Streets of Rogue - How I provoked a zombie invasion in middle of 2d Deus Ex

Games
21

The last three classes I played were all “stealth” classes. Assassin, Thief and Doctor. Let’s see the differences, what the game does to make different the same concept of stealth.


The Assassin is a very aggressive stealthter. Which is ironic because he potentially has the most OP stealth tool, the Camouflage ability, 10 seconds of invisibility, 5 seconds of CD between uses, and the unique feature of not breaking invisibility when opening doors, backstabbing someone, or picking or using objects (unlike the stealth cardboard box item). This allows you to try to complete some goals that are inside buildings while invisible. But he also has the ability to deal 10x the damage when backstabbing, that combined with the ‘maintain invisibility even when you backstab someone’ means you can cap fools in ninja mode, retire to recharge the ability, and do it again.
It sounds OP, but of course people goes to investigate and search around if see a body drop to the ground suddenly, and the invisibility breaks when someone ‘touches’ you.
To balance the possibly OPness, his stats are mediocre, which doesn’t make sense for a professional assassin but whatever. As good as he is in ambushes, he is weak in normal melee, be aware of that.
He has an interesting Big Quest, in each floor there is an extra mission, a target to assassinate. The target usually roams around and has bodyguards, and you have the condition of doing it silently, or killing the witnesses too.


The Doctor is the opposite, a pacifist. In fact her Big Quest is about that, about not having the freedom of killing people, you can only make a pair of ‘exceptions’ per floor. Even worse, let’s say you want to ignore her Big Quest, it doesn’t matter, you can’t use normal weapons with her! She has to use her fists, or some non-lethal weapons like the tranq gun or the taser.
In exchange, she can use a knockout ability, a chloroform hankie with low CD that instantly and silently puts people to sleep (although it can only be used from behind). So you have a great stealth tool to remove guards and other potential witnesses, making some areas trivial, but she is ‘hard-countered’ by some other situations (ie. multiple guards in a room with back to the wall). It’s here where she will have to improvise.
One of those improvisations I found is to use hired muscle to do the dirty work. You can’t kill, but your followers are free… not only that, there is some synergy in using followers, as you can heal them once per floor.


The Thief still plays differently to the other two. What I like of him is that he truly plays like a thief: you can steal money and items to every npc in the game, and he has a series of cool ‘thievery’ tools as this disposition, these ones:

to break into buildings and steal shit. However, notice that unlike the assassin ambush or the doctor’s chloroform, none of his special abilities will help him if a guard discovers him, combat is potentially dangerous for him (although at least, one of his unique traits makes him harder to hit with bullets).
The previous list of items is very nice but what do you when you deplete them? Easy, he has exclusive access to a shopper who will sell more items like those, as he just can buy them from other thieves.
This is all very cool, but finally he also has an important negative trait, he has a suspicious aura (or maybe it’s the classical stripped clothing!) and building owners will kick him out of their premises. That means less access to shoppers, more difficulties to do some missions, and less access to npcs to steal from.

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I really loved the demo of this, will eventually get to the full thing…

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But why Dominions?

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Because each class is kind of analogous to the asymmetry among the nations in Dominions? That’s my guess at what Turin was getting at.

I was unable to get this running on my PC for some reason – I mean, c’mon, it’s a frickin’ Unity game! – so I bought it on the Switch. And I’m glad I did. Turin uses the term flexible, and that’s a perfect way to describe this. It’s such a, well, limber design for how many different kinds of things it does and how adroitly it does them.

-Tom

25

Yeah, just a reference to the wide array of starting characters/nations.

Now let’s see the supernatural trio.


To start with, we have the Vampire. Which, to be honest, is a somewhat disappointing. He can’t be seen by cameras and he has the ability to bite people, draining them of health, thanks to that he kinds of play as another type of stealth character, one who needs a few seconds to silently kill enemies but in exchange he can recover hp in the process.
The disappointing part comes in that he could be much more. They could have done a ‘turn into bat’ power, or have a limited ‘charm’ ability, or not be able to enter into a building without being invited (easy to do, just disallow movement into the building if he isn’t in friendly status with the owner). As he stands, he is just another stealth guy with a twist.
At least the Big Quest is interesting, he has to find and kill a Werewolf in the map, he can do it thanks to his ‘vampire-sense’.


