Since its release back in 2022, Citizen Sleeper has captivated its players with its addictive blend of cyberpunk worldbuilding and constant moral dilemmas.
Set on the fringes of a dystopian future, this game thrusts its players into a world filled with AI, interplanetary capitalism, and ethical systems so ambiguous you’ll need a therapy session just to sort them all out.
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Citizen Sleeper is a tabletop-inspired RPG that heavily borrows themes from games like Dungeons & Dragons, with dice-rolling mechanics and narrative-based decision-making built right into the framework of its gameplay. It’s basically a higher-quality, cyberpunk version of all those nerdy games you played with your friends as a kid.
Whether you tend to lean more into decision-heavy narratives or just love games that stick with you long after their credits roll, this list is for you. Fromspace station dramasto AI-powered super societies, these are all the best games like Citizen Sleeper.
11Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor
Working Class Heroes
Diaries Of A Spaceport Janitor
If what drew you into Citizen Sleeper was its focus on trying (and sometimes failing) to survive a greedy, capitalistic mega-society hell-bent on beating down the little man, then you’re going to love Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor.
In this game, you take on the role of an Alaensee girlbeast witha trash-incinerating job at a busy spaceport. It might not be the most glamorous job in the galaxy, but it pays the bills, and that sure beats unemployment. Still, you’re able to’t help but dream of havingmore.
You might just be some nameless janitor at some equally nameless spaceport, but you still find yourself dreaming of becoming an adventurous, planet-hopping hero, one who could afford a giant spaceship and leave it all behind.
It’s a self-proclaimed anti-adventure game that appeals to the wanderer in all of us, and its themes of sci-fi dystopia and failed capitalistic structures relate heavily to Citizen Sleeper’s.
Like Citizen Sleeper, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor emphasizes the common struggle of finding meaning and stability through young adulthood, especially while under oppressive systems out of your control. It also handles the whole “the world is ending, but I’ve got work tomorrow” vibe that Citizen Sleeper has going on.
It’s a weird, poignant, and quietly radical experience that lingers long after that final burnt bag of trash.
10Synergia
What is Humanity, Really?
One of the coolest things about Citizen Sleeper is its focus on futuristic technology and androids, and how the lines between AI and humanity are often blurred more often than we’d like to admit. If that’s what drew you into the Citizen Sleeper franchise, then you’re going to love the narrative experience of Synergia.
Like Citizen Sleeper, Synergia takes place in a sci-fi, cyberpunk future where AI has evolved to human levels, often making it difficult to even distinguish between the two. You play as Cila, a veteran cop whose anger issues are rivaled only by her sour outlook on life.
Just when you think the world couldn’t get any more bleak, M.A.R.A (or “Mara”) steps into your life. Mara is a mysterious android that tends to toe the “uncanny valley” line more often than most, and she piques your detective curiosity more than you’d like to admit.
There’s just something about her that isn’t quite right, and you’ll do anything to get to the bottom of it.
Eventually, both you and Mara form a unique, if somewhat tense, bond with one another. But just when the picture of Mara’s origins starts getting clearer, Velta Labs, a corporate giant with government ties, gets wind of her existence.
Soon, it’s all Cila can do to stop Velta Labs from taking her new friend away, and it’s a race against time and the world itself to save her before it’s too late.
Synergia isthe kind of game that makes you want to play it over and over again, wondering how things could have ended differently if you’d just made the right choices. If that doesn’t meet the same vibes as Citizen Sleeper, then I don’t know what does.
9Minds Beneath Us
Who’s Controlling Who?
Minds Beneath Us
Like many of the titles on this list, Minds Beneath Us is another sci-fi narrative game that blurs the line between humans and AI, though not in the ways that you might expect.
Instead of humans creating what are essentially AI slaves in android bodies, in Minds Beneath Us, it’s AI that’s actually grown to the point of surpassing humanity. As a result, all of human society is fully controlled and automated by AI, and humans are mostly kept around as “computing devices” for AI androids.
The game starts off with you waking up in a hospital bed with amnesia, not sure of your identity, but having inklings of memories of shady contracts and deals gone wrong. The second you attempt to leave, however, a booming voice inquires about your intentions; after all, it isn’t in your programming.
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Soon, you find out that you’re not quite someone, but more of something, an amalgamation of human and machine whose sum is something beyond the two. But as soon as you realize this, your consciousness is transferred to another body, another hapless soul living in the forgotten underbelly of your AI-run society.
Between body swapping, global AI domination, and the massive conspiracy hiding at the center of it all, Minds Beneath Us is sure to take you on the wildest ride of your gaming life. It’s got everything that made Citizen Sleeper great and more; if you don’t sit in your gaming chair, head in your hands, mind blown for like 30 minutes after finishing this, then you’re playing the wrong game.
This game is for those paranoid few who still say “Please” and “Thank You” to their Amazon Alexa, just in case.
8The Red Strings Club
Is Change Really Possible?
The Red Strings Club
Every few years, an indie game comes along that forces you to reconsider literally everything you’ve ever thought about the world we live in; for me, that game was The Red Strings Club.
