Whenever I write a review I always try to make it the best it can be. Construct an introduction that entices the readers for what is to come. Give a brief explanation of the story, explain how the gameplay works, list the pros and cons, and tell them why I recommend the game. Reviews tend to take a lot of time, work, and effort to make, but occasionally there are games I struggle to cover. It’s not that I hate these games, but trying to concoct a full review for them is hard. To put it frankly, “I just don’t know what to say.” It’s a shame, because there have been short titles I’ve played recently that I still want to express my opinions on. I wrote an article last year titled, “Games I Didn’t Review in 2022,” and I planned to bring a concept like that back in the future for cases like this. I have also written short reviews titled “A Brief Look” in the past, so why not do a bunch of “Brief Looks” at once? Here we are with volume one of Briefs Looks. Most of the games we’ll be talking about are indie games, but there is one well known title here. Hardcore FPS fans aren’t going to like what I’m about to say, but…
Quake
I don’t love Quake, but I don’t hate it either. For any who don’t know, Quake is considered one of the most influential shooters of all time. It was one of the first FPS games out there that was truly 3D. The environments were walkable spaces rather than pixelated flat textures arranged in such a way where it gave the illusion of a 3D space, aka the original Doom. Characters and enemies were 3D models that moved about, the object and weapons you interacted with were 3D models as well, and unlike Doom you were able to aim in any direction and jump around. It was the next big step for the shooter genre, and it also had a fully functional multiplayer. The players could run around, pick up the weapons they used in the main campaign, and compete in what we know as arena mayhem. Quake is important and without it tons of other shooters wouldn’t have made the big leap either. Everyone loves Quake, so why didn’t I?
It’s not that I hate old school shooters. In fact, I love them. Four months ago I covered Dusk, an indie shooter inspired by Doom, Blood, and of course Quake. It had fast-paced combat, grim atmosphere, and horrifying monster design similar to that of Quake. It was great and proof that this style of shooter design can still have a place today. Just look at the rise of indie boomer shooters! I was excited to step into Quake because it was more of the type of shooters I enjoy. Everyone was talking about how timeless it was and that it aged like fine wine. I beat the original campaign and… well I don’t really agree with what a majority of people are claiming. I think the nostalgia goggles are blinding people of Quake’s flaws, and in a couple cases I think Quake aged kind of poorly. Let’s get what I like out of the way first. The gunplay is awesome and every gun is fun to use. Your arsenal isn’t perfect and there are some of the weapons you could go without though. I don’t why there’s a nailgun and super nailgun when players are obviously going to go for the stronger variant. The lighting gun is unlocked so late throughout each episode you won’t have enough time to use it, and the ammo for it is used up so quickly you might as well stick to the other weapons. Both the shotgun and super shotgun feel underwhelming, and none of your attacks have any impact or satisfaction. However, they are fun to use. It’s mindless and any gun that allows me to cut the enemy down quickly without reloading is a good gun.
All of the enemies have a distinct design that makes them easily recognizable, and due to how they all function differently from one another you should easily know how to deal with them. I like the atmosphere and dark tone, and can even sense a bit of lovecraftian influence due to the gothic architecture and eldritch horrors you fight. The movement is really good as you can run from one end of the level to the next within seconds. Quake is enjoyable on the surface, but then I started to notice the game’s flaws. First of all is the level design. I don’t like it. It’s cramp and doesn’t give you enough space to deal with the enemies running down on you. In a game built around fast movement speed you need to create open arenas and environments so the player has enough room to run around in. Oftentimes I’m forced into corners to deal with knights or the one enemy that’s like the pinky demon but it lunges at you, and I get annoyed because there are times they close in and refuse to let you out. Some enemies are pretty annoying like this one type that shoots homing explosives at you and you can’t even destroy the projectiles with your guns. The maze-like level design isn’t always great as the game doesn’t give you a good idea where to use a keycard next leading to needless backtracking. The first major boss fight sucks as it’s literally just running around a room to press three buttons, and the final boss fight sucks more as it’s a game of running around in circles and blasting the most powerful enemies in the game. Which then suffers from the same problem of not being built around movement.
