Jump Over the Age and Fellow Traveller have announced that development of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is underway, and will serve as a sequel to the original Citizen Sleeper indie game first released in May 2022, following the story of a corporate-owned android who finds refuge in a lawless space station on the fringes of interstellar society.
Citizen Sleeper was inspired by tabletop RPG systems, and sought to provide players with a more personalized experience through its player-led approach – coupled by characters and artworks from artist Guillaume Singelin and soundtrack by Amos Roddy.
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector promises to bring back the same development team that made the first game a success. This sequel will introduce players to new locations and characters, as they take on the role of a new Sleeper in a deteriorating body. Similar to the original, players are tasked with carving out a life among the stars. However, in this sequel, players have additional responsibilities, including managing a ramshackle ship and leading a crew through a system-wide crisis.
The sequel will also retain the tabletop RPG inspired gameplay approach, while incorporating ew systems and mechanics designed to provide increased depth, complexity, and challenge to the game. Jump Over the Age and Fellow Traveller introduced Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector during the PC Gaming Show with an animated narrative reveal trailer, which was produced in collaboration with Studio Yuzu. You can view this trailer for yourself below:
The Story of Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
You are a Sleeper, an android built by Essen-Arp for whatever purpose your corporate owners dictate. After a daring escape, you’ve made it all the way out to the Starward Belt, a remote asteroid cluster at the edge of the Helion System, only to have swapped one form of control for another. You’re now under the thumb of Laine, a notorious gang leader who provides you with Stabilizer – the drug your android body needs to survive – and uses it to exert control over you.
It’s a miserable existence for you and Serafin, your colleague in servitude. Together, you hatch a plan to escape. After a desperate attempt to free yourself by rewriting the very code that governs your system, you are on the run with a malfunctioning body, a price on your head and no memory of your past.
The first thing you did was steal a ship. Keep it running, maintain it, even upgrade it, and maybe it will eventually carry you away from all this. But you can’t run it alone. You’ll need a crew, and while the Belt is full of those looking for work, it’s also full of trouble. Can you hold the ship together through this crisis? Can you build a refuge here, among the stars?
Meanwhile, there is a crisis unfolding in the Helion System. Two vast corporate entities are fighting a bitter, covert war that is touching everything, even the Starward Belt. Waves of refugees, shattered hulks of warring ships, strange new technologies, all of this and more is now washing up on the shore of the Belt. Navigate this shifting territory, take on contracts, get paid, and survive to see the next cycle.
