A Wild West Revenge Story Where Time Really Matters
Erosion is an upcoming open world action roguelike that takes the classic Wild West revenge tale and cranks up the drama with a brutal time twist. Every time you die, you do not just reload a save. Instead, a full decade passes before you crawl back out of the grave.
You play as a parent trying to rescue your kidnapped daughter from a powerful warlord. The catch is that your failures have real consequences. Each death means ten years gone, and the world does not wait for you. Towns evolve, factions rise or fall, and your daughter grows older every time you mess up.
Die a few times and the heart of the story changes. You might have set out to save a scared child. After several decades and several deaths, you could be rescuing someone who is old enough to be your grandmother. It is a revenge story stretched over an entire lifetime, and that is what makes Erosion stand out from the usual roguelike loop.
The game is developed by Plot Twist and published by Lyrical Games, with a planned release in the first half of 2026. You can wishlist it on Steam while you wait.
A World That Changes While You Are Dead
The real star of Erosion is time. Every death is a fast forward button for the entire game world. The developers describe it in a very simple way. Die in a dungeon, wake up ten years later. The world does not just reskin itself. It mutates based on your actions and your failures.
A quiet farm you once passed through might turn into something completely different when you return. For example, that peaceful little homestead can become a full on cultist compound dedicated to worshipping a Great Ol Rooster. That helpful shopkeeper you once did a favor for might use your help as the first step to building a massive trading empire. Your choices ripple outward over decades, subtly or dramatically reshaping factions, townsfolk, and entire regions.
This means exploration is not just about discovering new places. It is also about revisiting old ones and seeing how they have evolved or fallen apart while you were busy being dead. The timeline of the world bends around your runs, which gives every decision extra weight. Do you take the safer path to keep the years from stacking up, or do you gamble on a tough fight and risk another decade lost if you fail
All of this sits on top of a large wasteland overworld. It is not only about the main quest to rescue your daughter. The game wants you to get distracted, experiment, and mess around in strange corners of the desert.
- Join a creepy cult and see how that choice changes future decades
- Steal a slick new ride and tear across the salt flats
- Gamble your hard earned Cheddar at a place literally called Al Cashino
- Go sand fishing for buried creatures under the dunes
- Hunt bounties or take part in duels for glory and gear
- Race trucks through the wasteland just because you can
The funny part is that all these distractions are technically time wasting. While you are out racing trucks and losing money at Al Cashino, the clock on your daughter is still ticking. Decades can fly by as you chase side content, which makes the whole experience feel like a messy, lived in story rather than a straight line to the final boss.
Destructible Voxel Chaos and Ridiculous Weapons
On top of all the time bending story hooks, Erosion is also leaning hard into chaotic combat and wild gear. The world is built with voxel environments, which means the terrain and structures are fully destructible. Cover is not something you can trust. It is temporary at best.
In a firefight, you are not just ducking behind walls. You are blowing them up, punching holes in buildings, and turning cozy saloons into smoking rubble. The game encourages collateral damage. If you want to flip the poker table during a shootout, it sounds like you absolutely can.
To help with all that destruction, there is a stack of weapons to collect. You get the expected tools for a dusty wasteland setting, such as guns and bows, but the game also throws in more ridiculous options. One standout example is a chicken that fires bouncing eggs out of its butt. It is silly, but it fits the tone of a world where cults worship giant roosters and desert truck races share space with life or death duels.
On the progression side, Erosion promises more than 100 skills and modifiers to mix and match as you grind your way toward the warlord who took your daughter. With the roguelike structure, every run can push you toward a new build, whether you focus on long range shooting, fragile but explosive glass cannon setups, or something completely weird built around strange weapons and environmental damage.
What makes that progression more interesting than a standard roguelike is the time jump layer. A failed run does not just reset your build. It advances the story. That failure might make a certain faction stronger in the next decade, open new questlines, or transform a familiar region into something harsher, richer, or much weirder.
It all adds up to a game that feels like a mix of Wild West revenge movie, postapocalyptic sandbox, and chaotic roguelike experiment. If you like the idea of a world that remembers what you did even after you die and lets years pass in the blink of an eye, Erosion is one to keep on your radar.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/every-death-costs-you-10-years-in-this-open-world-roguelike-so-your-missing-daughter-might-be-a-grandmother-by-the-time-you-find-her/
