I'm a big fan of storytelling and given the choice between a game with a good narrative but weak mechanics and its inverse, I'll always prefer the former... That said, games are meant to be played — so if the mechanics of this theoretical preferred game are so weak it feels more like a book than a game then, well, it'll be Citizen Sleeper and I'll have a hard time knowing what to think.

Building upon the best trends of In Other Waters (imaginative world-building and solid storytelling), Gareth Damian Martin's second game nonetheless retains most of the flaws of its predecessor (simplistic gameplay) for a production that you want to like but may feel frustrated playing.

The premise is a mosaic of familiar concepts: in a future ruled by corporations (Cyberpunk), you play a Sleeper – an emulated human mind in a robotic body (Ghost in the Shell) – who runs away from its corporate owners in a desperate bid for freedom (Bladerunner). You end up stranded on a space station called the Eye and have to fend for yourself in order to survive.

The most refreshing thing about Citizen Sleeper is its narrative and the care with which its characters were constructed. There are no stereotypes there – no people who could be summed-up in a single sentence or dropped into a convenient, pre-existing category. They have genuine depth and feel exactly like marginalized castoffs forced to survive on society's periphery.

Whether you are talking to an exoskeleton operator who staked his whole life on a single machine only to be cast aside by the company who made it; an enforcer whose misplaced devotion to a cause cost her a literal arm (but, thankfully, no legs); a crusading system administrator or a runaway consciousness hiding in a vending machine, all interactions feel real and worthwhile – not as one-dimensional gimmicks whose only purpose is moving the plot along.

Speaking of which, it's refreshing to play a dystopian, cyberpunk title without having to fight or shoot anybody. Despite their orbital setting, quests in Citizen Sleeper are really down to earth.

During your stay on the Eye, you will spend time scrapping, fixing or constructing space ships, tending mushroom crops, delivering food, cooking or even babysitting so that a single father can go to work with peace of mind... Even though your character is, essentially, a robot, the amount of humanity and empathy you are treated with is refreshing in a gaming landscape where a setting is – more often than not – just a backdrop that things are shot against.

It's a shame, then, that while the activities you can engage in make for an interesting read, actually doing them boils down to the single, simplistic mechanic that powers the entirety of the Citizen Sleeper experience. Namely — dice.

Every in-game "cycle" (read: day) begins with a random crop of five dice. These dice are how you "perform" any in-game action. Regardless of what you do – whether it is untangling the solar sails of a space-yacht, hacking a Yatagan enforcer for information or gambling – each action boils down to putting one of your dice into the action's slot and offering a silent prayer to RNG.

There's a little more to it. The Sleeper's body loses condition each cycle (which gradually leaves you with fewer dice); as well as energy (which further lowers condition when exhausted). Locations you discover can provide alternate routes to resources (such as buying scrap for credits versus having to mine it by using a die). And Sleeper "perks" can let you re-roll all of your dice for a given cycle or keep more dice than normal when your condition tanks. But, at the end of the day, quests are entirely linear and every activity boils down to random chance.

Which is a shame because, in every other respect, Citizen Sleeper is a game you want to play. It's really enjoyable to be able to help people, form new acquaintances and slowly, doggedly carve out a niche for your character in a world that doesn't really care whether they live or die. With a more elaborate system backing the narrative, this could have been a game to rival (or at least stand on equal terms with) Disco Elysium or Planescape: Torment...

As it stands, however, Citizen Sleeper is a ballet performed in a gravel lot: a beautiful, elaborate production atop a surface that doesn't lend it the support it deserves.

Pig Recommends:

• -being prepared? not sure how to phrase it better... basically, Citizen Sleeper quests fall into one of two categories – timed and lax – and the timed ones benefit greatly from advance preparation; the only trick is that nothing in the narrative telegraphs which category a quest actually is and the 60-second, progressive autosave all but eliminates the abiltiy to backtrack; at the very least, make sure you wrap up loose ends before undertaking A Way On Board, planting the Gardener's Seed or Refitting Amber — any of those three quests can actually end the game;