Citizen Sleeper review – an evocative cyberpunk survival sim

PC, Mac, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Fellow Traveller
A decaying cyborg with a human mind struggles to survive aboard a space station in a superbly written, if not exactly original, slice of scuzzy sci-fi

If your brain were copied and placed in a robot body, would it have human rights? That's the thorny issue at the heart of Citizen Sleeper, a game set on a run-down space station called Erlin's Eye in the far-flung future. In this reality, AI is strictly controlled and artificial beings that achieve sentience are hunted down and destroyed, Blade Runner-style. But emulated" humans known as sleepers offer a loophole, being neither fully artificial nor fully human.

Nefarious megacorporations will pay desperate volunteers handsomely for the right to emulate their brain. The person's memories are then excised before their cloned mind is pitched into a robot body and worked remorselessly. Sleepers are a classless entity owned by a corporation, who have no idea of who they once were yet retain human feelings.

Citizen Sleeper is out on 5 May; 17.99