Citizen Sleeper Design Works Book, TTRPG and more!
The next instalment in Lost in Cult’s premium series of design-focussed art books is here! Join us as we venture into the lawless reaches of a far-flung space station on the edge of interplanetary capitalism. This anniversary celebration of Citizen Sleeper comes in multifarious forms, with an official, high-end Design Works art book, an innovative new tabletop role-playing adventure, a beautiful vinyl record package, and many more extras besides.
The core Design Works book will highlight the incredible artistry of both the main game and its three DLC episodes (Flux, Refuge, and Purge). We’ll be zooming in on the details and minutiae of its art, discussing the game’s many influences and inspirations, and digging deep into ephemeral design processes with extended, developer-led captions, as well as key interviews and discussions with creator Gareth Damian Martin.
Alongside this, Lost in Cult is publishing something wholly inventive: a fully-fledged solo tabletop RPG, Cycles of the Eye, created by Gareth Damian Martin in collaboration with designer Alfred Valley, that pulls you into the universe of Citizen Sleeper. Buy the art book and TTRPG separately, or together as part of our stunning Deluxe or all-in-one Anniversary editions — available only during this limited funding campaign. Help us celebrate one year of Citizen Sleeper!
Here's what's in each edition:
Citizen Sleeper - Design Works - GBP £39.99 This 250+ page premium hardcover book comes with a Spot Gloss finish, highlighting the eponymous “Sleeper” player-protagonist. With a section sewn binding and an OBI strip printed in Citizen Sleeper’s iconic Magenta, even the Standard Edition is a collector’s item that’ll look as good on your coffee table as it will on your bookshelf.
It includes:
Spot Gloss hardcover book
210 x 297 mm (A4)
250 pages approx.
Section sewn binding
“Citizen Magenta” OBI strip
Citizen Sleeper – Cycles of the Eye - GBP £29.99 The Citizen Sleeper tabletop game, Cycles of the Eye, uses dice and tarot cards (both Minor and Major Arcana) to create a solo journey through the game's location of Erlin’s Eye. Over the course of several cycles, you will complete challenges, reveal new locations and interact with iconic characters, building a story unique to your session from the included tarot deck. Who will your allies and adversaries be? Will your Sleeper build a new life on the Eye or escape it entirely?
The TTRPG is designed for solo-play — intimate and innovative. This new step in the Citizen Sleeper universe is a collaboration between Gareth Damian Martin, and Alfred Valley, the creator of ingenious solo RPGs like Lay On Hands and Thousand Empty Light.
Cycles of the Eye includes:
TTRPG “Cycles of the Eye” zine book
78 Card Tarot Deck
Design Works / Cycles of the Eye Deluxe - GBP £119.99 The Deluxe Edition of Citizen Sleeper: Design Works includes the Standard edition art book, as well as a unique, special edition of the tabletop RPG, Cycles of the Eye, wrapped in a premium gloss cover. Exclusive to this and the Anniversary edition are our dice sets, custom designed for Cycles of the Eye but also usable as D6s for any tabletop session. This edition also comes with Holographic Foil details on its 78 Card Tarot Deck, two bookmarks, and a set of in-world iron-on patches based on those worn by the character Moritz in the game. Most importantly, all of this comes housed in a beautiful, custom box — coloured what we like to call “Citizen Magenta” with a metallic finish — boasting a magnetic clasp.
The Deluxe Edition includes everything from Citizen Sleeper - Design Works, plus:
Deluxe box with metallic finish and magnetic clasp
Deluxe TTRPG “Cycles of the Eye” zine with gloss wrap cover
Deluxe Holographic Foil 78 Card Tarot Deck
5 Energy Dice (Yellow)
5 Cycle Dice (Citizen Magenta)
Bookmark
Patches
Vinyl Soundtrack - GBP £39.99In addition to the release of our Design Works book, Lost in Cult is working alongside music label Stumpy Frog Records to bring you a signature 12-inch vinyl featuring an acetate sleeve with printed details. Designed to replicate a classic Japanese animation cell layout, as a tribute to the game’s anime influences, this gatefold LP also features interior “lo-fi” art of the Sleeper and the stray in their ramshackle apartment. Original soundtrack by Amos Roddy.
Citizen Sleeper - Anniversary Bundle - GBP £249.99 The ultimate celebration of Citizen Sleeper’s one year anniversary. This edition not only includes everything in the Deluxe, but also adds a vinyl record of the game’s iconic soundtrack presented in a beautiful gatefold cover, an exclusive anniversary slipmat for your record player, and a print of the specially-commissioned anniversary celebration art signed by both Guillaume Singelin and Gareth Damian Martin.
The Anniversary Edition includes everything from Design Works / Cycles of the Eye Deluxe, plus:
A2 Print signed by Guillaume Singelin and Gareth Damian Martin/Jump Over the Age
12-inch Vinyl Record with acetate sleeve with painted details
Don’t forget to sign-up to our Substack. It’ll ensure you don’t miss the upcoming reveal, and you’ll automatically go into the draw to win an awesome prize pack, to be revealed tomorrow!
