My attempt to ingratiate myself with the mayor went awry when I attacked several people with a fire axe in the Town Hall. From that point, my reputation never recovered. People with guns and bats hounded me in the street. My main quest-giver perished in an explosion I can’t say for sure I’m not responsible for. At some point my attempt to create a chicken sandwich outraged the local conservationists? It’s all gotten out of hand and everyone hates me. Plan B is to kill the mayor. Wish me luck!

These are my adventures in Streets of Rogue 2’s Steam Next Fest demo, a loose assemblage of some of the mechanics that will eventually make up the game’s full release that you can give a whirl yourself right now. It’s an immersive sim roguelike set in a 2D, procgen open world. Think of it as a kind of Deus Ex meets Dwarf Fortress, but hold your horses. Yes, I know that sounds like the greatest game ever made, but Streets of Rogue 2 is, very forwardly, not done yet.

In the demo, there are skills that aren’t yet implemented, mechanics that aren’t quite done, and tutorials that patiently explain that, one day, the thing they tutorialise will actually work in its entirety. If the game actually meets its currently listed release date of Q4 2024 I’ll be astonished.

I don’t say any of that to damn the game, mind you. Even in its unfinished demo form, I’ve had a blast with Streets of Rogue 2, and it’s quickly become one of my most-anticipated releases of… whenever it comes out. Even in this state, it’s a fun procgen chaos generator—the exact kind of thing I go absolutely nuts for—with bizarre emergent systems that careen into and off of one another.

I’m the cook

My chosen class, for instance, was Chef, which set me up well to pursue a life in the kitchen and less well to pursue a life of axe-wielding violence. Undaunted, I pursued the latter. Your quest in the demo is to topple the local mayor by any means necessary and for reasons that need (and receive) no explanation: You can either befriend him and get a foot in the door of the halls of power or, you know, sharpen your axe.

Easy enough. All I had to do was walk up to the mayor’s office. I’d even dumped a stat point into the Charisma skill—which sets pretty much everyone to a ‘friendly’ rather than ‘neutral’ disposition when you first encounter them—to make the job of befriending the procgen world’s haut monde a little easier. The only people who didn’t like me were evil robots, zombies, and, ah, yeah, the local conservationists, who I had displeased by massacring an island of chickens in a quest to make a sandwich.

Anyway, I had a quest and my feet were swift to answer it. I hopped in my sedan and headed downtown. Streets of Rogue 2 is, claims the dev, 10,000 times bigger than the first game. Driving about is a necessity. There are also new, Stardew-y elements like farming and building, but I was really focused on this axe thing.

Problem one: It was about 2 am and everyone who ordinarily works in the Town Hall was in bed at home. Solution: Smash a window round the back and climb into one of the building’s many ground floor offices. I could have smashed down the front door, but I’d have had to do it right there on the street and risk provoking NPC wrath. Easier to smash my way in and take the 15 HP penalty that comes from traversing broken glass.

Problem two: The mayor’s office is not on the ground floor and getting to the elevator means passing by a security camera. Solution: Avoid its gaze as I slink into the power room and kill the building’s electricity. Every light and camera in the building winked off, I was golden.

Problem three: The elevator to the mayor’s office needs a keycard. Solution: Um.

It was at this point that I realised that befriending or killing the mayor wouldn’t be an easy job, even for as talented a Chef as me. After claiming ownership of a bed in a nearby shack by setting its previous owner on fire, I walked back into the office during business hours. The receptionist informed me that, unfortunately, they didn’t just let any rando meet the mayor no matter how likeable they are, and I’d need to become a citizen of note before I could get in.

So off I went, tail between my legs, to ask the nearest bartender for a mission that would up my faction rep with the town. First he wanted me to dispose of a local wrestler, which I did by asking him nicely to leave town. Next, I was to steal an item I’ve since forgotten the name of, which I accomplished via stealth: Stealthily smashing a window, stealthily killing a guard with my axe, then stealthily blowing up an entire wall to abscond with my loot. Finally? A local politician had to go, and the diceroll on my ‘just ask them politely’ technique didn’t pan out in my favour. It was around this time that I killed myself, several others, my target, and levelled most of a building by catching a red explosive barrel in an errant axe swing.

All incredible demonstrations of my prowess, yes, and I only needed to complete a couple more missions for my bartender friend before I’d be reputable enough to murder the mayor. Unfortunately, he had been killed after attempting to involve himself in an altercation between a police officer and a drug dealer. Only marginally less dramatic than the time I watched someone—presumably not feeling the gags—knock a comedian clean through a wall and beat him to death in the street.

It was at this point that I decided all this namby-pamby stuff was for wimps, and reasoned that surely someone in the local government headquarters would cough up a keycard if I killed them enough. I handed a passerby $18 and told him we were going to attack Town Hall. Naturally, he agreed. My new henchman and I smashed down the door and got to work. The lobby became a riot of colour and violence. Office workers produced shotguns, I produced a flamethrower, my new friend seemed not to have any weapons at all which was, in hindsight, an issue, and off we went into the showdown of the century.

I reduced somewhere around 10 public sector workers to giblets before they finally took me down, and not one of them had a keycard. Worse, they all still hated me even in my post-death, reformed, reborn form. It was shoot on-sight for Chefs at Town Hall, and the mayor still hadn’t even heard my name.

Anyway, long story short: I decided to pursue the other quest I started the game with—getting a job at a local restaurant. It’s going well.

Rogue legacy

So despite it being unfinished, I had a ball with my time with Streets of Rogue 2’s demo, and I eagerly await its full version. If you’re the kind of person who goes gaga for the weird emergent stories that the likes of Dwarf Fortress, Crusader Kings, and other games that are constantly rolling procgen dice can spit out, this is one you should keep an eye on. I just wouldn’t expect it anytime soon, no matter what that Steam page release date says.