There’s the fact the game is made up of several shades of gray and brown, and despite having a good atmosphere I can’t recall any of the places I’ve been to. The story is nonexistent, which is fine because it didn’t need to be story heavy. However, from what I’ve gathered the plot is just Doom but not interesting. Quake is a really mixed bag for me. Again, I don’t hate it and I can see why a ton of people enjoy it. I haven’t tried out any of the other campaigns or expansions, so this is just a coverage of the original campaign. I can respect Quake for what it is, what it stands for, and I think it’s better than a lot of FPS titles out there. 7/10, for just okay. I can get past “Okay.”
Alright, onto the indie games. That’s what we are really here for!
FTL: Faster Than Light
I had an addiction to FTL for four weeks straight. Whenever I had some downtime in between classes or wasn’t off playing another game I’d just boot up FTL and play a round or two. Three if I was really feeling like it! FTL: Faster Than Light was developed by Subset Games, who some of you may know for making Into The Breach in 2018. I really love Into The Breach. A smartly designed tactical strategy game that forced you to think about every step you took. The roguelike element added a high amount of replay value to the game, and it kept me coming back even after reaching the end. It’s not my most played roguelike and I do think the starting team of mechs is better than everything else you unlock afterwards, but it’s one of the best tactical strategy games ever made. I would go as far to say it’s better than Fire Emblem. So I’ve been meaning to play FTL for a really long time now. See where Subset Games started out. Every time I thought about purchasing the game I turned it down. It didn’t fit my interests and I’ve never been a fan of spaceship management. However, I didn’t like tactical strategy until I played Into The Breach. So I said, “Screw It!” and just bought FTL during a Steam Sale.
The first few runs of FTL are rough. Even after playing the tutorial, the game doesn’t do a good job teaching you certain rules or preparing the player for the threats they are about to face. User interfaces can be difficult to understand and enemy ships can kill you quickly. Even on easy mode you can get blown to bits easily if you don’t know what you are doing. Once I did get into the game I was having a lot of fun. The premise that you are working for the Federation Fleet. You and your crew manage a small vessel, and must transport important information across the galaxy to Federation Headquarters. The rebels are getting ready to attack, and you must out fly them and deliver the info before they catch up or kill you. The premise is simple, but FTL has a pretty intriguing universe. One made up of different alien species, factions, and ways of dealing with them. Although those aspects aren’t that deep either, what FTL benefits from the most is the player creating their own stories. You get to decide how your journey plays out and the tales that are spun. The player is presented with multiple dev written scenarios and have choice on how they approach it. You could engage in every fight you see, back down, accept enemy surrenders, or blow them up for more rewards and become the most ruthless sons of bitches the galaxy has seen. Save slaves, kill the slavers, help with every distress signal, donate supplies, be selfish, or just go and kill more rebels. This nuance of storytelling is what gives FTL high replayability.
Gameplay is fairly designed and progression is satisfying. Ship combat can take a bit of time to get used to, but it’s all about knocking the enemy shields down and hitting them with all of the weaponry you have prepared. You can choose what rooms to target and shooting certain rooms may turn the tides. You could create a fire by shooting the weapon cache, blow up their oxygen tank and make them suffocate, kill the pilot, or kill each crew member one by one. You can even board their ship and engage in physical combat if you have a crew teleporter. However, enemies can do this to you as well. They’ll shoot you where it hurts and you have to send crewmates to rooms that are damaged. You have to know what to do during stressful scenarios. Crewmates can be plotted on certain stations and maintain the ship’s many systems. Decrease the time shields have to recharge, increase weapon ready rate, or use the cameras to see where enemy crewmates are on their ship. Managing what is going on without getting confused or stressed out is rough, but it is rewarding to pull out of difficult fights alive. You obtain supplies from winning fights, and they can be used to purchase items from shops or upgrades. Another thing you’ll want to manage is ship power as each ship function requires power to do things. Maybe you won’t have enough and have to divert power from one system to another. FTL may just be a jamboree of pixels and flat textures, but it immerses you into the role of being an epic ship commander.
