You Are Everyone’s Intrusive Thoughts In Citizen Sleeper Dev’s Upcoming Fungal RPG
You are everyone’s intrusive thoughts in Signet City, the upcoming fungalpunk RPG from Citizen Sleeper lead developer Gareth Damian Martin. This new project is a stark departure from the android survival mechanics of the previous games, instead placing you in the role of a sentient spore that infects individuals in a city. As a spore, you take control of the emotions and thoughts of those you infect, shaping their actions and influencing the course of events in the city. It feels like a unique blend of narrative control, similar to the sentient skills in Disco Elysium or Esoteric Ebb, where you're an external force guiding your host toward a desired outcome.
"As a parasite, each day you choose which host to drop into and then you have a limited number of actions that day," Martin explained. "And each host kind of comes with a part of the city that they live in, like a little hub. I think it's better to think of it as more something like Dishonored where you have these little chunks of the city—you don't have a whole city that you can walk around."
The game’s RPG system is built around emotion. For example, if you need to get through a door, you might manipulate your host's anger to give you an advantage. "I'm going to take him into the pub and I'm going to get him in an argument with somebody who's in the pub and that will get [my host] more angry and now I can [more easily] kick down this door," Martin said. This emotional mechanics system adds a layer of complexity and unpredictability to gameplay.
Like Citizen Sleeper, Signet City retains the use of a six-sided die, meaning that even the best-laid plans can fail due to the game’s inherent randomness. Martin mentioned that failing an action, such as injuring your host while trying to kick down a door, might lead you to try the same task with a different host. Each host is unique, so the ways you can influence them vary. To push someone into a state of adrenaline, you might need to have them discover political posters of a person or policy they don't support, or take them to the top of a skyscraper if they're afraid of heights.
"In a weird way, there's a little bit of Firewatch to it in the sense that when you're one of these characters, you're walking around the space and you're kind of discovering it," Martin said. "And then when you find something that the character can do or react to, you find it by looking and then you hold the left trigger to then bring up the UI that relates to that."
What makes Signet City particularly intriguing is its approach to storytelling and perspective. As a player, you engage with the game through first-, second-, and third-person viewpoints. The camera view is first-person, but the parasite is referred to as "you," while the hosts are described in third-person. This creates a layered experience where the player's role as the parasite and the hosts' individual experiences intersect.
Martin wanted to explore the relationship between these perspectives. "The parasite is influenced by observing tabletop play and how when you're playing a character in tabletop role-playing games, sometimes you're using your name, sometimes you use [your character's] name," Martin said. "Sometimes you're like, 'Oh, it would be really cool if this really bad thing happened to my character right now, because that would be really interesting.' And sometimes you're more in their head and you're more like, 'Oh God, I really don't want this to go bad. I'd really, really like [a good roll] to just make this go well.'"
This blending of perspectives opens up new narrative possibilities. "The game is in second-person and third-person simultaneously because [when] I write what it's like to be the parasite, [I use] 'you, you, you,' and then I write what the host is experiencing. So, 'Sid does this, Sid does that, Sid feels this,'" Martin explained. "And so that is a really exciting and interesting space to play."
Where these perspectives ultimately collide and begin to grate against one another is where Signet City seems to be delving into punk, creating friction and countercultural commentary. This unique blend of narrative, gameplay, and perspective makes Signet City a game that promises to challenge and engage players in a whole new way.
