Citizen Sleeper creator Gareth Damian Martin has a particular quirk when developing games; they write a single word on a post-it note and refer back to it while shaping the narrative. For Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, this word was ‘entropy’, although they told me that it changed once during development. I can’t help but wonder what that other word was. A not insignificant part of me believes it may have been ‘hope’.
That’s the word that threw itself at me as I roamed the Starward Belt in my dilapidated spaceship throughout the game. Everything is decaying, stations are being blown to smithereens by gang leaders, people are desperate to escape, to survive. But amid the rubble of a defunct, destroyed civilisation, the seeds of hope are sprouting. In 2025, this is the message I needed to hear.
Spoilers for Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector to follow.
Olivera is a planet of refugees led by Karman. They’re rebuilding their lives, but are much further along the path than others you meet in the Belt. Olivera is a functional, co-operative dwelling, where everyone chips in – your Sleeper included – to help everyone survive. Sometimes that’s all you can do in situations like these.
“I established this colony as a refuge, a way of starting again,” explains Karman after you save his life. “The Belt is changing, and I am afraid of what is coming.” This community is an insular group of drifters, not especially welcoming to outsiders, but co-operate with each other to create an equal society in the midst of galactic war. That’s admirable in and of itself, but both Karman and Olivera grow (the former figuratively, the latter literally) over the course of the game.
“If you need to resupply, we can help,” Xander offers when you arrive. “We haven’t got much, but if you chip in, you’ll get your share.” Karman soon doubles down on this philosophy, spurred into action by your own against Laine. Once the epilogue rolls around, Olivera isn’t just surviving, it’s thriving. But most importantly, it’s busy. Karman is welcoming people into the fold, and this community is extending its kindness to others, to outsiders, to those who would have formerly been turned away.
Olivera’s founders were refugees. Specifically, the refugees from the first game who escaped the Eye with your Sleeper’s help. Built out of the wreckage of the Pilgrim’s Seed, Karman, Xander, and everyone in Olivera are the phoenix rising from the ashes, the first buds of spring breaking through the undergrowth in the aftermath of a forest fire. In Karman’s words, “We built our independence from their failed hope.”
I think of Los Angeles, devastated by forest fires caused by global warming, a problem that the richest people on the planet ignore in favour of lining their own pockets and those in government ignore because their palms are being greased. Of the people who have lost their homes, their memories, their everything. Can they rebuild? Of course, but it will take time. Time to recover, financially and emotionally. Time to come to terms with everything that has gone and what can be remade.
I think too of Gaza, of the Palestinians forcibly displaced by decades of Israeli invasions and a year of bombings that have reduced the country to little more than rubble. Yet still, people survive. A population that is nearly 50 percent children forced to live through atrocities we promised to never let happen again.
I don’t live in Los Angeles or Gaza, and yet the world still feels oppressive. It still feels impossible to find solace from the unrelenting deluge of awful news. My government sells weapons that kill children. I tried to fight with my vote, I tried to peacefully protest in the streets. It all seems so futile.
Strangely, Starward Vector gave me hope. The opposite of an escapist fantasy, its commentary on real-world problems (though not necessarily or specifically the ones I’ve detailed here) opened my eyes to the ways we can push through, help each other, and rebuild. There is something to fight for. Within your own community, your local area, even just helping your neighbours is defying the selfish individualism that capitalism and political ideologies thrive on.
I’ve become a bit of a nihilist in recent years. Why bother recycling when corporations create more waste in an hour than I do in a lifetime? Why bother voting when both major parties are just different shades of the same cruelty? But Citizen Sleeper 2 made me realise that you can make a difference. And no matter how small that difference is, helping someone is still helping.
You can find countless examples of hope throughout the Starward Belt, from the unions overcoming terrible working conditions in Wellspring, to Juni getting her database running on archaic Solheim tech. But the line that stuck with me, out of all the masterful dialogues in this game, was from Kadet, the intergalactic Deliveroo driver who eschews the gig industry and avoids the mafiosos threatening her to create a business for herself.
“I want to build something here, in spite of everything, in spite of the fact that they could take it all away,” she says. “Because that’s the point. To go on living, without conceding. To go on building, or trying to build, something where we can find it.”
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