The Zombie plays unlike most characters. He can’t talk to humans or use firearms, so he can’t use shops or bribe or anything like that, in fact human will attack or run away on sight. So it turns the game on its head, making it an action game where you must provoke a zombie invasion in each floor, with the help of your zombie squad. And you really can make a zombie invasion, as any npc which has been hit once by you or one your zombies will also turn into another zombie. It’s fun seeing half of the map populated by zombies and hearing screams and combat sounds preceding you.
There is a bit of health management with the zombie, you can throw a phlegm that will infect people turning into loyal zombies (instead of neutral ones) but it costs a bit of HP.
Funnily enough, once you have turned a shopper into a zombie, you can buy stuff from him. Zombie economy at work!


The Werewolf is a skinny nerd no one likes (his stats are 1/1/1/1 and he is a sucker so shop prices are higher lol), but he can turn into a werefolf form, a melee beast, no pun intended, and take bloody vengeance. In werewolf form he can’t do anything except attack and lunge. He is especially weak after the transformation so you have to take care of not leaving survivors, or turning back into human where people don’t have LoS, so they won’t know where the big wolf went away… in addition, this OP ability has a high CD to balance it out.
In reality, the werewolf feels like a more flexible monster than the zombie. With the zombie, you only can attack everybody at melee, with the werewolf you have your human form to talk to people, use firearms, etc, and then also have the beast form to aggressively melee anything on sight like the zombie; so you can choose what is the most appropriate tool for each situation.

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Thanks for all these character summaries, please continue.

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Cool you are liking it, although I think next ones will be for tomorrow.

What I discovered yesterday in the wiki is that the toilets are actually operable, under special conditions. You can use them to nullify any negative effects (vomit?) and if the rare cases you are super small (if someone used a shrink ray or are the shapeshifter in the original form) you can use them to teleport to another toilet! lol

I still haven’t succeeded in any of my runs. Hell I still haven’t seen the mayor. It always happens the same. If I have a good run, after the early game I’m coasting, I have a full inventory with weapons, health items, diverse tools, etc. Small groups of enemies aren’t a problem, not even in bigger number if I’m the one who directs the fight, funneling them to where I want. I always die in the same way: I make a mistake and suddenly 4-5 guys around me turn hostile and start hitting me like crazy. I panic, they hit me twice before I can act, then I try to run away but I bounce like a pinball between them and before I change tactics, I’m dead.

Now I think about it, that part is actually faithful to roguelikes, lol, doing it well, lowering the guard and then being insta wiped before you can understand what happened.

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And finished:


In the upper-cruster area I was like this:

With super cops armed with smgs, avoiding cop bots patrols, super goons as bouncers and alarm boxes distributed around, it felt so dangerous to start any fight here. In fact I was lucky and could bribe or threaten successfully in several quests. This area has some interesting features, like automated bollards if a crime is detected, areas where you must leave your weapons to enter (from the main door at least), and more.

This was my ending

When I reached the last floor, I read he wiki to prepare myself a bit, I didn’t want to lose at that point. I read how one of the ways to finish the game is to directly buying the mayor’s hat for a cool $1500. I thought it was a funny way to finish it as surely most people will ignore that option, it’s too expensive.
But I was lucky with my run, you see? With the shopkeeperr, on level 2 I got a trait that gave me $40 in every floor, that combined together the better prices he gets means that by the time I reached the mayor’s village, I had $1350. I assaulted two chests, sold some items I wouldn’t need anymore, and I had enough to by the hat and win the game.

Final stats

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I recommended before the slower gameplay mutator, I’m going to highlight another one, I don’t remember the name but it makes shorter games, 2 floors per area instead of 3. I think it’s a good adjustment, as you can see I needed 2 hours and half to finish the game without it, that it’s a bit too long for a game so replayable. Well, I guess I also could skip the slums.

