Citizen Sleeper creator Gareth Damian Martin spins a new RPG that leans into horror manga, British history and industrial decay. Signet City casts players as a parasite that commandeers human hosts to chase its own agenda. Set against a brutalist, monochrome metropolis on the brink of collapse, the game promises a narrative that feels both eerily familiar and unsettlingly alien.

Martin cites his own Newcastle upbringing and the 1980s Winter of Discontent as touchstones, weaving scenes of towering shipyards and striking workers into the city’s architecture. The game borrows visual cues from Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Abara, while its two‑perspective design lets players inhabit both parasite and host through second‑person and third‑person views.

With a focus on emotional resource management and a narrative that blurs human and fungal identities, Signet City pushes the RPG genre toward darker, more politically charged storytelling. Release timing remains unclear, but the title is already available on Steam’s wishlist, offering fans a glimpse of its bleak, industrial aesthetic and complex moral choices.

The parasite wields a resource called emotion to steer hosts, while the host’s internal monologue offers counterpoint, creating an overlapping narrative that mirrors the tension between individual agency and external manipulation. This duality echoes New Weird writers like China Miéville, positioning Signet City as a bold experiment in immersive storytelling.