Citizen Sleeper
Fair · RPG · 2022
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
WAIT.
A BANGER at $6.98, only fair at $19.99.
- Length
- 6.9h
- Value
- $2.90/hr
- Reviews
- 92% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, DirectX 11 compatible GPU, 2 GB of storage. Runs on Windows, macOS.
Roleplaying in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism. Live the life of an escaped worker, washed-up on a lawless station at the edge of an interstellar society. Inspired by the flexibility and freedom of TTRPGs, explore the station, choose your friends, escape your past and change your future.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
November 2024 is where it bottomed out, at $5.99. 40 discounts in the 4 years on record. They run about 60 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 4 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 6 weeks. The math puts its BANGER price at $6.98. The record reaches that level 18 times.
Against its own genre it lands in the top 5 percent on value. It is pricier than 85 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 96 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Extended Edition ($19.99, scores 69) beats it on value, while it beats Dex ($19.99, scores 48).
Critics scored it 82. Players sit 10 points higher at 92 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 9 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written September 2022 to August 2026. That is fewer refunded reviewers than 7 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 3,416 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 2,623 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 61 percent of the 263 reviews written there were positive, against 92 percent overall, and those are 3 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
64% start to 6% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
36 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
A complete failure from a ludological point of view. Overly pithy and maudlin. Full of busywork and waiting around for bars to fill.
If you like melancholic sci-fi and found-family stories, there's a good chance you'll love this. However, the tone remains quite the same. If you take a close look, you'll see that Citizen Sleeper is a bunch of text organized around loading bars. The strong art direction and mood can disguise that, can carry the experience. For me that didn't happen. Initially the space station was fun to explore. You meet strangers...
Overall, I'd rate it 9/10. Definitely worth playing. This is probably some of the best writing and narrative in a game I have ever played. The story is linear-ish (individual narratives can be completed in order of your choosing, but overarching story is largely unaffected), and some of your choices will matter much more than others. But the character writing and development is, in the truest sense of the word...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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Citizen Sleeper scores 67/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1578650/citizen-sleeperThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 23.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.