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I love this game, but if I were to pinpoint one area where it’s lacking, it’s far too easy to minimize your risk levels, and that’s the key to winning. It’s much harder to do that in multiplayer, which is why that mode is more chaotic. The systems try to push you towards chaos a little bit, but it’s too easy to avoid that push.

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I only just realized that turning on mutators to make the game easier doesn’t result in any penalties that I can see.

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Yep. There is only one specific mutator that IS a cheat mode and will disallow any meta-progress, or so it says in the description. Overall the game is pretty chill in how it’s played.

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The workers


The Shopkeeper is a fairly simple class, despite my ?? on top of my head when I first saw it existed at all.
He is actually a more or less normal class, good with firearms and with a starting shotgun, with a pair of perks on top of it: he can summon a sell-o-matic whenever he goes (useful as not all levels will have one easy to reach), he gets a discount when buying stuff, and he has the perk of being able to haggle and buy objects to npcs. This means you can buy a pistol from a goon before combat with him starts, or you can buy a key for a jail from a cop, or just buy directly a quest item from the person who have it. This said, the price is a bit higher from what it should be, so it’s an action useful to solve some quests, but not something to spam nilly-willy.
Perhaps the most interesting tidbit for him is the Big Quest, where in each floor you are asked to sell one specific item. You may have that item from before (for example I was asked a pistol in my current game), or you may have to obtain it in the current level, stealing or buying it.
To end, he has some nice starting items, beyond the shotgun, he has the mini fridge (food heals 20% more) and a free item voucher.
Oh, one more thing: using the trait loneliness killer or using the clone machine, you can obtain a loyal second shopkeeper that follows you. The loyal relationship gives you a discount to his shop inventory, together your haggle skills, you can obtain items very cheap this way. Even better: his default shotgun means he is a good combat companion.


The Bartender is another surprisingly decent-at-combat class, with the twist of being a “status dispenser”. He can do cocktails with drugs and other consumables, offer said cocktails to npcs, and if the effect is positive, you earn favor with the npc (which means bouncers letting you pass, cheaper hiring prices, shoppers offering better prices too, if someone attacks you they will participate defending you, etc), and if the status is negative they will turn hostile, but hey, they already drank your poison so surely you will have an edge, so it can be used as a ‘opener’ for a fight.
The other thing to know about him is he is a team player: he can get up to three followers and in fact it’s very easy to obtain them, as his ‘charismatic’ trait means most npcs relationship status start at ‘friendly’ directly. This means he can enter in people’s houses without being yelled and he won’t suffer of random attacks of thieves, mobsters and vampires.
To make the cocktails, he also has the ability to identify the drug effects, so it’s also possible to use them for him, of course.
I’m having problems with his Big Quest, he has to serve 5 drinks in each floor. It’s sometimes a pain in the ass, as you have to ‘waste’ health drinks in this requirements, or even buy drinks from another bartender because there aren’t enough materials to make them.


The Investment Banker is the odd duck here. I don’t like it, as he plays in a style opposite to mine. His gimmick is that he is a drug addict so every 60 seconds you have to use a drug or he starts losing health. You can stall that by consuming cigarettes (yes, that’s the use of cigs, in case you saw them and asked yourself why were in the game if they hurt you).
So his thing is, he is intended to be played by speedrunning. Enter the floor, go for the objectives, maybe get a pair of extra objects, and get out, as that way you minimize your drug spending.
To help him in his drug-fueled crazed race, he has some traits of the previous two classes, like identifying drugs and obtaining cheaper prices from shoppers. He also feels the duration of the drugs longer than other classes and can borrow money from more npcs than just bank clerks, but be aware of the assassins that spawn if you abuse that and don’t return the money…
There are some good drugs (heh) in this game, like one that turns you invincible or one that makes you invisible, so the drug identifier trait + extra duration combo is the hope for this class.

