Citizen Sleeper was a very strange game to play to me and it was even stranger to think about how it came to be highly rated. I suspect that it shows that something surreal is happening to how people view games.

Don't get me wrong. I think the developers did a good job with the game. It was really polished and a good read. Therein lies the issue: reading.

In my opinion, the game is great because of the text I consume and the choices I make. What makes it great is similar to a well written text adventure book. Perhaps such books are such a dying breed that which warrants making a game out of the text instead?

For example, the stats and classes and abilities are fine at the start, especially when resources are limited. There are people and podcasts who say that the game is about you struggling to find a sustainable way to live but to be honest, that's only maybe the first quarter of the game.

Once you found a sustainable way to not die (and got rid of people trying to end you), the game shifts its focus to your surroundings, rather than you. This is not a bad thing, and offhandedly the difference between Disco Elysium's storytelling style where it's focused more towards introspection, but there are game mechanics that forcefully stop you from proceeding a quest line.

Basically I feel that forcefully removing a player's investment in a storyline without a good reason is bad. For example, George R Martin did it with ASOIAF, but he is providing different perspectives in a timeframe. Citizen Sleeper's is mord of "oh give me 6 cycles, go find something else to do", which feels like hitting a brick wall.

What ends up is me getting confused whenever I pick back up a story. "Who are you again" was my most common questions.

On top of all that, there's dice rolls to get in your way if completing a task. At some point, it's just a chore.

So the fact that it gets high reviews... I get it. It has a good story. It is a decent game. But it does bring into question about whether it really IS a game, I guess similar to the debate when Heavy Rain is released.