The Red Strings Club is a revolutionary title about AI extortion, mass corporate manipulation, and philosophy in the face of humanity’s downfall. In a distant future where happiness is manufactured, and free will is an illusion, is attempting to make the world a better place really worth the effort?
Set in a cyberpunk future where AI has been integrated into nearly every aspect of society, you play as Donovan, a freelance informant and bartender at The Red Strings Club.
This club is one of the only AI-free establishments left in the entire city, and even though you might not have the biggest customer base, you at least get enough repeat customers to keep the lights on. Plus, selling crucial information that you weasel out of your high-priority clients doesn’t pay too badly, either.
While things weren’t necessarily peaceful, they were at least stable; that is, until you learn of Supercontinent Ltd’s plans to release Social Psyche Welfare. Social Psyche Welfare is a prospective system that will wipe out all negative emotions from society, forcing people to constantly be happy and complacent.
This doesn’t sit right with you, and for good reason; what good is happiness if you’ve never endured sorrow or pain to get it? Can an entire society function on just happiness alone, or does it require ambition, envy, spite, and other negative emotions to truly progress?
With the help of your hacker-genius boyfriend and a rogue android, you’ll do everything you can to stop society’s most influential mega-corporation from making the biggest mistake of humanity’s life—before it’s too late.
7Pentiment
Uncovering Medieval Conspiracies
Surprisingly, Pentiment is one of the few titles on this list that isn’t set in some neon-lit, cyberpunk dystopia; instead, it’s set in 16th-century Bavaria (yes, seriously). Despite this, the parallels between it and Citizen Sleeper are unmatched, and it remains one of the most well-loved dupes in the Citizen Sleeper fandom.
While the setting may not match Citizen Sleeper’s perfectly, it still captures its vibe like nothing else. The ethical dilemmas, the massive underlying conspiracies, and the helplessness in the face of societal greed are only a few similarities that this game and Citizen Sleeper share.
Set in Bavaria in the 1500s, you play as Andreas Maler, an artist who somehow gets caught up in a series of murders in Tassing and Kiersau Abbey. What begins as a seemingly simple “whodunnit” mystery in a sleepy town soon transforms into a wild ride of political upheaval, religious unrest, and scandals so malicious you’ll feel like you’ll need to confess to a priest.
Through the span of three separate acts and 25 years, you will be forced to make impossible decisions, often with limited information and no clear right answer, and be forced to watch as they play out generations after the fact. Though you will often make mistakes, you won’t always be the one paying for them, and that makes the stakes so much more daunting.
You and you alone have the power to shape the fate of the small society you find yourself in, the likes of which serve as a microcosm of much larger systemic forces—oppressive institutions, social decay, and the constant, juxtapositional march of progress.
Uncovering larger conspiracies while still trying to work out the kinks of local ones seems impossible, but doing so in a near-civil-war-era Bavaria? Good luck and have fun trying!
6Disco Elysium
Heroics or Hedonism? You Choose!
Disco Elysium
Disco Elysium is an immensely popular game that is not only reminiscent of Citizen Sleeper, but it’s also one of the best story-rich, “choices matter” RPGs on the market.
It’s not necessarily set in the classic sci-fi, AI-overrun future that Citizen Sleeper is known for, but despite that, it still manages to remind its fanbase heavily of Citizen Sleeper’s gameplay, mechanics, and tone. Instead, Disco Elysium takes place in the heavily impoverished district of Martinaise within the city of Revachol.
Revachol is a failed revolutionary country that heavily borrows inspiration from Eastern Europe in the late 1980s to the early 1990s. As such, it’s filled to the brim with widespread poverty, civil decay, and social unrest, making it the perfect setting for a game like Disco Elysium.
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In Disco Elysium, you play a washed-up detective with a terrible hangover who wakes up with little to no memory. With no idea of who you are or what you’re even doing here, your investigation into a random murder becomes a surreal odyssey through the psyche of a broken man, and the even more broken systems around him.
The city is decaying, its people are bitter, and your own thoughts are fragmented into bickering voices in your head. Whether you decide tosink into madness or become the heroic detectivethe city needs is up to you, but one thing’s for sure: this game’s not out to hold your hand, or your conscience; whatever you decide to do in this broken world is up to you, but be prepared to face the consequences.
Sci-Fi Louisiana
NORCO is one of those weird, breathtaking games that can hardly be explained in just a few words. While its setting isn’t massive, condensed down to just a few square miles of post-dystopia Louisiana, it feels like stepping into an entirely different dimension that just begs to be explored.
It certainly isn’t anything like any of the other sci-fi games I’ve played, and I doubt I’ll ever find another game that even comes close to the unique, distorted atmosphere that NORCO delivers. Though it’s not a horror game, its gameplay strangely gives me “World of Horror” vibes, which definitely isn’t anything to complain about.
In NORCO, you play Kay, a young woman returning to her hometown to settle her late mother’s affairs. You soon realize, however, that your little brother has mysteriously gone missing, and you’ll have to investigate every nook and cranny of your decaying former home if you ever hope to figure out what happened.