FTL does have flaws though. You gain more rewards for exploring each sector of the galaxy and this encourages players to explore before moving on. However, two mechanics hold this back from perfectly working. First off, there’s the fuel system and how once you run out it’s basically game over. Fuel is used whenever you make a jump, so it limits how much you can travel. It does force the player to manage their supplies, but I feel like this is a mechanic that could be removed and nothing is lost. In fact, a lot is gained as the players will probably want to explore more now. The second mechanic is the approaching rebel fleet. After a certain amount of time, a rebel fleet will begin to enclose you. Having the rebel fleet catch up leads to this stress forcing the player to move on. I get that you don’t want players to linger around in an area too long, gain a ton of upgrades, and become overpowered during the late game, but in a game that’s already really unforgiving this feels really unnecessary. Another mechanic that can be ditched and a lot would be gained. Sector 5 and everything above has this absurd difficulty curve, and if you haven’t been obtaining good weapons or upgrade your shield capacity above three you are pretty much f*cked. The final boss is this huge bullet sponge I barely managed to scrape. It has a cloaking device that prevents you from attacking for a few seconds, does a ton of damage to your ship, and there’s about three phases. At some point I just quit. I never beat FTL, but I did enjoy it for the time being. I think it’s a fun game with a ton of depth, and you can clock in hundreds of hours with how every run can play differently. I do recommend it and it’s easy to see why it’s considered the best spaceship game and an indie classic. 8.5/10 for pretty good.
Hotline Miami
We move on from indie classic that has aged wonderfully to indie classic I have spite for. The Hotline Miami series is considered to be one of the most violent video game series ever made. Sparking a ton of controversy, but garnishing a ton of love nonetheless. I don’t know why it took so long for me to get to Hotline Miami. I played a good handful of games influenced by it like Bloodroots, Ape Out, and lastly Katana Zero which I consider to be a masterpiece. Without this classic these three probably wouldn’t have existed. Unfortunately, I do not like Hotline Miami. I think the game is kind of overrated and that the games that took influence from it managed to avoid some of the problems it had. In Hotline Miami you follow a man who gets a suspicious phone call. The night before he had a dream about being visited by three masked strangers telling him bad things are about to happen, and the phone call gives him addresses to places filled with crime lords and thugs. He goes to these places and kills everyone he sees. Mutilating them and slowly going insane in the process. Hotline Miami has some decent world building and you can see a bit of the character’s life changing with each act he commits. Seeing him fall down into a state of insanity and transform into the monstrous animals he wears masks of. Hotline Miami has a good presentation, but everything else about it I did not really enjoy. I hated it.
The gameplay focuses around clearing each room using the tools you have. Every enemy dies in one hit, but the catch is you die in one hit as well. Creating this rush to run around and deal with foes the fastest way possible. It’s fun until it gets really frustrating.You have a split second to react and later on a good chunk of foes are armed with guns. They have precise aim and if you don’t kill them in time you are basically dead. You can use the guns they use yourself, but sadly you can’t reload them or loot ammo off the guns they drop. Which sucks, because this creates inconveniences at the wrong time. Your peripheral view isn’t the best as it gives a good idea of what is around you, but not of what is ahead. Meaning you can often get killed by something that is coming from off screen. I should mention I played the Nintendo Switch version of this game, and let me tell you this was not designed with the controller in mind. This was obviously a game designed for mouse and keyboard as quick reaction requires precise aim. It can be hard to tell what is going on in the environment as bullets fly about, glass gets laid along the floor, and blood is spilt. It’s a visual mess and while I get you’re supposed to be disturbed by the violence it can lead to getting killed amongst the gorey mess. One thing Katana Zero brought to the table was bullet time, otherwise time slow. It allowed the player to make precise actions easier or during moments when too much was going on. They added it not only because it was fun, but to avoid problems such as this. Hotline Miami is pure trial and error to the extreme, and while this is a style of games that benefit from it here I felt it got too repetitive.
My other complaints include the art style being ugly, but maybe that was on purpose. The music is obnoxious in my opinion, the mask system does not add a whole lot to the game, and while the score system does encourage replaying levels the rewards aren’t great enough to encourage great performance. Hotline Miami was disappointing to me. I don’t think it’s a terrible game and it’s a lot better than a lot of games that came out in 2012. It’s just not my cup of tea and one of my least favorite indie games now. Final score is a 6/10 which stands for passable in my book.
The Case of The Golden Idol
The Case of The Golden Idol is a “mystery” game I was very excited about. Everyone compared it to Return of The Obra Dinn and upon watching a gameplay trailer I got Obra Dinn vibes from it. Return of The Obra Dinn is a masterpiece and still my gold standard when it comes to mystery games and any detective game that comes out. Its only flaw is that you can’t replay it and have the exact same magic the first playthrough had, so you just have to cross your fingers and hope more games like it come out in the future. The Case of The Golden Idol should have refueled me and the hunger I built since playing Obra Dinn. However, I walked away feeling underwhelmed. Let me clarify, this is a good game and I do recommend it. This is a puzzle game that forces you to actually think, analyze the material in front of you, and work towards the solution. It does not hold you by the hand and the hint system built in even forces you to work towards obtaining a single hint. Most of which don’t immediately point out the answer. Golden Idol should have been a slam dunk, but then my appreciation decreased with time. My opinions can be summed up with Video Games are Bad video essay on the game, but basically what I'm trying to say is Golden Idol has no mystery.
