Streets of Rogue: Complete Guide

A practical guide to surviving and beating Streets of Rogue: how runs and missions work, how to unlock characters, which playstyles are easiest to learn, how to reach and beat the Mayor, and co-op tips.

Researched September 2026 — current as of Version 99 (July 2025 maintenance update, patched through v99i). Live games change; check the linked sources if something differs.

Quick Start

1. Each floor has missions; the exit elevator opens when they're done. Read the mission list when a level loads. You can finish them any way you like: violence, stealth, talking, hacking, or buying your way through.
2. You don't have to kill anyone. Many missions can be solved with tools, bribes, disguises, or characters' special abilities.
3. Owners and guards react to trespassing. Breaking into private property, stealing, or attacking people angers the owner and their allies. Watch who's watching.
4. Chicken Nuggets are your meta-currency. You earn them in runs and spend them at the Home Base on unlocks that make future runs better.
5. Characters are unlocked by conditions, not by money. Many unlock simply by reaching a district or completing a character-specific goal.
6. The city has six districts. Slums, Industrial, Park, Downtown, Uptown, and finally Mayor Village. Each normal district has three floors.
7. Unlock elevator access to skip ahead. Industrial, Park, Downtown, and Uptown each have an "Unlock elevator access" achievement; once unlocked you can start a run in that district, which is great for practice.
8. Talk before you fight. Some characters can persuade, bribe, or hire people. Hired followers make hard fights much easier.
9. Traits stack up over a run. Picking good traits at level-ups defines your build.
10. Play the tutorial once. It teaches the verbs (and unlocks an achievement).

How a Run Works

• You pick a character and start in the Slums.
• Each floor is a procedurally generated slice of the city full of NPCs going about their day: shopkeepers, cops, gangsters, slum dwellers, and more.
• Missions appear at the start of each floor. Typical goals are things like neutralizing a target, retrieving an item, freeing someone, or destroying something. Complete them, then use the elevator.
• Completing floors and missions earns XP. Levelling up gives you trait choices.
• You gain Chicken Nuggets during runs. At the Home Base, the Resistance can trade them for unlocks and other services.
• Death ends the run (unless you have a way to survive it), but your unlocks and nuggets carry over.

The districts

Winning the game

You have more than one way to win in Mayor Village:

• Neutralize the Mayor (there's an achievement for it).
• Win the election (the "Legal Takeover" achievement).
• Win without either (the "Peaceful Takeover" achievement).

Characters

Streets of Rogue has well over 20 characters. Some are available from the start (the store page highlights the Soldier, Doctor, Hacker, and Bartender playstyles); most unlock through play. Every character below has its own "Unlock playable character" Steam achievement, except the Soldier, Doctor, and Hacker. The playstyle notes are short summaries; check each character's traits on the select screen for specifics.

Each character's unlock condition is shown in the character select screen. You can also build a custom character from traits and abilities you've unlocked.

Best characters for beginners

• Soldier: the most straightforward. Guns solve problems.
• Doctor: teaches stealth and non-lethal play; very safe once you learn to pick off lone targets.
• Hacker: teaches the "use the environment" side of the game.
• Gorilla: once you have a few freed gorillas following you, most fights are easy.

Core Mechanics

Ownership and hostility

Every building and object has an owner. If someone sees you breaking in, stealing, or damaging property, they turn hostile, and their friends may join. The police respond to crimes. In practice:

• Scout first. Check windows, cameras, and guards before you enter.
• Separate targets. Lure one person away and deal with them alone.
• Use back entrances. Windows, walls you can blow up, and vents let you avoid the front door.

Followers

Some characters can hire, recruit, or command NPCs. Followers soak damage and do a lot of it. Keep them alive and they carry you.

Items and tools

The item pool is huge: shrink rays, hypnotizers, boomboxes, bear traps, food processors, and plenty of guns. Look for ways to combine tools with the environment: electrocute someone standing in water, poison a water source, or set traps along a patrol.

Status effects

You can stack buffs and debuffs (having four at once is an achievement). Some are great: invisibility, speed, strength. Some are dangerous: poison, fire.

The Big Quest

Each character has a Big Quest, a run-long objective tied to their identity. Completing one is its own achievement and rewards you. Check the Big Quest when you start a run; it often changes how you should play each floor.

