I punched a cultist in the face in Streets Of Rogue 2, just because. He started running away – something I would not allow. When another robed cultist spotted what was happening, he tried to intervene, and a kind of Benny Hill pursuit chain began. We ran across a beach, through public toilets, and into the surf. In the end I had to knock them both out. As they lay unconscious, I worried they might soon wake and tell someone what I had done. This can’t happen, I hate accountability. I punched their unawake bodies toward the sea in an effort to float the evidence away. But after a few punches the first man exploded into chunks of flesh. I am a murderer now. I was supposed to be a chef.
Streets Of Rogue 2 has a demo out for Steam Next Fest, and while a lot of features are locked up behind the word “UNAVAILABLE” in red font, there’s still quite a lot of mischief for you to get up to.
If you missed the first Streets Of Rogue, it was a small but mighty indie immersive sim of sorts, with random roguelike elements thrown in to create a funny, chaotic sandbox of silliness. You’re supposed to be climbing floor after floor in an effort to find and dethrone the city mayor. But more often you end up freeing a troop of gorillas and watching as they run amok, or hacking all the ATMs while a co-op friend injects themselves with a syringe of gigantism.
The sequel is following suit, with a load of extra stuff thrown in. Even something as simple as gathering chicken to craft a sandwich can take a comic turn for the worse. At first, I figured I’d simply buy some chicken fillets in the shop. But the only store in town was closed. What does that matter? I smashed the window and cut myself on broken glass clambering inside, only to find neither chicken in the freezer nor money in the cash register.
I washed my face in the staff bathroom, again because I can. This normally removes status effects. But my status was merely chickenless. I had to leave town and source my meat from the wilderness on the outskirts, where a gang of live chickens were frolicking happily in a pond. “I’ll just kill a hen and watch the others run away in terror,” I thought, getting out my trusty chef’s pocket knife. But as soon as I stuck one chicken, four others immediately turned on me, pecking my poor body to pieces.
I barely managed to fend them off. And I had to go back to the shop to buy bread from the shopkeeper anyway, who had finally opened for business. I eyed the broken glass innocently. Shopkeepers in Streets Of Rogue 2 carry shotguns, just like the cranky hawkers of Spelunky 2.
There’s a lot missing, this being a demo. But it does grant you a sneak peek at the possibilities. I created a vanilla world during the world generation process. But an encouraging amount of world modifiers are teased in the menu. You’ll be able to make every animal invincible, it seems, or adjust a “cop leniency” meter. One modifier turns the game into “Water World”, another reads “Zombies Ate My Game Balance”, which suggests a means of transforming the game into a zombie apocalypse playground.
As for personal stats and quirks, these can include being computer illiterate, or being addicted to all drugs. You may need to kill at least once per day, or be unable to speak to people at all. One quirk makes you small enough to flush yourself down a toilet, like the shapeshifter of the previous game. Probably handy in a bind.
As part of the tutorial, I was sent to kill the mayor in a larger neighbouring town, which I did. But only after driving a car at questionable speeds and hitting many pedestrians along the way. The cars (a new addition) handle very nicely, drifting and sliding along with the smooth sensation of an old-school Grand Theft Auto. I parked neatly in the carpark of city hall, denting perhaps only five other vehicles, and got to work sneaking around inside the building, knife at the ready. I was discovered by goons and office workers multiple times. It was perhaps inadvisable to plant so many landmines in the hallways. Many people died.
Including the mayor himself. You’re meant to be able to wear the mayor’s hat after killing him, and give a speech at the podium to inherit his municipal throne. But at this point the tutorial bugged out and wouldn’t detect that I wore the headwear. That’s fine, demos gonna demo. It was nice just to kill the head honcho for once. I don’t think I ever made it to the mayor in the first game, yet here I have smeared his internal organs all over his dining room in just over an hour. A satisfying result by itself. What? Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not like there’s going to be a “pacifist” mode in this ga– oh, there is.
At this point I could wander out and explore the city streets, take some career quests as a chef, or restart things as a (probably much shootier) soldier or cop. But my “let this simmer” sense is tingling. I was already willing to trust this sequel on the playful strengths of its predecessor (it’s one of our best roguelikes). But seeing firsthand that much of the wackiness and freedom of the original Streets Of Rogue remains intact is doubly reassuring. You can play the demo yourself on Steam, should you too wish to bash a bodyguard through the wall and inject yourself with a bunch of syringes marked: “???”