Erosion Preview
I don’t envy game developers. Setting aside all the industry complications, financial constraints, and technical hurdles, just birthing a compelling game premise is difficult enough. While it doesn’t even go into early access until next spring, Plot Twist’s Erosion has a few really interesting ideas. It looks promising.
Backwards and Forwards in Time
Erosion’s recipe includes a lot of familiar — but tasty — ingredients. It’s a spaghetti western-themed roguelite featuring twin-stick combat and chunky voxel art. It has end-level bosses that cheekily reference classic video game icons like Centipede. But what’s most intriguing about Erosion is the way it plays with time.
In the hands-off reveal I attended, the developers were a little cagey about plot details. Basically, you play a character whose daughter has been kidnapped. You set out to rescue her. The open world in which Erosion takes place has both mission-specific levels and more explorable areas. You start with a basic camp and build out from there.
Here’s the loop: you talk to NPCs and take on missions. If you die during combat, you’re tossed back to your home base camp. The twist? When you resurrect, time has moved forward. Both you and your daughter continue to age, and the world changes and evolves. However, being victorious means that you can rewind time and undo some of your mistakes. There are lots of branching paths that are impacted by the missions you take on, the choices you make, and your success or failure in combat.
Choose Your Weapon
The game’s combat is clearly rooted in the twin stick shooter/bullet hell genre, with the player mowing down large swaths of swarming enemies. The developers note that there will be over 100 weapons and skills in the game, though there wasn’t a ton of information about them. The demo gameplay looked and sounded like lots of fast-action fun.
Often, voxel art is code for “we couldn’t be bothered with detail,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Erosion. While the characters and enemies aren’t packed with expressive features, the visuals are attractive and use the voxel art style to advantage. The spaghetti-western aesthetic comes through loud and clear, and enemies and bosses are well animated. We only saw a small slice of the game’s promised variety of biomes, but what we saw looked great.
Many roguelikes have an issue of longevity, because once you’ve finally reached the final boss, there isn’t a lot of motivation to continue. The developer specifically noted that there will be a lot of endgame content and additional missions after the main story quest has been completed.
Saddle Up
While we didn’t get to see a huge amount of gameplay, it appears that Plot Twist has brought together a number of elements in an intriguing way. Erosion is set to enter early access in the spring of 2026.
