Citizen Sleeper Dev Talks Sequels, Stress & Creating “My Personal Take On The Mass Impact Collection”

Nintendo Life: Citizen Sleeper was an enormous success again in 2022, however you’ve stated previously {that a} sequel wasn’t the pure subsequent challenge for you. What was it that made you need to come again to this universe for Citizen Sleeper 2?

Gareth Damian Martin, Leap Over The Age: I’m an enormous fan of constructing experimental initiatives, and inventing new designs inside video games, which suggests a sequel isn’t all the time my first intuition. However with Citizen Sleeper, I felt there was nonetheless a lot extra of the experiment to do! The primary sport was pretty modest when it comes to system and scale, so it left loads of house for brand new techniques and concepts. Particularly, I’m an enormous fan of “ship and crew” sci-fi sequence like Cowboy Bebop and Farscape, however I’ve all the time felt video games by no means fairly bought the style proper. So it was thrilling to attempt to make certainly one of these tales throughout the Citizen Sleeper universe, which I felt was ideally suited to this sort of storytelling.

Ultimately, I felt like there was a possibility to construct on the primary sport whereas additionally providing one thing equally recent and totally different in order that the 2 video games might sit alongside one another as a pair.

Citizen Sleeper 2, like its predecessor, is about lots of various things: capitalism, humanity, survival, loneliness, and so forth. What are the most important challenges of balancing so many themes in the case of writing a narrative like this?

I’ve to be trustworthy, I don’t actually write “thematically” after I’m telling a narrative. I’m probably not targeted on making statements. As an alternative, I’m very thinking about my characters and the totally different paths they will take by means of the sport.

I actually hope gamers get pleasure from connecting the dots between the 2 video games

After I begin writing, I typically have lots of conditions in my thoughts that really feel attention-grabbing or thrilling. I might need an thought for a contract the place you instigate a mutiny on a ship in the course of a common strike or an thought for a bunch of characters who’re all pursuing the identical long-lost interstellar drive. I choose and invent these primarily based by myself pursuits, so the explanation Citizen Sleeper has these themes is as a result of that’s what pursuits me on this planet! That’s after I actually arrange the topics of the story, and from that time on, my thoughts is targeted on who the characters are, how they converse, how the world works, and what may make for a compelling plot.

Some tales are compelling as a result of they’re tense and pacy, others as a result of they’re introspective and heartfelt. For me, the fantastic thing about Citizen Sleeper is that the sport can comprise all these atmospheres and tales without delay, so I don’t fear an excessive amount of about balancing. If it pursuits me and looks as if a powerful story, I attempt to get it in!

Regardless of sharing some narrative DNA, this sequel seems like it may be performed by these unfamiliar with the primary entry. How necessary was it so that you can create one thing that continues the Citizen Sleeper universe, but in addition works as a standalone?

I feel that is all the time an necessary a part of making a sequel, it’s important to assume that that is the primary sport for gamers. However relatively than see this as a restrict, I noticed it as a possibility. I’ve all the time been an enormous fan of time skips in tales. When carried out properly, they combine all the prevailing elements of the story, after which the reader or participant will get to really feel sensible and curious as they piece all of it again collectively and inform their very own story of what occurred within the lacking time between.

What is very enjoyable with a time skip is that they typically enable for the prequel/sequel order to be learn in both manner, as discovering the place a personality got here from is as compelling as discovering the place they find yourself. So this was an enormous focus when making the sport, and I actually hope gamers get pleasure from connecting the dots between the 2 video games and being stunned by the customarily uncommon journeys characters could take.

The sequel seems to be rather more rooted within the RPG style, with clearly outlined class expertise, missions and expanded cube mechanics as only a few additions. Had been there every other video games (video or tabletop) that impressed these mechanics throughout improvement?

As with the primary sport, Citizen Sleeper 2 was massively impressed by designs and ideas from pen-and-paper TTRPGs. Blades within the Darkish was the primary tabletop sport I ever ran, and it stays my favorite. It impressed the primary sport, and with the sequel, I noticed the chance to adapt extra of its techniques right into a online game. Citizen Sleeper 2’s “push” mechanic, the place you accrue stress to realize a bonus to or reroll your cube, is a direct inspiration from that sport, and its techniques are designed round asking the participant to “push their luck”.

stress shortly grew to become a really great tool to symbolize all types of techniques within the sport

Within the stress techniques I added to Citizen Sleeper 2, I took inspiration from the myriad of stress techniques showing in tabletop video games over the previous 5 years, however particularly Mothership and Coronary heart: The Metropolis Beneath. There’s a lot good and thrilling sport design occurring within the tabletop scene, and I discover it a continuing inspiration for my very own work.

