{"id":596064,"date":"2026-03-19T17:33:46","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T17:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next"},"modified":"2026-03-19T17:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T17:33:46","slug":"gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Gareth Damian Martin on their life, Citizen Sleeper, and what&#8217;s next"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next.jpg\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>We keep coming back to puppetry as a running theme, and that&#8217;s because, much to my surprise, Gareth Damian Martin is a trained puppeteer. When they ran out of time to apply to art college, they chose puppetry instead, which would eventually take them into a career in theatre design. And they learned lots of valuable lessons there: one of them being un-moveable deadlines and this idea of planning only what can be done in time. That&#8217;s how they made Citizen Sleeper in two years, and how they were able to plan a break before launch so they could return refreshed for it. So that&#8217;s how I find Damian Martin today: refreshed, calm and smiling. <\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;ve got good reason to smile of course: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/citizen-sleeper-review-a-gentle-cerebral-game-of-belonging-and-survival\">Citizen Sleeper<\/a> appears to have been a big success. Because of Game Pass, it&#8217;s being played by many, many more people than Damian Martin&#8217;s previous game, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/in-other-waters-review\">In Other Waters<\/a>. But it&#8217;s been bought by more people too, both on console and on PC, which is obviously gratifying &#8211; and it means Damian Martin can comfortably make games for the foreseeable future. And there are more Citizen Sleeper plans they&#8217;re already working on, by the way.<\/p>\n<p>But what really fulfils Damian Martin is the feedback they&#8217;re getting about the game: the heartfelt messages from people who feel seen by the new sci-fi role-playing game. It&#8217;s a game that thinks a lot on othering and the idea of belonging, against the backdrop of a fairly brutal reality, and clearly it&#8217;s striking a chord. It&#8217;s also interesting seeing those same themes pop up in Damian Martin&#8217;s life as they walk me through the many twists and turns it has taken so far. Growing up in the Orkney islands and playing among ancient burial sites sounds awesome.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We keep coming back to puppetry as a running theme, and that&#8217;s because, much to my surprise, Gareth Damian Martin is a trained puppeteer. When they ran out of time to apply to art college, they chose puppetry instead, which would eventually take them into a career in theatre design. And they learned lots of valuable lessons there: one of them being un-moveable deadlines and this idea of planning only what can be done in time. That&#8217;s how they made Citizen Sleeper in two years, and how they were able to plan a break before launch so they could return refreshed for it. So that&#8217;s how I find Damian Martin today: refreshed, calm and smiling. They&#8217;ve got good reason to smile of course: Citizen Sleeper&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230],"tags":[7152,7153],"class_list":["post-596064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eurogamer","tag-citizen-sleeper","tag-in-other-waters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Gareth Damian Martin on their life, Citizen Sleeper, and what&#039;s next | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We keep coming back to puppetry as a running theme, and that&#039;s because, much to my surprise, Gareth Damian Martin is a trained puppeteer. When they ran\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/gareth-damian-martin-on-their-life-citizen-sleeper-and-whats-next\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gareth Damian Martin on their life, Citizen Sleeper, and what&#039;s next | Arcader News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We keep coming back to puppetry as a running theme, and that&#039;s because, much to my surprise, Gareth Damian Martin is a trained puppeteer. 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