Citizen Sleeperis an exciting game with a rich narrative, heavily influencedby tabletop RPGs. The world-building is excellent, and there are plenty of interesting characters and places to explore. InCitizen Sleeper, the player assumes the role of a Sleeper, an emulated human mind locked in a mechanical body. With little to no memory of their past in a place that isn’t always hospitable to Sleepers, surviving on The Eye is a challenge.
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One of the biggest hurdles to survival is planned obsolescence. Sleeper’s bodies begin to degrade rapidly: it only takes a handful of cycles for their bodies to begin to power down (players will feel this decline, as they’ll havefewer dice to rollas the Sleeper’s body begins to degrade). To overcome this, players need to inject Stabilizer into their bodies. It turns out, however, that Stabilizer isn’t the easiest thing to come by.
Here are a few ways players can find Stabilizer. Some of these are renewable sources, but will cost a fair bit of time or cash; others are one-time deals or rewards for side quests. Balancing the drive to explore the story alongside the need forStabilizer and energyis all part of the brain-scratching joy ofCitizen Sleeper!
Sabine’s Surgery
Players will first find Stabilizer in Sabine’s surgery in the Bright Market. They must fill in the ‘Local Knowledge’ clock to access it. They can do this by completing the Ask for Directions or Explore the Market action. The former is a Critical Action, meaning players only have one shot at doing it. The second is a repeatable action, so anyone can do it as often as required.
Once players have done this, they can access Sabine’s surgery. She’s a slum doctor, willing to rely on some underground contacts to source Stabilizer for this unexpected Sleeper. Players must wait for three cycles, then check back in with Sabine. She’ll give players one Stabilizer free of charge (at this point, players will need it!). However, players must pay Sabine 100 cryo from then on for additional Stabilizer.
Castor’s Table
Castor is an interesting character. He has many questions for the Sleeper and asks many (painful) questions about the Sleeper’s origin story. Once players have gone through their first encounter with Castor, they can revisit him to see what he wants. Castor wants data on both Havenage and Yatagan. Getting these can take a while, as he wants 5 of each, so it’s a longer-term task.
Still, if players can get this data for Castor, they’ll be richly rewarded. In exchange for the Yatagan data, Castor will provide them with 1 vial of Stabilizer. He’ll also hand over a Shipmind in exchange for the Havenage data, which is also worth doing. Those 1- and 2- dice rolls feel much more valuable now!
Hypha Commune Labs
Players will have to find the Hypha Commune and become a member first (before that, they’ll need to pay some cryo to cross the Founder’s Gap, as detailed in the above picture). Once they’ve done this, they can chat with Riko. Riko is a botanist who wants some assistance in understanding the local ecosystem. Helping her involves a few stages: players will have to collect spores, then grow mushrooms, which can take quite some time.
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However, once players have done this, they’ll be rewarded with Stabilizer; Riko explains that this came from the mushrooms themselves, unlocking the option of sourcing more mushrooms for Rika to use to make more Stabilizer. This is potentially a rich source of Stabilizer, so it’s worth investing time into.
Sidequests
Some side quests offer Stabilizer as a reward, but this varies depending on the player’s choices throughout the game and how successful their actions are. Players may stumble upon Stabilizer just by being willing to explore or lend a helping hand; getting a vial of meds as a reward is always a nice surprise.
An example is the ‘Study the Winter Light’ drive in Dragos’s yard. Digging through the broken ship will dig up a chunk of the story and, crucially, reward the player with Stabilizer. The downside is that Dragos will become so furious with the player that they won’t offer any further work for them. Players will have to decide if that is a risk worth taking.
Bonus: Repair At Home
A bonus entry to this list. Players who struggle with sourcing Stabilizer could use their upgrades to unlock the Self-Repair skill. This enables players to use scrap to repair their condition rather than relying on Stabilizer. While scrap can be hard to come by at the beginning of the game, players may prefer to do this than to seek out Stabilizer from Sabine or go down the ‘mushroom’ route.
Having said that, if players have chosen the Engineer class, they’ll unlock a pretty decent skill. The Efficient Extractor skill allows players to (potentially) gain a random Scrap item for every Engineer action. Scrap is helpful for many reasons, but it becomes much more valuable if players can use it to repair their Condition using it. So, if players have chosen the Engineer option, unlocking the Self-Repair skill is an excellent choice and could save quite a bit of cryo in the long run. (They can also unlock the Sunbatheskill to restore energytoo).
Citizen Sleeperis available on PC, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
