Streets of Rogue

I have a combined total of about one hundred and something-ish hours across all of the versions have played so i thought it was probably time to give it a review
I was in a pretty extreme depressive slump when i initially played streets of rogue, I picked it up when it was on game pass as i thought it looked pretty interesting, i played a couple of games and decided I didn't like it all that much.
Until one day i decided to give it a second go, it clicked.
and when it did i played it every single day, and i sucked at the game so hard but i (mostly) enjoyed every second of it.
This was the game that gave me a reason to get out of bed in the morning because i was so damn infatuated with it and i wanted nothing more than to complete a run (a little pathetic, im aware).
It took me about 2 months before i finally completed my first run (yes i sucked THAT bad) but that was it, all i wanted out of the game was to complete a single run. After that i completely lost all motivation to play the game but during that time i gained the motivation to get out of bed in the morning and actually go do things, that was about 4 years ago.
Recently it's clicked with me again and reignited my love for this game, i can confidently say that I've never played another game that has given me this amount of enjoyment.
I can confidently say that this is my favourite game of all time.
Thank you Matt Dabrowski for creating this silly little game that has helped my through my darkest moments, i'm very much looking forward to its sequel.
TL;DR - This game literally cured my depression.

I can't stop playing this game. It has too many possibilities.
I picked the Comedian and told a joke so offensive, the cops tried to do an extrajudicial execution on me. While running away, I knocked on a stranger's door and told them another joke, which they liked so much they decided to sacrifice their life to save me from police brutality.

I wanted to say thanks for this game. It's been amazing. I can't believe I've only played 53.8 hours. I've played a lot of offline time that might not have been recorded, as a dad with a steam deck. This game has it all. Hardcore cyberpunk action. Compelling stories. Violent action that won't traumatize a kid if they happen to look over my shoulder. I wish there was an LFG feature. Can't wait to support the dev and buy SOR 2. Probably going to gift it to my wife or a friend since its on sale.
10/10. This game is the cyberpunk roguelike I never knew I was missing. Truly an instant classic. If you're on my friend's list, message me for a free copy of this game. I'll buy it for you so you can enjoy it. It's that good.

This game is hard to describe. An anarchic apocalypse survival sim without any boring parts? A cyclical playground for random violence? GTA without cars or a story?

Actually there is a story, but it's more of a simple framework. You start at the lowest level of a layered city and hustle your way to the literal top floor by completing randomized missions with some freedom in how you do so. Your overall goal is to replace the “evil” Mayor, but then you become the Mayor and so the world goes on the same.

Each top-down city level has two or three missions to complete before you can ascend; missions might ask you to neutralize certain targets, rescue someone, destroy objects, activate switches inside guarded buildings, or retrieve an item. Alongside the main missions, there are optional side missions and character quests. The side missions are more of the same tasks with a slightly different completion requirement, while character quests can change the flow of an entire run.

Gameplay comes through the creativity you have in completing the missions. Neutralizing an NPC could be shooting them, bludgeoning them with a baseball bat, poisoning them, controlling them and sending them to die, asking someone else to kill them, using magical or super-science gadgets, or even just asking them to leave the city.

Cops and concerned citizens roam most levels, but if they don't witness you break the city's nebulous laws or see you near a crime scene, you get away with everything. You can tackle missions directly with brute force and fight everyone, or you can work from a distance and tactically engineer goals from safety. The latter is generally better, but there's a lot of fun to be had with the direct approach.

Each time you start a run, you choose a class which grants free traits and items (some of which are quite powerful) but you also have a character quest; for example, the doctor can stealth through levels with chloroform and their quest is to not kill too often, the cop has handcuffs and their quest is to arrest criminals, while the thief starts with great burglary items and their quest is to steal stuff. There's a wide range of characters to start as, or you can create your own.

The classes start with traits and then you choose more each time you level in a run, which can grow into some strong and occasionally broken builds. Money earned in a run allows you to remove or level up traits at the upgrade booth, as well as buy items you started with from the loadout booth. There are also shops everywhere, from the obvious ones to the secret shops run by criminals.

Items range from the plain and utilitarian to the wacky and strange. Guns work like guns, axes work like axes, bundles of dynamite work like bundles of dynamite. Then there's the shrink ray which allows you to crush foes under your feet, the squirt gun which lets you fire drugs and chemicals, or hypnotizer gadgets which make someone attack the next person they see. Your inventory feels big at the start, but around halfway through a run, you'll probably wish you had more room for all the good stuff.

For another way to play the game, try the Daily Runs option from the main menu. This has you start a run with locked difficult modifiers along with your class and world seed. Some days are pretty challenging, but the best part is things stay the same if you start again, plus you might get to try items and traits that are still locked for you.

There are three issues with this game, though they didn't come close to ruining the fun for me. First is how basic most of the menus feel. Learning I could quit a run and continue later was an accidental discovery, and there are some very clunky systems for saving configurations of traits and rewards. Run Mutators are really cool in how they allow you to set higher or lower difficulty or just change the way levels look, yet take some experimentation to fully understand.

Second, most of the classes and their Big Quests are great, but a few are reminders of the worst kinds of videogame mechanics: one where you must escort a celebrity while doing all of the other missions, others where you must constantly look for electricity or oil or drugs. There's not many of these bad classes though and you can simply ignore them.

Third and most serious of all, whatever type of character you choose and whatever build you have, you'll still need to accomplish the regular missions. So there's always some degree of sameness in runs; you need reliable ways of neutralizing foes even as the frail Hacker, and you'll want a few tricks and gadgets even as a straightforward combat class. This makes the game start to feel a little stale after a while, though I played for a hundred hours without complaint.

Overall, this is a great game made by fun people who were maybe a little new to game and menu design. Definitely buy this and play solo and with friends, and I strongly recommend the DLC. There's also a wide variety of player-made campaigns in the Workshop.

- Be a cop
- You need to neutralize a homeless person
- I try arresting the homeless
- Accidentally punch the homeless with cops around
- Homeless person gets shot up from 4 different directions
Thank you Streets of Rogue for letting me play as a corrupt cop, a cyanide gassing scientist, a drugged up monkey, etc. One of the funniest games that I've ever played

Streets of Rogue is a fun and chaotic mix of action, roguelike, and RPG elements with endless replayability.
10/10

A very highly replayable game! Each run is about 40 minutes to 1 hour long. But there are so many different ways to complete the run! You can go in gun blazing, use stealth or simply bribe the mobs, it's entirely up to you. And there are a huge selection of characters and tons of unlockable items to find! A fun game with a good humor.