If your daughter were kidnapped, how much of your life, or hers, would you give up to rescue her? That question will weigh on your mind with every action you take as you attempt to rescue her in Erosion, a roguelite twin-stick shooter from developer Plot Twist.
Published by Lyrical Games, Erosion tasks players with alternating between adventuring and questing in the Wild West Overworld and delving into the dungeon to rescue your child. The game’s voxel aesthetic caught my eye immediately, but after some hands-on time with Erosion, it’s the quests and time skip mechanics that have me wanting to play more.
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I would have missed a whole dungeon and its reward if I had made different choices earlier on.
In my all too brief time with the game, I learned that Erosion begins with your daughter getting kidnapped, and you and your wife being left for dead. Something decides that you don’t get to rest just yet, and then a decade passes, although it’s unclear in what order these two events occur. Either way, you wake in a desert, ready to enter the dungeon, but free to explore the world.
A handy guide leads to the nearest quest, where a group of cultists needs you to clear out a town for them. The developer explained that while I could just follow their request and wipe out the town, I could instead choose to help the villagers wipe out the cultists, or destroy both, or stay out of the conflict entirely.
Being a man of my word, I chose to proceed with the original request and destroyed the town, leaving it abandoned for the cult. Instead of venturing into the dungeon, the developer showed me the option to simply skip time ahead by ten years, allowing me to forgo the trip into the dungeon if I was more interested in seeing how the quest played out.
Erosion is a delight to play.
After the time skip, I revisited the town. It was now completely occupied by chicken-worshipping cultists, one of whom had a new quest for me. This quest, and the passive buff I found in the dungeon, would have been inaccessible if I hadn’t decided to help the cultists. The developer went on to elaborate that each quest you complete has far-reaching consequences, and they’d all be tracked on a timeline map.
This timeline tracks each time period, as well as the quests you completed (along with the ones you ignored). It also tracks the rewards for each choice you make, allowing players to ensure they make different choices or correctly repeat the ones they want.
Of course, all these possible futures would be meaningless if the gameplay were lacking, dull, or otherwise subpar. Thankfully, Erosion is a delight to play, thanks to snappy controls, a vibrant voxel art style, and an array of weapons and passive skills to help you create an unstoppable build.
Erosion is full of mysteries as well as great gameplay.
Whether it’s a gun capable of firing a ricocheting laser across the room to wipe out a mob of enemies, or the ability to drop a turret each time you dodge roll, Erosion has plenty of tools to improve your ability to destroy every enemy in your way.
I asked the developer about your daughter’s fate if you die too many times: Would she simply age out of existence? The developer coyly avoided answering. Just another mystery I’d have to solve when Erosion eventually launches, although that timing is also unknown for now.
Ultimately, Erosion was a lot of fun. It’s one title everyone should keep an eye on.
