Belt. You may be distant from the Core Systems, torn by endless corporate wars, but you’re far from safe. Even more so for your being a Sleeper, an unnamed construct developed with servitude in mind, albeit one of the rare few that broke the drug-laced shackles of your masters. For that affront, you must die. Citizen Sleeper 2 is a tale of struggle against all odds, of survival and razor-edge compromises; in this aspect, the writing shines the most, also by emphasizing how things we may deem little are symbols of great hope in a place like The Belt. You’ll meet people willing to aid you, both companions that will venture with you and side characters; both are well-written, plausible and coherent in their responses, changing attitudes based on your actions and the events unfolding. The narrative for each location is highly descriptive, sometimes a bit too much so, but that contributes majorly in giving you the right impression and knowledge of whatever place you’ll visit. Each place has its variety, not so much visually, but most of all contextually—space stations may look all the same, but it’s the people there and how they behave to make all the difference. There are a lot of mysteries in the Belt, all for you to uncover… if you can. Despite all that, you’ll have the feeling a greater force, in a place that couldn’t be farther from any God, is protecting you in the most dire circumstances, a savior or an occurrence always ready to snatch you from oblivion’s grasp… unless you screw up really, really hard, but that’s on you.

Exploration & Survival

You’ll soon acquire a ship, The Rig; not big enough to make it through the stars, but good enough to ferry you and your eventual crew around The Belt. You’ll have to manage fuel, supplies and even maintain it at times, all of which, of course, doesn’t come for free. You’ll have to find the Cryo, the local currency, to pay for it all, or obtain it in other ways, often through risky scavenging, shady deals and dangerous business. The scarcity is more felt at the beginning, where it shines most as a true struggle for survival, but becomes less demanding as you progress, despite it making little sense, since your circumstances only get more dire. You’ll visit stations of all shapes and sizes: to get the lay of the land, you’ll have to use your Dice, a representation of your physical state and will to continue. Each passing day, you get six of them, rolled randomly, and you can use them in various interactions, such as exploring, doing odd jobs, repairing something, and a lot more. Depending on your character abilities, these dice may get a bonus or a malus, so better stick to the tasks that you’re more proficient at, and try to avoid what isn’t up your alley; there’s always a risk, and a negative outcome can deplete your energy quicker, making you starve in a world where food is a valued commodity, damage your dice, and even fail quests entirely or bar you from some interactions permanently, in the worst cases.

Skill System & Character Progression

Your skills depend on your starting class, with one of the five different specializations being forever barred to you, making you completely inept at certain interactions. All the others can be upgraded with Skill Points, acquired by completing main and side quests. Each class also has a unique ability, only usable during Contracts, that can boost skill check outcomes for either you or your companions, remove Stress, which breaks your dice and leaves you with less chances to succeed, or other positive effects. These abilities also influence skill checks in dialogues, which instead of dice, use your raw skills as a baseline to dictate the outcome.

Quests & Contracts

Normal quests often involve speaking to someone, doing favors, transporting goods, arranging deals. Some may be on a timer, some may not. The world doesn’t revolve around you and events beyond your control are always around the corner. There may be moments where you can take your leisure and keep accruing Cryo and resources, but those are few and far in-between. For most of the game, you’ll always have to be on the move, making efficient use of your time and your dice. Contracts work differently. Some are found in the world, others given by your companions. Each of them is a high-risk situation where you’re tasked with interacting with something particularly dangerous, with limited supplies, accumulating stress, and often a time limit or another circumstance that can fail the contract entirely. These are the parts when strategy, efficiency and yes, even luck are most prominent. Choose what companions to assist you well, so that they can compensate for the abilities you lack. Choose when to wait another day to get better dice, or risk it all with low rolls to get the best outcome before time runs out. The risk-reward factor is very much present, and rarely will you have the time to get everything in one go: something usually needs to be left behind.

After an enjoyable 8 hours, the entire experience was ruined by poor RNG and the games poor auto save system. these combined to create a death spiral which made the game impossible to continue. Nobody wants to invest hours and hours into a game just for bad luck to permanently ruin your save.