Lost In Cult produces some of the most beautiful video game books I’ve ever seen. What’s more, its choices of which games to cover are exemplary. Its Design Works series of stunning hardback tomes has covered Sable (which was runner-up in my Game of the Year list in 2021), the criminally underrated Eastward, and is following them up with Outer Wilds, Immortality, and Mundaun.
Lost In Cult has also just announced a book about Ultros.
Sandwiched in between these bangers is Citizen Sleeper. My Game of the Year in 2022, and one of my favourite games ever made, I couldn’t wait to devour nearly 250 glossy pages of interviews, design documents, and beautiful artwork. But I didn’t realise that this book would also be the best way to play more Citizen Sleeper after I finished playing the sequel, Starward Vector.
Citizen Sleeper: The Book
My expectations are sky high for Lost In Cult books at this point. Somehow, they always exceed them. From the minimalist cover adorned with a glossy image of a melancholy Sleeper, to the heavy pages within, this is a premium affair that would grace even the most expensive coffee table. And that’s before you get to the words.
If you ever wanted a look inside the mind of a game developer, there are few better ways to do so than by picking up a Lost In Cult Design Works book. Writer Ewan Wilson pulls golden nuggets of design philosophy and development stories from Citizen Sleeper developer Gareth Damian Martin like plucking the finest apples from the greengrocer.
There’s a wealth of backstories and design decisions explained in this heavy book; every element of Citizen Sleeper is picked apart and carefully crafted back together again. Ever wanted to know about the banh mi stall in London that Emphis’ is based on? To see the concept sketches that portray how Bliss’ design came to fruition? How do you even begin to create Killer, an anthropomorphic computer virus? Design Works has the answers to it all.
I’d go as far as to say that this is a book that will appeal to anyone, whether they’ve played Citizen Sleeper or not. Obviously, it helps to know what all these decisions are in relation to and how they shape up in the final game, but it’s not necessary. If you’ve got any interest in game development, science fiction, or beautiful books, then this is worth your time.
Citizen Sleeper: The TTRPG
And yet, there’s more. Never sitting on its laurels and perpetually pushing the medium forward, Lost In Cult includes an exclusive Citizen Sleeper TTRPG with its weighty tome. Damian Martin has been vocal about continuing to explore the Citizen Sleeper universe in the tabletop space, and this exquisite tarot-based game feels like the start of something much bigger.
A single-player card game, Cycles of the Eye is an ingenious format to allow players who have finished a couple of playthroughs of both Citizen Sleeper and its sequel (guilty as charged) to further explore The Eye and the characters who inhabit it. Using a bespoke tarot deck designed in the same style as the games, a rulebook, and a reference book, you can play out an alternative version of the events of the first game.
Damian Martin and Alfred Valley have created the perfect game for those of us who want to spend yet more hours living, surviving, on The Eye. The nature of a tabletop game is that it lets your imagination run wild, and this pairs perfectly with Damian Martin’s descriptions and the duo’s robust mechanics.
If you’re looking for more Citizen Sleeper and are happy to while away an hour or so inside your own head with a solo TTRPG, you can’t go wrong here. Grab a pen, paper, and ten D6, and head back to The Eye for another cycle of adventure.
If you were lucky enough to grab the deluxe version of the Design Works book, it comes with ten beautiful dice designed to look like those in the video game.
Cycles of the Eye is the perfect accompaniment to Starward Vector. It leads you back to The Eye in a way that feels familiar, but almost like experiencing Citizen Sleeper for the first time all over again. I don’t know what form Damian Martin’s next Citizen Sleeper TTRPG will take – I’d imagine it would be a co-operative multiplayer experience, but that’s pure guesswork on my part – but the very thought excites me. In the meantime, though, you can find me poring through the pages of this Design Works book and dealing myself a new hand that just so happens to lead me to Emphis’ stall all over again. This time, I’m not sure I’ll ever leave.
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