How can I say this when it has a gameplay structure similar to that of Obra Dinn. Analyze each scene, obtain info, and fill in the blanks within a log book. That’s just analyzing information. A mystery is what we are pursuing. Okay, so explaining this is going to be hard, so let’s look back at my good friend Obra Dinn here. In Return of The Obra Dinn you had to figure out the fates of the sixty passengers aboard. How they died and what was happening that night on the ship. The mystery of Obra Dinn is not how they died, but the events that occurred. It seemed normal at first with crew betrayals, but then you start witnessing monsters boarding the ship and you have to wonder how they were lured aboard. The mystery is now figuring out what lured the monsters or where they came from. It’s a satisfying goal to work towards and what makes this even better is that none of the events are given in chronological order. You have to piece together the info yourself until you have an understandable narrative. That’s what made Obra Dinn so memorable despite none of the concepts in the game being original. It’s a decent narrative told in an amazing manner. Going back to The Golden Idol, you don’t pursue a mystery. You just see events unfold and what crazy shenanigan happens next.
You aren’t a detective or player character solving a mystery, but instead just seeing a bunch of scenes mashed together as if this was some slideshow. Every event is told in chronological order meaning you don’t have to piece together the narrative for the narrative is told in a linear fashion. The story focuses around a magical Golden Idol and the spells it can perform. People mess up things with it, people get killed, and at some point the government of a small town changes. This isn’t a mystery, this is me witnessing a historical retelling. The first few cases though start off good. Core gameplay is well designed as you fill in the blanks and discover how the murdered person died. However, they stopped being comprehensible after the 6th case. Golden Idol suffers from a problem of, “To make it challenging let’s just increase the size of the investigation space and how much is going on.” and this is a terrible method. This doesn’t make the case hareder, but it makes it more overwhelming to deal with. Scurrying across each space and trying to determine what the f*ck is going on. The game stops giving good clues on who is what and how it went down, and some of the clues they give aren’t good enough. Obra Dinn never had this problem as investigation scenes were often compact and not too much was going on. Golden Idol then stops being an investigation game of what happened and then just tells you to recall each scene. That’s when I knew Golden Idol was terrible at being a “mystery” game. Everything else is good. The soundtrack is well composed, I like the aesthetic, and the pixelart is great besides the character portraits. I think this is a smartly designed puzzle game that tries to advertise itself as a mystery game, but fails. I give an 8/10 for being pretty good. This is one of the better 8/10s I’ve given.
Helltaker
Another free to play indie game that I managed to beat within under an hour, and this is one my weird friends have been begging me to try out. It’s one of the more internet popular indie titles out there, and we’ve all seen the “intriguing” fanart for it. Practically made for the fan content that would sprout out. Helltaker is a short puzzle game where you hook up with hot demon girls and make it out the depths of hell. It’s as simple as it gets folks. In all honesty, Helltaker is good. Not amazing, but pretty good. Each level has you pushing around blocks, smashing skeletons to bits, maybe grabbing a key, and reaching a demon girl before you run out of moves. Each level requires a bit of thinking as you want to reach the demon girl with said amount of moves. Maybe you don’t want to smash all the skeletons in your way, or the blocks you have to push are in actuality diminishing the amount of moves you have to act. The game pushes your mind, but no level should take several minutes to beat. Reaching a demon girl is rewarding, but then you have to pass a skill check to get them to come with you. Fail the skill check and you have to redo the level. This I feel like the game could have done without, but yet again you should remember the puzzle solution by then. The art style is charming as everything was hand animated and drawn. From the small little chibis running around on screen to the character portraits which are all fantastic. Every demon girl has their own unique quirks, and it’s just funny seeing what buffon you run into next. Music is good and there’s a fun bullet hell section at the end of your journey that switches up the puzzle solving. I wish Helltaker had a level editor, because I can see a ton of people creating new puzzles for other players to solve. I recommend Helltaker as a lot of heart was obviously poured into it by the single developer working on it. 8/10, pretty good.
