Leaving, Staying
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #188. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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What does digital grass feel like?
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In Citizen Sleeper you begin by arriving on the Eye. You have escaped Essen-Arp, the corporation that built your body, although they will come and find you soon enough. But there’s nothing you can do about that. Leaving the Eye is almost impossible. You’re just going to have to make the most of it.
In Citizen Sleeper 2 you begin by leaving Darkside. You are on the run from Laine, the person who once controlled you, although he will come and find you soon enough. You can never stay in one place too long. But you have a ship. You jump from place to place across the Belt. You’re just going to have to make the most of it.
As you meet people and help them in Citizen Sleeper, the Eye gradually begins to feel like a home. Although you might sleep in a storage container for many nights, you’ll eventually be able to repair the wall of a place of your own and adopt a cat there, or rent an apartment in the gravity-less spire, or bunk with the commune that lives in the shattered Greenway.
You’ll build a life. Although things are a desperate scrounge at first, the fight for survival often asking you to trade-off between necessities like food and the stabiliser that stops your body from literally falling apart, it won’t always be this way. In particular, you can commandeer your own space in the Greenway, reclaiming a section of the collapsed station to farm mushrooms.
These mushrooms are perhaps the most grounding aspect of being on the Eye. They can be repurposed into the stabiliser you need, cutting a huge part of your expenses, and they can also be sold in their own right at a high price. They can be offered to friends and researchers and refugees, deepening your roots in the community.
Some of those roots are impermanent. You’ll make a lot of friends on the Eye, and many of them will leave. Many of them will offer to take you with them. And maybe you’ll go, but I couldn’t. I was home.
As you meet people and help them in Citizen Sleeper 2, the Belt only expands. You’ll learn about other planets where people need help. You’ll take on jobs that have you hopping from hub worlds to asteroids, crashed ships, mysterious signals in the middle of space.
Every time you reach a new place, you’ll have to get to know it before you can do anything, even eat or get fuel to leave. It’s a constant cycle of learning the ins and outs of unfamiliar spaces and communities. And it’s expensive. Unlike the mushroom farm giving you room to breathe in Citizen Sleeper, there is no moment where Citizen Sleeper 2 becomes easy. Perhaps easier, if you’re lucky on your missions and don’t get critically stressed, but never easy. You’ll always be scrounging for fuel, supplies and scrap. Travelling is expensive. You can grow mushrooms in your little ship, but only for your own consumption. They have no roots.
I hit credits in Citizen Sleeper many times, each one when I refused to leave the Eye. It didn’t ever really feel like an ending, because there was always more to do, here, at home. Citizen Sleeper 2 has a conclusion that feels more final. Back on Darkside, the place you once escaped, your doctor asks you to imagine what you’ll do after a life-changing procedure. The first, most crucial question: will you continue to travel, or will you stay?
I’ve never wanted to be pinned down. But having just replayed Citizen Sleeper and fallen in love with one single space station, and then having played its sequel and been ground down by the relentless movement of its sequel, I wanted to build a home. So, I’ll stay. No matter what comes next, I’ll stay.
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Jay Castello is a freelance writer covering games and internet culture. If they’re not down a research rabbit hole you’ll probably find them taking bad photographs in the woods.