And remember to stay up to date with all the latest Citizen Sleeper news here:
Citizen Sleeper - LudoNarraCon Opening Day Stream
LucdoNarraCon Opening Day Stream
Fellow Traveller and Jump Over the Age invite you to join them for a gameplay stream for the opening day of LudoNarraCon on the 4th of May at 10am Pacific.
Join Citizen Sleeper developer Gareth Damian Martin (aka Jump Over the Age) as they play and talk about the game to celebrate the opening of LudoNarraCon.
This video will be set to loop for the duration of LudoNarracon from 4-8 of May if you can't make the start time.
To learn more about LudoNarraCon, visit the LudoNarraCon website.
Anniversary Livestream
On Friday, May 5th, Citizen Sleeper officially turns one year old! Make sure you also join us for a very special anniversary livestream event!
Finally, don't forget to join us in Discord to discuss all things Citizen Sleeper!
And stay up to date with all the latest Citizen Sleeper news here:
Anniversary Week Begins!
On May 5th, Citizen Sleeper will be turning one year old, and we want you to join us to celebrate!
Beginning today, we’ve got five days of announcements and activities planned, from exclusive reveals to giveaways, livestreams and more.
First up is some exciting news: the dream team that brought you Citizen Sleeper are back, and working together on a new project! That’s right, Fellow Traveller, Gareth Damian Martin (Jump Over the Age) and collaborators, Guillaume Singelin and Amos Roddy have joined forces once again to bring you something awesome, to be revealed in full in the near future.
To follow along with all the Citizen Sleeper news, you’re going to want to ensure you’re signed up to the Jump Over the Age newsletter over on Substack. Not only will it ensure you don’t miss the upcoming reveal, you’ll automatically go into the draw to win an awesome prize pack (to be revealed on May 3rd).
Perhaps even more importantly, signing up for the newsletter is the only way to access wallpaper variants of this incredible new piece of Citizen Sleeper art, created exclusively for Citizen Sleeper’s anniversary by the legendary Guillaume Singelin.
But this celebration is all about you, the players, and we want to hear from you! Favourite game moments? Best character? Head over to the Citizen Sleeper Discord channel to share your memories, and celebrate with all the other fans. We’ll also select our favourites at the end of the week and share them out for all to see.
Finally, make sure you join us on Friday May 5th at 9am Pacific - when Citizen Sleeper officially turns one - for a very special anniversary livestream event!
Tune in again tomorrow for Day 2 of Anniversary Week, when we’ll reveal something extremely cool.
And remember to stay up to date with all the latest Citizen Sleeper news here:
UPDATE 1.3.5
-Added ambient audio controls -Updated news window (big news soon!) -typos and minor fixes
Mac Hotfix 1.3.2
Fixed Mac saves not appearing. -If you have had this issue you will now see your save. -If you moved your saves as a workaround please move them back to the original save folder (Application Support/com.JumpOvertheAge.CitizenSleeper)
Citizen Sleeper Episode: PURGE - Out Now
Wake up, Sleeper.
Citizen Sleeper’s third and final DLC, Episode: PURGE, is out now!
The news gets better. The game is on sale at 30% off until April 4, AND it launches tomorrow, March 31st on PS4 and PS5.
With the release of Episode PURGE, Citizen Sleeper’s three episode post-launch DLC expansion is now complete and the game has even more to offer with a thrilling late game storyline that delivers an immersive new narrative arc introducing additional characters, lore and locations. Players returning to Erlin’s Eye might even find themselves running into some familiar faces!
Since launch, the tabletop-inspired narrative RPG has received high praise from the industry at large, including prestigious award nominations from the The Game Awards, the IGF Awards, the D.I.C.E. awards, a British Writers Guild Award, and last week, received the "social impact" award from the Game Developer's Choice Awards.
Citizen Sleeper is also up for four BAFTA Game Awards! Tune into the ceremony today in just under an hour at 18:50 BST / 10:50 PT on the BAFTA's Twitch channel to see if it wins!
Celebrating Tabletop Fest with a 30% discount and a blog about my inspirations!
Hi, this is Gareth Damian Martin, the developer and creator of Citizen Sleeper!
Citizen Sleeper is part of this week's Tabletop Fest and to celebrate I thought I would share a little more on the tabletop games that inspired me to make the game, and the ideas I borrowed to bring Elrin’s Eye to life.
Obviously any game which features dice is most likely inspired by TTRPGs, but Citizen Sleeper is full of other features inspired by some of the most exciting games in the contemporary TTRPG scene.