On the online game facet, my important touchstone was Mass Impact 2. I wouldn’t say I used to be trying to duplicate something from Mass Impact 2, nonetheless, extra that I wished to make a sport that approached related concepts another way. I typically discover this can be a manner I prefer to work in video games. In Different Waters was my very own tackle Metroid Prime, refocusing it on scanning and xenobiology. In the identical manner, Citizen Sleeper is my very own tackle the Mass Impact sequence, shifting the main focus from saving the galaxy as a supercop to studying to stay and survive within the margins of an interstellar society.

With neighborhood and residential being such an necessary a part of the primary sport, how does this theme play into the bigger setting of the Starward Belt within the sequel, and what challenges do the brand new hubs pose for the Sleeper?

Concepts of residence play out a bit in another way in Citizen Sleeper 2: relatively than having a large city megastructure as the situation, the sport performs out over a sequence of scattered habitats of various dimension and elegance. Due to this, your house actually turns into the Rig, a ship you will have stolen and that expands and modifications over the course of the sport. I actually need to seize that gradual and refined technique of transformation because the ship beneficial properties crew and turns into extra acquainted, and sometimes in writing the sport, I discovered that to be in distinction with the Hubs, which finally, you all the time have to depart.

So I feel on the coronary heart of the sport is a rigidity between shifting on and settling down, which feels essential to the Citizen Sleeper sequence on the whole.

There have been many aggravating moments in Citizen Sleeper, and now Stress is a mechanic within the sequel. Why did you resolve to implement this, and what impact will it have in your relationships in-game?

Citizen Sleeper 2 ties up a number of the concepts properly, whereas additionally opening up the opportunity of extra tales

Stress techniques are a reasonably in style and well-battle-tested ingredient in lots of modern TTRPGs, and I feel that’s as a result of they provide an summary type of hurt vs Well being Factors. You may take stress from a heist, a tough negotiation, or babysitting a toddler, however you hopefully wouldn’t take HP injury! This permits for a broader vary of challenges for gamers and in addition penalties. I used to be actually conscious of the chances this opened up for telling a broader vary of tales from operating TTRPGs, particularly ones that aren’t targeted on fight. So this was one of many first issues I wished so as to add to the sequel.

As I developed these concepts in Citizen Sleeper 2, stress shortly grew to become a really great tool to symbolize all types of techniques within the sport. It represents the stress your physique is beneath and the chance that the strain may flip into actual and everlasting hurt. It represents your crew’s eagerness to proceed engaged on a contract when issues don’t go properly. It additionally represents extra summary concepts, like how shortly a derelict ship is falling aside, or the opinions of a disgruntled crew turning in opposition to their captain. So stress bars of varied varieties could have an enormous impact in your path by means of Citizen Sleeper 2, and I feel managing them is without doubt one of the most compelling and tense components of the sport.

This time round, I actually wished the sport to be aggravating, compelling and crammed with emergent tales of success and failure. Stress is the software that enables me to attain that.

You latterly instructed Eurogamer that Citizen Sleeper 2 could be the final online game within the Citizen Sleeper universe, however a tabletop adaptation continues to be on the playing cards for the longer term. How does it really feel to be fascinated about returning the sport to its tabletop roots and is there something you’re feeling might be misplaced/gained within the course of?

I’m very early within the course of of constructing a Citizen Sleeper TTRPG (as you may think, I’ve been busy with the sequel!), however I’ve a really clear goal with it. I’m actually pleased with the 2 video games and the story they inform on this universe. I feel Citizen Sleeper 2 ties up a number of the concepts properly whereas additionally opening up the opportunity of extra tales. My goal with the TTRPG is handy the instruments to inform these tales over to the participant and to allow them to carry whichever threads catch their curiosity ahead with their associates (or begin completely new ones).

What will get left behind by doing that’s, in fact, my very own presence because the narrator of these tales, however I feel after two video games, there are lots of references for individuals to go to if that’s what they need. What’s gained is the unconventional openness of a tabletop system, the prospect for gamers to fill within the gaps in a significant manner and actually discover their connections to the universe’s characters and concepts. Which, in a manner, is what these video games have been about all alongside.

This interview has been evenly edited for readability.

Thanks to Gareth for taking the time to reply our questions and to Jasmine at DoubleJump Communications for setting it up. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector launches on the Change eShop on thirty first January for £20.99 / $24.99.