Gato Roboto
Some of you readers should know I love metroidvanias, but did you know that I love cats? Quite adorable creatures with their starry eyes, soft fur, adorable paws, and wiggly tails. What if I told you there is a metroidvania about a cat piloting around a mech suit. Gato Roboto is an adorable pocket sized adventure where you explore an alien world, fight off baddies, and collect upgrades to power up your suit. The game is one of the more linear metroidvanias I’ve played. I never felt lost while exploring, the game kept a consistent pace, pushed the player to always move forward, and defeat the next boss. Gato Roboto doesn’t do a whole lot of new or special things, but it is a very fun game. Always keeping up the action, and throwing boss fights that test your skills and knowledge of a new upgrade you picked up. The game took me under three hours to beat which is a decent runtime. The game doesn’t have high replay value, but there’s enough to encourage speedrunning which the game does after your first playthrough.
The story is pure humorous fun. A guy crashlands onto a planet, gets stuck in his ship, and his kitty goes off to explore. Along the way they encounter a talking mouse which serves as the main antagonist, and they uncover the logs of what appears to be a scientist going insane. It’s stupid, ridiculous, and I had fun witnessing it. The humor isn’t memorable like let’s say Guacamelee or Psychonauts, but it’s good enough to get you through. There are a few flaws. You can only heal whenever you save at a save station, which is weird as every metroidvania I have played has always offered a way of healing beyond save stations. Boss fights are where the game curves in difficulty and some of them can be annoying to deal with. The black and white color scheme can be an eye sore to look at, but that’s a personal opinion. (Plus we're about to touch upon another game with a monochromatic color palette.) Gato Roboto is a short but fulfilling enough metroidvania. You might want to wait for a sale. Ten bucks is still quite an asking price for a three hour joyride, but overall I recommend the game. 8/10 for pretty good.
Minit
This explanation is going to be really short just like the game. Minit is okay enough. You pick up a curse sword, die every sixty seconds, and embark on an epic adventure to find the origins of the sword. Characters you meet are silly, there’s a ton of discoveries to be made, and what makes the discoveries fulfilling is that you have to find them on your own. The world is small, but figuring where to go is a mind boggler at times. Each death you should learn something as you piece together the puzzle and work towards a goal. Minit has a cool gimmick going on, but it ended too soon. It took me under an hour to beat the game and it felt like they could have done more with it. A lot of the enjoyment during the first playthrough is lost as if you know exactly what to do you can just dart straight towards the finish line. Engaging in fights is not fun at all, and what you have here is a classic styled adventure game with the gimmicky nature of those style of games. Ten bucks is also really steep for a game that’s less than an hour long. Minit is good, but I don’t know if I recommend it. 7.5/10, but this is one of the better okay games out there. The one where you hope they flesh it out more in the future.
Downwell
As the title suggests, Downwell is about journeying down a well and I really loved it. This is a game focused on its core gameplay loop and executing it well, and by all means they did it well. Rather than move left to right you mainly won’t to focus on what’s coming up below. Enemies, hazards, platforms, and everything that wants to kill you. Our main character can only take four hits before he dies and encountering health refills can be often rare or expensive. However, he has a pair of gun boots to blast whatever stands in his way or keep himself in the air for a few seconds. Your guns reload whenever you step onto solid ground or hop onto an enemies head, so you could be a player that carefully navigates his way down and only stomp on an enemy just so they don’t fall down too quickly. Here’s the catch: continuously stomping on enemies' heads will generate a combo meter. If this combo meter exceeds eight (from what I can remember), you will get a gem bonus. Gems are your main currency and they can be used to purchase items at shops. Whether that be healing items or upgrades to your ammo capacity. Continuously collecting gems will also fill up a meter called Gem High which increases how many gems you get from jumping on enemies. You are rewarded for rushing down, reacting quickly, and maintaining combos. It’s satisfying and you want those gems as item prices increase with each new zone.
Everytime you clear a zone you can choose between one of three items, and each item will affect how your character works. Having a jetpack for when you run out of ammo, creating a blast that hurts everything around the enemy you stomped on, shooting projectiles whenever you destroy blocks, having a balloon that blocks enemies coming from above, and much more. Every item and upgrade you collect is a useful expansion to your character, and even purchasing healing items when you are max health can be useful as overhealing four times will increase your max health. You can pick up different gun modules and each one functions differently. You have the machine gun, noppy w, shotgun, burst fire, and laser. All of which are fun to use. Gun modules also have the advantage of refilling health or increasing ammo capacity, so you have to consider if it’s worth restoring health in exchange for a different firing mode. Enemies you can stomp on are white while enemies who damage you when stomped on are red.