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Thanks for all these summaries. You got me started on this game, TurinTur, and I’m liking it so far. I wish there were a way to just load the traits most useful for a character, though (without having to make the profile). I feel like I should go through and select what they should most optimally have, and I’m a bit lazy…

34

Your summaries sold me on this game!

I’ve only made it out of the slums a handful of times so far, but I’ve been having the best experience with the Hacker of the handful I’ve tried. Borrowing $50 from a shopkeeper then making $350+ from a hacked slot machine is a huge help. And hacking the cop bots has made for some delicious chaos.

Looking forward to testing out the rest of the classes.

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You know what, at first it wasn’t my intention to make summaries of all the classes, I only wanted to do 6 or 7. But I guess at this point I can continue until the end.

The brawn: Jock, Wrestler and Gorilla

They all are somewhat similar, so I will group them together.

-All of them are good at melee. They all suck with firearms.
-Gorilla is fastest, Wrestler is slowest.
-They all have some handicap to make sure they are combat oriented characters:
      -Gorilla can't talk (unless until he finds a translator) and people drive him out of establishments.
      -Both Jock and Wrestler can't use computers and have the 'loud' trait so they can't be stealthy.
-They all have one special ability to use in combat:
      -Gorilla can do a lunge attack. Not only it does more damage, it also can be used to gain extra movement.
      -Wrestler can pick up big objects and throw them.
      -Jock can do a charge movement that goes through things.

Apart from that, there are a few more small differences:
     -Jock gain extra xp destroying stuff, and buying items is more expensive for him.
     -Wrestler and Gorilla suffers of less knockback in combat.
     -Gorilla gains twice the health with bananas, can't use firearms, and can form a squad of followers.


The Gorilla’s thing is that he has the eternal enmity with the scientists faction. So he gains twice the xp killing them, and the scientists are always hostile the moment they see you. On the other hand, other gorillas starts being loyal to you directly. So you are supposed to kill all evil gorilla-experimenting scientists and form a small squad of gorillas that go rampaging through the city.
One more thing, the lunge has a 2x damage multiplier so with a melee weapon strong enough, it can be used to destroy some walls.


The Wrestler has some nuance with his ability that makes it more tactical than it seems. Some thrown objects provoke status effects upon impact, see:

Although I wonder if that’s not all, with lamps it seems there is a high chance of provoking the dizzy status.
Also he has an interesting Big Quest where he has to challenge one person per floor to a fair fight.


The Jock is all about mastery of his Charge. Or that’s the theory. You can’t stop it once it starts, so it may kill the enemies you want, and then go on and on… through a building, through the other side of the street, thorough a police station full of cops that start firing at you… you get the idea. You only stops at metal structures or the border of the floor.
I’m not liking him, even when you plan it half of the time the charge will have unintended (bad) consequences, don’t do a lot of damage in combat and when you finally stop it it stuns you for two seconds.
His Big Quest give you a random object class (lamp, bed, fridge, etc) and you have to destroy all of them in that floor.

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The two sides of the Law: Cop and Hacker
And the cannibal too, I guess.


The Cop seems underwhelming at first. Only one single trait and one ability?
But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The way the trait, the ability and the big Quest interact makes it for a class totally on its own.

His trait is called ‘the Law’, and means you lose XP (a unique mechanic not seen in any other class) when you commit crimes against innocents (robbery, murder, arrest, etc). This is interesting as in this game killing and stealing for your own benefit is the most common thing ever, so you are more limited in that sense. It’s good how in this game classes are defined by not only what new toys they bring, but also by why they can’t do.
Still, it’s optional and sometimes it will be totally worth it to arrest the innocent owner of a shop if that means it gives you access to his safe and his fridge. Calculating the cost vs benefit is a constant for the cop, although he has a trait of ‘crooked’ that sometimes appears when he levels up that decreases the amount of xp penalty.
As a cop, the other cops are ‘aligned’ as you. You cannot give them orders, but in any fight that occurs they will help you. Apart from not having to evade or run away from the cops as it’s usual with other classes.

