Following an early teaser in May, Citizen Sleeper creator Gareth Damian Martin has revealed Signet City. Martin describes their new game as a “fungalpunk” RPG. In an all too brief trailer, we’re introduced to the game’s stark monochrome visuals and mushroom-infested City 17-esque setting as the post-punk drone of the band SPRINTS plays in the background. “You are a parasite, in a city where strange technologies and radical ideas are taking root,” says the game’s YouTube description. “Grow into and through its inhabitants, uncover and change their stories, and witness the terminal season of the Signet City.”
“Unlike traditional RPG protagonists, players in Signet City exist as a parasite moving through the city’s social body, shaping conversations, influencing inhabitants, and navigating the games beautifully crafted locations,” publisher Fellow Traveller Witness writes in its press release for the game. “This allows the game to dig deep into the interior lives of the parasite’s hosts, in powerful, affecting prose that has become the signature of Jump Over the Age’s games.” A fact sheet adds that Signet City is partly informed by the turbulent decade the United Kingdom experienced during the 1980s, with its northern industrial cities serving as inspiration for the setting.
Martin’s previous games, In Other Waters, and the Citizen Sleeper series, were all set in the distant future, so for them to explore what could be an alternate reality for their latest project is something new. As for the art style, screentoned manga, pen and ink drawings and black and white photography are cited as touchpoints. Signet City also sees Martin working with a new set of collaborators, with Eli Rainsberry taking over for Amos Roddy to produce the game’s soundtrack and audio, and Tom Kitchen assisting with its environmental art.
I imagine a lot of people will compare Signet City to The Last of Us, but I would argue the game sees Martin exploring ideas that have interested them for years. In interviews following the release of Citizen Sleeper, they cited Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World as one of the game’s primary influences. Tsing’s book critiques capitalism, and our current era of precarity and ecological devastation, through the lens of matsutake, one of the more expensive varieties of mushroom. Matsutake, as well as girolle and other species of fungi, feature prominently throughout Citizen Sleeper, its sequel and In Other Waters, wherein the player guides a xenobiologist through an alien landscape teeming with life.
Signet City will arrive on PC through Steam later this year. No word yet on other platforms.
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