Each zone has unique rules that switch up the gameplay. First zone preps you up, the second zone has floors you can’t always stand on, the third zone is a water level where you can run out of air if you linger too long, and the fourth zone is a test of combo stomping. Difficulty is always ramping up, but the games manage to be fair. I never felt like a death was based on randomness, so this is one of the more skill based roguelikes out there. I wouldn’t even say Downwell is a roguelike. It has a high score system and as you gather more points you unlock different falling styles. Each changing how your character functions like slower falling rate, or more health at the start but falling faster. I don’t think Downwell is perfect. The final boss is chaotically hard, and the three colors the game uses can be tiring to look at. You can swap to one of the many other color patterns the game has, but some of them may make it harder to tell what enemies can and cannot be stomped on. Meaning you might as well stick to the default color pattern so that you don’t take damage from trying to stomp on a jellyfish. It’s not one of my favorite roguelikes either, but damn this game is extremely addicting. I strongly recommend Downwell as it’s easy to pick up and get hooked into. It’s even on mobile, so you can possibly play it while sitting on the can. 9/10 for excellence at best.
Valiant Hearts: The Great War
Valiant Hearts: The Great War is probably my favorite among the games we’re talking about, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a good “video game.” I don’t think this is a game you should play for fun and any gameplay to speak of is very minable. The puzzles are fairly designed and once you figure them out you feel like a genius, but they aren’t too hard of puzzles and they lose their value during future replays. There are occasionally these driving rhythm game sections where you must avoid attacks, but these aren’t too hard either and the checkpoints are forgiving. You have these stealth sections and chase sequences which can punish you as well, but checkpoints are also really forgiving. Exploration only rewards you with collectibles which do nothing, and this is a one and done game. Once you beat it there is no going back as you replay the exact same events in the same way again. Valiant Hearts: The Great War is not a good “video game,” but I do strongly recommend it nonetheless. It is a game with heart and soul, and delivers a powerful narrative I looked back on even after rolling credits. It is one of the best war stories I’ve seen in a video game and it’s not even the most violent.
You follow four characters as they are sucked into the nightmarish battles of World War I. Karl, a German farmer who lived in France and took care of his loving family until he was deported and forced to fight for Germany. Freddie, an American who moved to France but wishes to extract revenge on the general who killed his wife. Anna, a medic who rushes to the front lines to help the wounded and search for her father who was a scientist abducted by the Germans. Then there is Emile, father in law of Karl who is forced to fight for the French. All of these characters’ paths are intertwined at some point and they struggle to survive as the war gets harsher. Valiant Hearts is a game about war and how it affects the lives of many in the worst way possible. How it’s not as fun as you think and the people who fight in them oftentimes don’t want to in the first place. The soldiers you follow are near human beings. People with actual lives they wish to get back to if they manage to survive. The death toll rises with each month and more lives are wasted as they fight a hopeless battle. The war brings out the worst in men, and by the end of the game you see all the destruction brought upon by warfare. Besides the comically evil German general, all the characters are pretty likable. The music is good and the art style is beautiful. The description I can give Valiant Hearts is, “Children’s story book taking a twisted dark turn.” I really liked this game. It goes on sale often for five bucks and that’s a perfect asking price for it. There’s a sequel out at the moment and I plan to play it if it gets ported some day. 9/10 for excellence at best.
Citizen Sleeper
Citizen Sleeper is the most unique game on this list and the one I’d suggest picking up the most. It started off very slow, but with time it wormed its way into my heart and now it’s refusing to leave. You are a Sleeper, a human who decided to upload their consciousness into the mind of a humanoid android and agreed to be controlled by the Essen-Arp Corporation. All machines that are owned by them are under their controller, but you decided to sneak aboard a cargo crate and escape their clutches. You end up on a massive space station known as Erlin’s Eye, where dozens of escapees and refugees of the Essen-Arp Corporation try to survive. The Eye isn’t in the best condition and everyone tries to play their part to keep the colony alive, but they try to find some form of hope. You awaken with no memories of who you once were, but the humans that found you try to put you into good work. They are aware you are the property of Essen-Arp and they’ll eventually try to track you down, but before that happens they might as well teach you or remind you what it was like to be human. You start taking on daily jobs, interacting with locals, and forming a new life. However, life is terrible and you have to find a better place to live. Not to mention, your body is decaying.
