The thing about Citizen Sleeper is that I wish there was more of it. Not literally, necessarily, I’d never want that world to be exhausted of its setting, and my imagination is stronger than any threequel or otherwise. Still, I’d like to play more of it because its inventive approach to digitising tabletop RPG design still feels fresh now. Thankfully, more and more games inspired by its structure are popping up, like Joy Malignant, another dice-based RPG where every choice you make affects how people see you.

In its demo (which you can try out for yourself too), you start in a similar fashion to the likes of Citizen Sleeper and Disco Elysium, unsure of who or where you are, a blank canvas upon which you can build yourself. With those two games however, the canvas provides more of an outline, in that the literal character designs are pre-established. This is not so in Joy Malignant.

Upon meeting someone whose visage appears to be that of a person with a mouse’s head in place of a human one that plays a violin, all photobashed together with a surprising amount of grace, you learn you have no face. It is through this discovery of yourself that you learn every single choice you make will shape your shape, will apply a new layer to your fuzzy, at present ephemeral body. Whatever actions you take informs who you are visually, and while I’ll definitely need to play the full game to get a proper read on this, it’s certainly an intriguing path to go down.

The core loop is quite similar to Citizen Sleeper in that you have a set number of dice, or masks in Joy Malignant’s case, all of which have varying degrees of happiness, suggesting how well you will or won’t do on a roll. Time also passes for tasks you carry out upon a roll until you’ve done enough to progress to the next point in the story. The fresher aspect to Joy Malignant is the way you build out yourself, as there’s no classes to choose from, so you’re building from the ground up. I wonder if seemingly innocuous choices prevent you from going down certain paths?

Joy Malignant is a curiosity of a game, and it’s not long until it’s out either, with a current release date of July 29th. You can check it out on Steam, and perhaps throw it a wishlist, right here.