Mechanically the game mainly consists of making sure your body isn’t in disrepair by using scrap and a specific life-sustaining drug to restore your health as it slowly drains with each cycle. At the beginning of each day, you are given up to 6 rolled dice, each containing a number 1-6. You use your dice rolls to perform specific actions, with higher rolls increasing your chance of a successful outcome. The amount of dice you have each cycle is based on how much health you have. At the start of the game, you start with 13 out of a maximum of 20 health, forcing a sense of desperation upon the player as they desperately try to find a way to recover before their health hits zero. The system is incredibly simplistic, but I believe that was an intentional design decision to make the player focus more on the game’s characters and the other threats against your survival.

Your body is corporate property, and as a result, there are bounty hunters hired to return you to the Essen-Arp megacorp. Your ultimate goal is to either build a new life for yourself or escape into the infinite cosmos. In this pursuit, you find friends in the different districts of the station, often needing your help to survive as much as you need theirs. Also, if you spend too much time lurking around the station’s deep nets, you might find some foes clocked in darkness. For the sack of spoilers, I won’t discuss any specifics but let’s say the cast of characters is terrific. Each character has a storyline of hope, despair, revenge, and freedom as they call on you for help. In my pursuit to 100% the game, I did come across some genuinely heartbreaking story moments where I entirely faded into the world of Citizen Sleeper.