Citizen Sleeper uses tabletop mechanics to play with the sci-fi RPG format

polygon.com:

Partway through Citizen Sleeper, I realize that the closest thing I have to real kin on this entire space station is trapped inside an ancient vending machine. Neovend 33 is a cranky little thing, but who can blame it? The AI has been dormant, gathering dust in a locked bay, hoping that someone like me — a dysfunctional Sleeper barely holding it together — would come along to help. Long after I bid Neovend farewell, it stays planted in my head like a seed, and I’m alone in facing the impracticalities of my own existence. And when I finish the game, left with nothing to do but exist, I miss Neovend, deeply.

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Citizen Sleeper is the new narrative-driven, text-heavy role-playing game from Jump Over the Age (aka Gareth Damian Martin, the creator of 2020’s In Other Waters) that uses a dice system inspired by tabletop games. The player controls a Sleeper — an emulated “person” fleeing from the Essen-Arp megacorp in a proprietary body frame designed for “planned obsolescence.” It’s not far off from consumer tech now — hardware purposefully designed to wither in the face of endless updates and opaque new operating systems (or in the case of bionic eye company Second Sight, hardware that bricks itself in the face of bankruptcy). For Essen-Arp, these frames are a failsafe to prevent escapees like me from getting too far before they can send someone to bring me back. It is possible,