First up is John Harper’s excellent TTRPG Blades in the Dark. Set in the dark fantasy city of Doskvol, Blades in the Dark focuses on high intensity heists, narrative-first gameplay and elegant and lightweight systems to simulate a whole city of criminal factions vying for control. One of the first tabletop games I ever ran as a game master, it immediately impressed me with its focus on “success at a cost” which gives its heists a fluid sense of escalation. Blades simulates the experience of being a master criminal always on the edge of failure, and so I found its balance of luck and strategy a good inspiration for modeling Citizen Sleeper’s sense of also living on the edge, not as a criminal, but as someone marginalized by society.
Blades in the Dark is also where I first encountered “clocks”, a simple way of tracking progress towards objectives, time passing, and upcoming events. I was really impressed by the utility and simplicity of this system and there’s nothing I love more as a GM than introducing a mysterious clock and ticking it up when the player fails a roll to give a sense of impending doom! So when it came to designing Citizen Sleeper I knew I wanted to use clocks to track everything from relationships to debts, something which also gives the game a unique TTRPG flavor.
Another part of Citizen Sleeper designed to feel very TTRPG is character progression. Rather than give out numerical XP in a traditional manner, I wanted character progression to reflect the players choices in the world, and to be a tool for letting the player figure out what they wanted to do next. Out of this came the idea of “drives” instead of “quests”, with the distinction being that Citizen Sleeper’s drives are all optional, and focus on the player's choice to engage or not engage with different parts of the world. I wanted players to choose their priorities, and then be rewarded for following through.
This kind of design is part of a wider movement in TTRPGs which began with the game Apocalypse World by D. Vincent Baker. First releasing in 2010 and going on to inspire a whole genre of TTRPGs under the label “Powered by the Apocalypse'', Apocalypse World focuses not on simulating everything that is happening the world, but instead abstracting ideas to simple dice systems so that the player has more agency and the game master is focused on driving the narrative, not adjudicating a complex rule set. This narrative-first kind of TTRPG is exactly what I hoped to emulate in Citizen Sleeper.
Finally, one of the key inspirations for Citizen Sleeper comes from something that is a massive part of the contemporary TTRPG scene; actual play! For the uninitiated “actual play” is the term for video and audio content where players play TTRPGs live, telling stories that can change with a single dice roll. In particular Citizen Sleeper takes inspiration from one of the experimental and innovative actual play podcasts, Friends at the Table. Often telling richly diverse sci-fics stories with contemporary relevance, Friends at the Table’s brave approach was a huge inspiration for me. This counts double when it comes to the games 3 episode DLC sequence, which I wanted to have the story-telling rhythm of an actual play podcast, where the episodic story feels unpredictable and like something you discover as you play!
Whether I have achieved this goal will be decided when the final episode, episode: PURGE, launches on the 30th of March. But however it turns out, it has been an exciting journey to bring some of the most interesting ideas from the contemporary TTRPG scene to video games, in some cases for the first time. I hope you’ve enjoyed it too, and if any of this has piqued your interest, I strongly recommend getting hold of a copy of a TTRPG mentioned above and trying to run a game with a few friends!
And remember to stay up to date with all the latest Citizen Sleeper news here:
Citizen Sleeper - Episode: PURGE arrives March 30.
Wake up, Sleepers! Citizen Sleeper’s third and final DLC episode will be released on March 30 for all platforms as a free update.
Citizen Sleeper will also launch on PlayStation (for PS4 and PS5) the following day, complete with all DLC content!
With the release of Episode: PURGE, Citizen Sleeper’s three episode post-launch DLC expansion is now complete and the game has even more to offer players, with a thrilling late game storyline that introduces additional characters, lore and new locations. Players returning to Erlin’s Eye might even find themselves running into some familiar faces!
The tabletop-inspired narrative RPG has received similar praise from the industry, including prestigious award nominations from The Game Awards, the IGF Awards, the D.I.C.E. awards, the British Writers Guild and most recently, four BAFTA Game Award nominations!
Citizen Sleeper Episode: PURGE arrives March 30. The full game plus all DLC also arrives on PlayStation, March 31.
Havenage system engineer Feng has discovered some crucial new data whilst hacking the system backend. He has now made this data available to all players.
First off are the Steam Trading Cards.
These will automatically drop as you play Citizen Sleeper. Collect and trade cards to complete a set, then craft them to earn a badge and receive Citizen Sleeper themed items!
Secondly, he has discovered Steam Points Shop items!
Use your Steam Points to grab cool animated avatars of Lem and Mina, Feng, Ethan, Emphis, Ankhita and Sabine.
Or if you prefer, why not pick up an animated background of a sleeper chilling out with a cat? Visit the Citizen Sleeper Steam Points Shop here:
In addition to the release of our Design Works book, Lost in Cult is working alongside music label Stumpy Frog Records to bring you a signature 12-inch vinyl featuring an acetate sleeve with printed details. Designed to replicate a classic Japanese animation cell layout, as a tribute to the game’s anime influences, this gatefold LP also features interior “lo-fi” art of the Sleeper and the stray in their ramshackle apartment. Original soundtrack by Amos Roddy.
