Emergent Antics In Streets Of Rogue's Free Alpha

"I played it very briefly and made a bunch of idiots kill one another by dropping rage poison into the ventilation system outside their hideout," Adam tells me about the free alpha for Streets of Rogue [official site]. It's almost enough to make me stop grumbling that Streets of Rogue isn't a roguelikelike beat 'em up. Instead, it's some sort of stealth-o-action top-down 2D game with all manner of opportunities for immersive sim antics. Oh fine, that does sound interesting - but it better have neon punks and hot grooves.

So! Streets of Rogue is a... class-based roguelikelike stealth shooter in a procedurally-generated city, where you can complete quests in loads of different ways by combining abilities and gadgets. Among other things. You might hack a system, warp through a wall, sweet-talk someone, distract folks with a boombox, shoot everyone, pump fightgas through vents, or turn into a giant gorilla and stomp the city. Options! And it has two-player co-op.

Here, this trailer shows a little of how it works:

Crumbs. And as far as I know it's all the work of three people, lead by Matt Dabrowski.

Publishers TinyBuild haven't announced when Streets of Rogue will properly launch but the alpha is free for now so... head on over here if you fancy a bash. You might also fancy poking at its wiki to read up on all the items and abilities we'll get to put together. Sometimes it's nice to imagine scenarios.