Citizen Sleeper Episode: FLUX Is The Perfect Addition To A Stunning Game
A flotilla of refugees has arrived on the Eye, but it’s stuck in limbo. Held outside the station’s ports in effective quarantine, the people on board are struggling. They need a home, but more pressingly they need food and water. When you bump into Eshe and Peake, two mysterious renegades dead set on helping the refugees, you’re pulled into their hectic and high-stakes plan. But who are they, and are you going about helping the refugees in the right way?
Citizen Sleeper is a game that makes you think about your place in the world, but aside from parallels to modern-day bionic implants that stop working when companies go bankrupt, the commentary tends to be quite subtle. That’s not the case with the refugee story that Flux tells, but developer Gareth Damian Martin handles the tricky subject with ease.
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You don’t get to speak to, or even see, any refugees in Flux, but as the first part of a three-chapter story (all of which are free, by the way) I hope that changes. For the moment though, Eshe and Peake are interesting and motivated characters who slot perfectly into the environment of Erlin’s Eye, as if they’ve always been there alongside the likes of Feng, Sabine, and NeoVend. They’re as mysterious as they are rebellious, and will find any way to help those in need, but other forces that I won’t spoil are also in play.
Flux is a tight mission, intended to be played when you’re already late into the game. There’s a 12-turn timer on the main quest, and despite the fact I’ve completed the game and therefore had a hefty stockpile of resources, I only made it with two turns to spare. In that sense, it feels perfectly balanced; it was a tense affair with
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