A Decades-long Rescue Mission

Many games task players with rescuing someone, be it a captive leader, a defenseless child, or a beloved pet. There’s often little to no stakes when it comes to how quickly you have to do this; Princess Peach will remain unchanged and unharmed in Bowser’s clutches until Mario swoops in, so it doesn’t matter how many lives he burns through along the way. Erosion eschews this formula; it stars a cowboy who must rescue his kidnapped daughter, but each death advances time significantly. Can you save the girl before most of her life is wasted in captivity?

This deceptively ambitious project comes from developer Plot Twist. On its face, Erosion is a twin-stick shooter where players blast outlaws and other enemies in an open, highly destructible voxel world. Saving your daughter is your only mandatory quest, but falling in battle three times marks a single death that moves time forward by 10 years. Your daughter, abducted as a child by an evil lieutenant and his gang, will become a teen, an adult, and even an elderly woman if you fail too often. When I ask how old the daughter can become and what happens if she passes away from old age, game director Bartłomiej Lesiakowski only tells me, “We don’t want to spoil too much, but let me say that there is a chance [you] won’t be able to even meet her.”