But who is innocent and who is guilty? The game indicates in the UI, with the people in ‘mission buildings’ always being guilty. Normal drug dealers has the guilty tag too, and sometimes hackers, thieves and others may have it.
This means sometimes you would like to assault a lab to get the safe… but all the people inside are not guilty, so the dilemma is there.

His ability is handcuffs. It allows to arrest people, that basically is a somewhat silent npc removal (but visually it will alert the victim partners/faction) that needs a pair of seconds to be finished, so take care with the interruptions. If the victim has a normal status it can be done easily, if it’s hostile it has to be done from the back (although there are tricks like using a freeze gun or a taser). Arresting baddies gives more xp than killing them so you will want to do that, on the other hand arresting innocents makes you lose more xp than killing them. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense realistically but hey, it’s balanced, as with handcuffs you don’t have to fight them.
Of course, his Big Quest is about arresting/killing enough guilty people, arresting them gives you 2 marks, kiling them 1 mark, and you need a total of 150 marks at the end of the game. This makes funny situations like you being a corrupt cop that tries to provoke gang wars so the game marks them as guilty when they hurt someone.


The Hacker needs a player who has done a few hours already in the game, to know how items, npcs and more works. But once you are in that point… oh boy, the hacker is pure easy mode.
Let’s see where I start:
He has infinite money, in between hacking ATMs, the sell machine and the slot machines.
Ammo dispenser and loadout dispenser can be hacker to be cheaper.
He has a free follower per floor, by hacking the cloning machine.
The ‘enemy’ strongholds, those buildings with several enemies and traps? Between hacking turrets to turn against their masters and triggering the gas (a unique effect he can do) and other trap, he softens them enough for his follower to mop up the place.
All the hacking he does is remote thanks to his laptop, so he can do some setup for the missions (turning off security systems, opening doors and safes) without even entering in the building.
He has several more distraction action points, like jukebox, tvs and arcade games.
He can hack fridge so it will start jumping forward like crazy, destroying everything on its path. It’s a fun action that serves to open up new entrances to buildings.
He can hack cop bots.

And all that doesn’t cost anything nor there is a cooldown, and he even can move while hacking. The only thing he has to be aware of, it’s of cops seeing him while he is hacking and people going to investigate if they are looking at the object you are hacking. I think the hacker is OP, I would have made him have to upgrade his laptop to unlock some capabilities, for example.

His Big Quest is unique, too, he has to install malware in at least one computer, and said action will make cop bots appear form the exit point, searching for him. However it’s trivial to slip between them and reach the exit.


These two are some of the most unique classes, in the game, however not all reach this level, for example I see the Cannibal and I can only say ‘meh’. He is like… a worse vampire. He cannot get companions, or enter in shops, and in exchange of that, he can replenish his health with npcs taking care of not being seen if possible, like the vampire (except in a less useful way than vampire’s bite).

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This isn’t true for me at all. I was starting on the Park level to pass it with 5 characters and would get killed by the killer robots, and then I learned that it was the malware that caused them to spawn, which piece of info didn’t seem to make much difference. So I started again in the slums. Dead. Dead. Dead. I can’t seem to get a handle on this guy.

(I did make it all the way to Uptown with the Robot, though.)

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The malware triggers the cop bots. And of course it can be ‘gamed’ by only installing it when you are finished with the floor. The killer robot that seems like a Terminator is a random disaster. You may want to play with disasters off.

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I’ve switched over from the Hacker to the Thief, and I’m enjoying the trade-off between ease and speed of the run.

I’ve also been playing with disasters off and slower game speed. Gotta love the tweakability. Makes a huge difference.

40

Yes, it’s good that games have settings and options, but I wonder if the game would have liked more if the default settings were more appropriate. Lots of people won’t bother into trying to see if they can customize a game if directly don’t have a good first impression.

I’ve been playing a bit less of Streets of Rogue. In fact I was planning to let it simmer for a week or two and then come back, but the game has its claws into me: in two occasions I started a game with a new class with the intention of just playing two floors, just to have a taste, and in the end I played until midnight, it’s always ‘one more floor and I will stop’.