The game has a really interesting premise and it’s the result of fantastic writing. The story is the main reason I kept playing Citizen Sleeper and I wanted to see what happened next. What new characters I would encounter and how I could help make their lives better. Everyone you meet is understandable or faces a problem the player character can relate to. Suffering from poverty, lack of food, shelter, or trying to escape the mass corporatization Essen-Arp tries to influence. How the system they work for eventually ends up screwing them over in the end and eliminating any hope they have for a better life. All of the player’s thoughts and character actions are described through dialogue and the style of writing reminded very much of another game, Disco Elysium. Actually, the main reason I checked out Citizen Sleeper was because a lot of critics compared it to Disco Elysium through how character dialogue works and the many skill checks throughout. However, I wouldn’t compare the two as both of them have hugely differentiating qualities. The world of Disco Elysium was an expansive space you wandered around in. Whereas the world of Citizen Sleeper is just a rotational ring you select icons on to trigger conversations or actions you could participate in. The stats in Disco Elysium were different thoughts and beings who would speak to you in conversation, and the stats in Citizen Sleeper influence how likely you are to get a higher benefit in a skill check. Well they were like that in Disco Elysium too, but there’s like about six stat categories here in Citizen Sleeper. I can see where people are getting comparisons from, but overall I find the comparisons to be extremely unfair.
The game uses Cycles, otherwise a time progression system. Each new Cycle you wake up in will give you Action Dice, and these dice can be used to perform actions throughout the world. Whether that’s daily jobs, scouting out areas, or obtaining new information. The higher the number a dice is, the more likely you’ll get a positive outcome. The lower it is the more likely you will get a neutral or negative outcome. If you get too many negative outcomes in certain skill checks you may even lock yourself out from completing them, so sometimes you want to save up higher number dice for checks you want to succeed in. If you perform certain actions enough you can progress in character questlines, and some questlines have to be completed within a certain amount of cycles otherwise you fail. Other quests you’ll have to wait for until after another set amount of cycles, and the game transforms into a time management game similar to that of let’s say Persona. Completing quests gives you skill points to increase stats and unlock perks, and some of them are really useful like being able to reroll your dice once per cycle. Two mechanics you want to be wary of are condition and hunger. Two hunger points are used up each day, and the player condition will decrease each day. If player condition decreases enough then they’ll lose one of their Action Dice. You have up to five dice and being stuck with two during a tough schedule can be burdening. You can restore health by eating food and there’s a food stand nearby that costs little to nothing, but the drug you need to restore your condition is really expensive. This encourages you to pursue work, make money, and save it whenever.
Gameplay overall is good enough. It does have its flaws. Player condition is already a mechanic worth worrying about, but hunger could be removed and nothing would be lost. The player can collect resources for quests or crafting items, and it would be nice if they give you a table or icon telling you what places sell the items they need to progress in a quest. For some quests they do, but for others they don’t. There’s this other world you can enter where you can hack info out of elite agents. This requires you to have specific number dice and upon unlocking this data you may continue through certain quests or gain data that sell for a good amount of money. This is cool and all, but I feel like they could have gone without the hacking world and just plopped them as icons onto the current map. The game can feel overwhelming when you have too many activities going on, and at times you have to consider what quests you want to fail or prioritize on. However, a game that makes me accept failure without getting pouty about it is obviously doing something right. Even when you start screwing up the game secretly encourages you to try again and hopefully lady luck will be on your side. This is one of few games where luck and randomness doesn’t annoy me. The developers manage to make randomness benefit the game.
I’m really glad I stuck around with Citizen Sleeper. It’s not for everyone, but yet again nothing is for everyone. It fits a certain niche and thankfully I fell within that specific niche. It’s one of the more important and impactful games to have come in 2022, and it’s probably one of the ten best indies to have come out last year. Citizen Sleeper is a game about continuing to live on despite the hardships in life, and that is the most meaningful message of them all. I strongly recommend this game and in the end I am going to give this game a 9/10 for excellence at best.
That’s all the games for today dear readers. Goodbye and have a pleasant day.
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