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We’re big fans of developer Jump Over The Age’s highly acclaimed tabletop-inspired narrative RPG Citizen Sleeper here at Eurogamer, so July’s sequel reveal was a happy day indeed; and while there’s still some way to go until it’s release, creator Gareth Damian Martin has now shared a few new details, including confirmation it’ll be heading to Game Pass.
Speaking in a video shared by Xbox as part of its Gamescom activities (hence the Game Pass focus), Martin explained Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector will once again combine “free-form table-top RPG inspired dice-based gameplay with slice-of-life stories and relatable characters” – only, this time, it’ll be “bigger, more varied, more challenging”.
Citizen Sleeper 2 brings a new, malfunctioning Sleeper android protagonist and a new setting in the Starward Belt, on the edge of the Helion System. One of its biggest changes, though, is that players get their own ramshackle ship and can assemble its crew, which Martin says is an attempt to “capture what’s special about stories like Cowboy Bebop and Firefly, where it’s not about hauling tonnes of titanium across the galaxy but…getting into trouble with a complex cast of characters, improvising, making do, and always running on the edge of disaster.”
The juiciest bit of Martin’s update, however, comes toward the end, with a first look at a new location in Citizen Sleeper 2: a bustling way station known as Hexport, built on the back of – and powered by – three abandoned solar reflectors. It sounds like Hexport will be one of the sequel’s earliest destinations; Martin says players arrive here with a damaged ship and must find allies and take on contracts to be in with a chance of escaping their bounty hunters pursuers.
Inside Hexport, players can hang out at The Bends – a spacer bar “where you can find trouble and a freelance crew in equal measure” – or land a lucrative contract at the Hexport Exchange, the “thrumming heart of the station” filled with data brokers and merchants. And the final location revealed for now is Factory Row, home to ship fitters and salvage yards, and a tight-knit community players will need to get on the right side of if they want repairs.
That, alas, is all the information we’re getting about Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector for now, but anyone eager to learn more can sign up to Jump Over the Edge’s free Helion Dispatches newsletter. It’s a monthly text-based narrative series intended to fill the time gap between the original Citizen Sleeper and its upcoming sequel. There’s no hint of a release date for the new game just yet, but it’ll be available on PC via Steam and Game Pass – and potentially other still-to-be-revealed platforms – when it eventually arrives.
