You almost can’t throw a rock without hitting a roguelike these days. You really need something special to stand out in a sea of similar titles. Plot Twist, the team behind The Last Case of Benedict Fox (our review here) thinks they have exactly that with their newest game, Erosion. Shown at Summer Game Fest (you can check out a long-play preview that doubles as an interview below), Erosion is a twin-stick shooter that doesn’t just lean on the usual high-speed combat and procedurally generated worlds. Instead, it weaponizes its own mechanic. Every time you die three times, the world moves 10 years into the future. Given that your main objective is to rescue your daughter, time is not on your side. Can you rescue her before she runs out of time?
Erosion is a rescue story, as I mentioned before. Your daughter has been dragged to the bottom of a dungeon, and every three of your deaths moves the clock for the entire world forward by a decade. The overworld shifts and changes; decisions you’ve made bear fruit, and your precious daughter grows old. The pressure to make good decisions, stay safe, and get the job done, all while dealing with the challenges of this world, is a compelling change against the usual narrative.
While the central thrust of the demo at Summer Game Fest outwardly focused on delving into dungeons and combat therein, the real star of the show was choice and consequence. Our protagonist is a seemingly immortal gunslinger in a semi-western world. I say semi-western as there are multiple elements of sci-fi that appear all over the place. Talking with the developer, he revealed that he’s a huge fan of Adventure Time and wanted that quirky blend of genres as they make for an interesting mix. As such, the overworld is filled with western towns, but the protagonist also rides a sort of hoverbike. There are also vending machines and laser weapons, so there are few rules at play here. Funny enough, that’s when things got weird.
While there are real consequences at play when it comes to the passage of time, you can’t ignore that one of the first things you’ll have to decide is whether or not to join a pervasive Chicken Cult. You see, the Chicken Cult is asking you to head into town and take out the corrupt Mayor and all of his cronies. Well, if you head into town, it should come as no surprise that the Mayor would love it if I were to wipe the Chicken Cult off the map. You see, the word “hero” is flexible in the world of Erosion - something demonstrated quickly when we uncorked our shotgun on the town’s inhabitants. This is where things get interesting.
Most roguelikes reward failure. In fact, it’s a central mechanic – you die, you get stronger. Erosion, on the other hand, punishes you for it. If you die, you lose time, and that’s the one resource you can’t grind back. Dying caused the world to move forward 10 years, and we are immediately presented with the hard truth of consequences. The town we “freed” for the Chicken Cult is now changed. Without the Mayor and its inhabitants that we so resolutely slaughtered, the town is now filled with cultists in chicken suits. Yes, the suits are funny, but the juxtaposition of our choice is that the place is now filled with crazy people. Since this is where you’ll buy and sell goods, it’s rather important. Perhaps this wasn’t a great choice?
Erosion uses an interesting presentation technique, going with a voxel-based world. It’s procedural but tile-based, meaning most things can be destroyed, but the world is randomly created from a number of curated hand-placed tiles. I didn’t see any repetition, despite the length of the demo, and the voxel world is surprisingly detailed. The movement is fast and smooth, and every encounter feels like it has a deliberate weight to it. It’s similar to games like Enter the Gungeon and Hades in the best ways possible. As you make meaningful decisions about the various weapons and equipment you keep in your backpack, and you buy upgrades that can persist between runs and time leaps, you are crafting your future. It makes the whole thing work in a way that is surprisingly well executed.
The fact that the branching outcomes of your choices have such far-reaching effects, and that you’re trying to build a world that your daughter will one day have to live in, creates a game that is less about dying until you get strong enough not to die, but more about creating a legacy. Storytelling is central, and with the pressure of time, each run becomes less about repetition and more about choice and consequence. So many games advertise it, but few nail it the way Erosion is trying to deliver. If Plot Twist can stick the landing on that premise, it could be one of the best roguelikes we’ve seen to date. Plot twist indeed…
Erosion is coming to Early Access “soon” on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC, with a full release in late 2026.