Kay’s Louisiana isn’t anything like its 21st-century counterpart, however; instead, this Louisiana has suffered from immense environmental decay, overpopulation, and industrial pollution. As a result, most of its suburbs are quite literally sinking into the Earth, as the swamp seeks to take back what’s been abused by its inhabitants.
What starts off as a simple, yet desperate search for your missing brother turns into a haunting journey involving mega-church cults, rogue AIs, flooded memories, and the horrifying realities of a post-dystopian world. Like Citizen Sleeper, NORCO immerses its players in a place that feels alive in its decay; the world may be rotting, decomposing to its core, but its people are still alive and vibrant with their desire to carry on.
Its setting and story may seem oddly specific, but trust me, it’s one of the best games like Citizen Sleeper there is.
4I Was a Teenage Exocolonist
Sci-Fi Alien Life Sim
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist
I’ve been enamored with I Was a Teenage Exocolonist since the moment I picked it up back in 2022. It’s genuinely one of the unique games I’ve had the pleasure of playing, and the fact that it’s so similar to Citizen Sleeper is just a bonus.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist is about a group of “colonists” plotting to escape Earth’s post-collapse, end-stage capitalistic structure. Earth has become practically unlivable for anyone but the rich and powerful, and these brave souls have discovered a way to leave it all behind: by stealing the Stratospheric spacecraft and heading to the only other hospitable planet on their radar, Vertumna.
You were one of the few children born on this ship, halfway through its 20-year voyage through a wormhole. At just ten years old, you and the rest of your colony arrive on Vertumna, a seemingly uninhabited planet teeming with vibrant fauna and flora.
You and the rest of the colony must learn how to survive in this dangerous new world, which only gets harder upon realizing the planet doesn’t exactlywantyou there. Over a period of ten years, you’ll face countless challenges, including natural disasters, starvation, community unrest, animal attacks, alien diseases, and even political turmoil.
It isn’t easy, but anything beats the near-apocalyptic hellscape that your parents escaped from. Plus, how you decide to spend your formative years will greatly shape your colony’s future, whether you decide to spend your time studying to become a politician or exploring to become a ranger.
Much like Citizen Sleeper, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist offers an incredibly rich narrative full of branching paths, where each decision, no matter how small, has the potential to ripple out into an entirely different story.
3The Outer Worlds
Player-Driven Space Colony Sim
The Outer Worlds
Fextralife Wiki
If you’ve ever wondered what Citizen Sleeper would be like if it were crossed with Starfield and then sneezed on by Borderlands, then The Outer Worlds is your answer.
The Outer Worlds isan open-world space colony simset in a distant star system known as Halcyon, colonized completely by mega-corporations, one that you’ve been thrown into like a monkey wrench into an engine. Known simply as “The Stranger”, you play as a passenger from a lost colony ship.
After being revived by a talented scientist, you’re tasked with rescuing your fellow colonists and taking down the mega-corporations responsible for your colony’s downfall.
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But what starts off as a mission to save the colony quickly mutates into something a whole lot messier: deciding who and what’s worth saving, what compromises are acceptable, and how to keep a grip on your humanity in a place that’s constantly trying to sell it back to you.
The story that unfolds from there is entirely up to you and the person you decide to become. In the entire corporate equation, you are the unplanned variable.
Just like Citizen Sleeper, The Outer Worlds deals with delving into conspiratorial mega-corporations and the dangers of relying solely on unsustainable capitalistic systems. If you were drawn to Citizen Sleeper because of its whole “one man against the world” vibe, then you’ll love everything about The Outer Worlds.
Dice-Rolling D&D Dystopia
Tharsis has been described time and time again as the original Citizen Sleeper, or, at the very least, its inspiration, and I honestly couldn’t agree more. Tharsis’s gameplay has so many similarities to Citizen Sleeper it’s almost uncanny; it’s like the game’s underrated older sibling that can never quite catch the spotlight.
Just like Citizen Sleeper, it blends tabletop-inspired mechanics like dice-rolling and narrative-based decision-making to drive the plot forward. Because of this, a lot of its gameplay is determined by luck, but don’t worry; there’s still plenty of strategy involved in a game like Tharsis.
Set aboard a rapidly failing spacecraft on a desperate mission to Mars, Tharsis drops you into the shoes of a small, panicked crew after a micrometeoroid storm kills two members and leaves the rest scrambling to patch together what’s left.
Every turn, you’re counting on lucky dice rolls to allocate dwindling resources, fix cascading disasters, and try like hell to keep everyone alive until the end. It’s every bit as difficult as it sounds, but the pure strategy of it is about as addictive as it gets. Sound familiar yet?
One of the most genius parts of Tharsis’s gameplay is the pure helplessness built right into every decision you make. Every choice feels like a compromise, every success comes at a cost, and survival always feels like it’s just barely out of reach.
Unlike action RPGs that give you a clear enemy to fight, there are no clear enemies for you to focus on in Tharsis; instead, you’re fighting chaos, hunger, grief, and a system that was never built to care about your survival in the first place.
