Nintendo Life: Citizen Sleeper was an enormous success again in 2022, however you’ve mentioned prior to now {that a} sequel wasn’t the pure subsequent undertaking for you. What was it that made you wish to come again to this universe for Citizen Sleeper 2?
Gareth Damian Martin, Bounce Over The Age: I’m a giant fan of creating experimental tasks, and inventing new designs inside video games, which implies a sequel isn’t at all times 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 area for brand new programs and concepts. Particularly, I’m a giant fan of “ship and crew” sci-fi collection like Cowboy Bebop and Farscape, however I’ve at all times felt video games by no means fairly obtained the style proper. So it was thrilling to attempt to make one among these tales throughout the Citizen Sleeper universe, which I felt was ideally suited to this type of storytelling.
Ultimately, I felt like there was a chance to construct on the primary sport whereas additionally providing one thing equally recent and completely different in order that the 2 video games might sit alongside one another as a pair.
Citizen Sleeper 2, like its predecessor, is about a variety of various things: capitalism, humanity, survival, loneliness and so on. What are the largest challenges of balancing so many themes with regards to 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 centered on making statements. As an alternative, I’m very fascinated by my characters and the completely different paths they’ll take by the sport.
I actually hope gamers get pleasure from connecting the dots between the 2 video games
After I begin writing, I usually have a variety of conditions in my thoughts that really feel attention-grabbing or thrilling. I might need an concept for a contract the place you instigate a mutiny on a ship in the course of a normal strike or an concept 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 the planet! That’s after I actually arrange the themes of the story, and from that time on, my thoughts is concentrated on who the characters are, how they converse, how the world works, and what would possibly 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 include all these atmospheres and tales directly, so I don’t fear an excessive amount of about balancing. If it pursuits me and looks like a powerful story, I attempt to get it in!
Regardless of sharing some narrative DNA, this sequel looks like it may be performed by these unfamiliar with the primary entry. How essential was it so that you can create one thing that continues the Citizen Sleeper universe, but additionally works as a standalone?
I believe that is at all times an essential a part of making a sequel, it’s important to assume that that is the primary sport for gamers. However reasonably than see this as a restrict, I noticed it as a chance. I’ve at all times been a giant fan of time skips in tales. When finished nicely, they combine all the prevailing substances of the story, after which the reader or participant will get to really feel good 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 usually enable for the prequel/sequel order to be learn in both method, as discovering the place a personality got here from is as compelling as discovering the place they find yourself. So this was a giant 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 usually uncommon journeys characters might take.
The sequel seems to be way 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 programs 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 programs are designed round asking the participant to “push their luck”.
stress shortly turned a really useful gizmo to signify every kind of programs within the sport
Within the stress programs I added to Citizen Sleeper 2, I took inspiration from the myriad of stress programs 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 taking place within the tabletop scene, and I discover it a continuing inspiration for my very own work.
On the online game aspect, my major touchstone was Mass Impact 2. I wouldn’t say I used to be making an attempt to copy something from Mass Impact 2, nevertheless, extra that I needed to make a sport that approached related concepts otherwise. I usually discover this can be a method I wish to work in video games. In Different Waters was my very own tackle Metroid Prime, refocusing it on scanning and xenobiology. In the identical method, Citizen Sleeper is my very own tackle the Mass Impact collection, shifting the main focus from saving the galaxy as a supercop to studying to dwell and survive within the margins of an interstellar society.
With neighborhood and residential being such an essential 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 house play out just a little in a different way in Citizen Sleeper 2: reasonably than having a large city megastructure as the situation, the sport performs out over a collection of scattered habitats of various dimension and magnificence. Due to this, your house actually turns into the Rig, a ship you will have stolen and that expands and adjustments over the course of the sport. I actually wish to seize that sluggish and delicate strategy 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 at all times have to go away.
So I believe on the coronary heart of the sport is a stress between transferring on and settling down, which feels crucial to the Citizen Sleeper collection generally.
There have been many nerve-racking moments in Citizen Sleeper, and now Stress is a mechanic within the sequel. Why did you determine 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 programs are a reasonably in style and well-battle-tested aspect in lots of up to date TTRPGs, and I believe that’s as a result of they provide an summary type of hurt vs Well being Factors. You would possibly take stress from a heist, a tough negotiation, or babysitting a toddler, however you hopefully wouldn’t take HP injury! This enables for a broader vary of challenges for gamers and in addition penalties. I used to be actually conscious of the probabilities this opened up for telling a broader vary of tales from operating TTRPGs, particularly ones that aren’t centered on fight. So this was one of many first issues I needed so as to add to the sequel.
As I developed these concepts in Citizen Sleeper 2, stress shortly turned a really useful gizmo to signify every kind of programs within the sport. It represents the stress your physique is underneath and the chance that the strain would possibly flip into actual and everlasting hurt. It represents your crew’s eagerness to proceed engaged on a contract when issues don’t go nicely. 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 assorted varieties could have an enormous impact in your path by Citizen Sleeper 2, and I believe managing them is among the most compelling and tense components of the sport.
This time round, I actually needed the sport to be nerve-racking, compelling and full of emergent tales of success and failure. Stress is the device that permits me to realize that.
You latterly instructed Eurogamer that Citizen Sleeper 2 can 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 desirous about returning the sport to its tabletop roots and is there something you are feeling will likely be misplaced/gained within the course of?
I’m very early within the course of of creating 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 believe Citizen Sleeper 2 ties up a number of the concepts properly whereas additionally opening up the opportunity of extra tales. My purpose 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 mates (or begin completely new ones).
What will get left behind by doing that’s, after all, my very own presence because the narrator of these tales, however I believe after two video games, there are a variety 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 method and actually discover their connections to the universe’s characters and concepts. Which, in a method, 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 Swap eShop on thirty first January for £20.99 / $24.99.
Jim got here to Nintendo Life in 2022 and, regardless of his insistence that The Minish Cap is the most effective Zelda sport and his unwavering love for the Star Wars prequels (sure, actually), he has continued to write down information and options on the location ever since.
