Mutators

Mutators are a system in Streets of Rogue 2 intended to let players change how the game plays by overriding default rules. The developer has said he plans to allow a large number of his official design decisions to be totally subverted through the mutators system, reflecting a design goal of making the game's systems flexible and easy to mess with. Because the game is in development, the exact list of mutators and their effects had not been finalized publicly at the time of writing.

Purpose

Mutators are positioned as a way to tailor the experience to different kinds of players. The developer has framed several balance dilemmas around the fact that some players want a harsher challenge while others prefer to relax, and has pointed to mutators as the tool for reconciling those preferences without forcing a single fixed ruleset on everyone.

Death Penalty

One area the developer has specifically tied to mutators is the death penalty. The stated design goal is to avoid making death too punishing, for example not forcing players to run halfway across a dangerous city to recover lost items, while still keeping enough at stake to maintain tension. Mutators that tweak the conditions of death are described as the intended way to let players adjust that balance to taste.

Flexibility and Iteration

The mutators system is part of a broader development philosophy in which the game is built on flexible foundational systems so that design decisions can be rapidly iterated and, where appropriate, handed to the player to change. The developer has acknowledged that some design elements may not work out as planned, and has described pre-Early Access and Early Access as the time to test and refine them. For the wider set of systems being implemented and balanced, see Early Access and Development Roadmap.