Success and fame are things I imagine any game developer might want. We live in a world where more games are released each year than ever before, all of them rushing by in a frothing torrent of competition, fighting for air and a branch that will hoist them above and get them noticed. Few grasp it, but Citizen Sleeper most certainly did.
Released in 2022, and spread widely via Game Pass, this warm-hearted science fiction story about a distantly-controlled robot has now been played by more than a million people, and it made the game’s creator, Gareth Damian Martin – also known by their studio name Jump Over the Age (they contracted the artwork and music) – something of a star. A success.
It’s deserving of that success – it remains one of my favourite games of recent years. Though slight in stature, it smolders like a fire in my memory, held there by the touching relationships you forge with characters on a circular space station called The Eye. The game is a mixture of role-playing, strategy, dice-rolling and narrative, though really it’s a ponderance on identity and finding out where you belong. Who or what are you as a Sleeper? It’s up to you to figure it out.
Citizen Sleeper 2 – Date Announce Trailer Watch on YouTube
Success, though, can be tricky to deal with. It creates expectations and thrusts people into a spotlight that can be fierce and withering. “At first, it’s very, very disconcerting,” Gareth Damian Martin says, talking to me in a video call shortly before Christmas. “It’s very tricky to deal with. You are absolutely drowning in praise and people sending you direct messages and emails, and sending you pictures of tattoos they’ve got and things like this.”