Home Base and Unlocks

At the Home Base:

• Spend Chicken Nuggets with the Resistance on unlocks.
• Unlocks include items and traits that can then show up in future runs, plus other perks.
• You can manage which items and traits are in the pool by unlocking (or not) specific options.
• Mutators change the rules of a run for a fresh challenge.

What to unlock first: focus on things that help every character (healing, general utility) before niche weapons.

Co-op and Multiplayer

• Up to four players in online or local co-op.
• Version 99 (July 2025) moved online play to the Mirror networking system with a new matchmaking service and updated the game to Unity 2022.3.60f1. Follow-up patches fixed the early bugs: v99g fixed doors/windows/counters not appearing or not being interactable in multiplayer, v99h fixed single-player issues introduced by 99g, and v99i fixed destroyed objects sometimes respawning for clients who join mid-game.
• Twitch integration was temporarily removed in Version 99.

Co-op tips:

• Pick complementary characters, like a talker plus a fighter, or a hacker plus a stealth character.
• Split missions across the map to finish floors faster.
• Watch friendly fire from explosives.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Breaking into a building in plain view. You'll pull the owner, guards, and maybe police at once.
• Ignoring the mission list. Some missions fail if the target dies or leaves, so read them before charging in.
• Fighting groups in the open. Pull enemies one at a time through doorways.
• Hoarding healing items. Use them before the fight goes bad, not after.
• Rushing Uptown with a weak build. Uptown and Mayor Village punish sloppy play. Build up traits and followers first.
• Forgetting the Big Quest until the last floor.

Advanced Tips

• Water plus electricity is a classic combo (see the "Shocker" achievement).
• Poison water sources to affect everyone who drinks from them. The "Fountain of Life" achievement even involves poisoning water with Resurrection Shampoo.
• Use the environment for kills. Throw objects at enemies (a gravestone throw is an achievement).
• Ask NPCs to leave. You can nicely ask an NPC to leave a level, which removes obstacles without violence.
• Make friends with guards and shopkeepers when your character can talk; allies make floors much easier.
• Speedrun practice: the community runs speedrun categories like "Cardio%" (used in the official 5th anniversary tournament). Elevator starts help practice specific districts.
• Experiment with mutators once you've beaten the game to keep runs fresh.

Achievement Highlights

There are 52 achievements in total. The district-completion set (Savior of the Slums, Industrial Idol, Park President, Downtown Diva, Uptown Upper-Cruster, You Rule) and the four elevator-access achievements come naturally from normal play; the rest are "do something weird" achievements you can knock out in the Slums with a cheap character.

Achievement hunting plan

• Tutorial, Flat Earther, Safe Travels, Potent Mix: do these on your first few runs; none need a strong build.
• Shocker, Fountain of Life, Murderous Mixologist: these depend on finding the right item or setup (water plus electricity, Resurrection Shampoo, a Cyanide Cocktail). Pocket the item when it appears and use it on the next water body or NPC.
• Creature Feature and Slaver Enslaver: need the Werewolf unlocked for the first, and a character or item that can enslave NPCs for the second.
• The three endings (Hostile, Legal, Peaceful Takeover): plan one run per ending rather than trying to chain them.
• True Believer and The Bad Ending: secret objectives; if you're stuck, community guides on the Steam hub cover them.

FAQ

Is Streets of Rogue still updated? Yes, occasionally. Version 99 (July 2025) was a big maintenance update to keep online multiplayer working. The developer says the main focus is Streets of Rogue 2 but plans to keep both games alive.

Is Streets of Rogue 2 out? Not as of September 2026. Its Steam page says "Coming soon" with no date. A demo was released in October 2024, and the developer said he won't announce a date until he's sure of it.

How many players can play together? Up to four, online or local.

How do I unlock more characters? Each locked character shows its condition at character select. Many unlock by completing districts or specific actions.

What are Chicken Nuggets for? They're the persistent currency you spend at the Home Base on unlocks.

How do I beat the Mayor? Reach Mayor Village and either neutralize the Mayor, win the election, or find another way to take over.

Is online co-op broken? Version 99 replaced the old, deprecated networking and matchmaking. If you have issues, update to the latest build and report bugs on the Steam forums or Discord.

Sources

• Streets of Rogue on Steam
• Streets of Rogue Steam achievements
• Steam News: Version 99 and SOR2 updates (Steam News API)
• Streets of Rogue on Wikipedia
• Streets of Rogue 2 on Steam