New Open-World Shooter on Steam Turns Every Deathloop-Like Time Reset into a Vampire Survivors-Style Build Frenzy

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Lately, Steam has been releasing a lot of exciting new games. Whether you’re into challenging soulslike adventures, lighthearted games to play with friends, or the addictive gameplay of Vampire Survivors, Steam has something for everyone. The Vampire Survivorsinspired genre is particularly crowded, with many indie developers creating their own versions since the original’s popularity in 2022. While fans await the official spin-off, Vampire Crawlers, there’s no shortage of similar games that capture the spirit of Survivors – simple controls, rewarding progress, and tons of ways to customize your character. A new game called Erosion* aims to deliver all of that, and even more.

While many games draw inspiration from the popular Vampire Survivors, Erosion seems to also take cues from Arkane Lyon’s Deathloop. Deathloop is known for its unique premise: players control characters like Colt who are stuck repeating the same day over and over. To escape this time loop, players must eliminate eight targets within a single day, which demands careful observation, strategic planning, efficient execution, and a thorough understanding of the game world. Erosion approaches time manipulation differently – only the player character persists after death, while the world jumps forward ten years – but it’s clearly becoming a key element of the game.

The game Erosion is currently scheduled to release in the second quarter of 2026, according to its Steam page. Interested players can register for a chance to try it out through a playtest.

Erosion Features at a Glance

  • SHOOT your way through hordes of cultists, outlaws, and other enemies. Boss fights are also present, and are based off classic arcade games, from dancing titles to snake.
  • RESCUE your daughter from a villainous warlord, with potential for better story endings depending on how often you die.
  • MAKE decisions that can pay off down the road, like helping a shop owner who later builds an empire and owes you a favor.
  • EXPLORE procedural dungeons and a handcrafted, roguelike open-world that changes drastically after every death.
  • BUILD your character with dozens of weapons and over 100 skills.
  • RIDE a vehicle through the wasteland and race trucks through the salt flats.
  • ENJOY side activities like bounty hunting, poker, gambling, sand fishing, and duels.
  • DESTROY the environment, with physics mechanics allowing players to tear up cover and demolish buildings.

How Erosion Flips Deathloop on Its Head

Discover a vast, ever-changing world in this roguelike adventure. Every choice you make impacts the story, and you can collect over 100 unique weapons and abilities. Plus, you’ll battle your way through completely destructible dungeons made of voxels!

Unlike Deathloop, where the world stayed constant while the player grew stronger, Erosion changes the world with every death. Each time you die, ten years pass in the game, making things incredibly unpredictable. You might help someone and receive a reward a decade later, seeing how your actions improved their life. However, dying to trigger these rewards is a gamble – a friendly town you often visited could become the stronghold of a dangerous cult. The story also discourages dying; while being stuck in a time loop sounds bad, dying in Erosion means losing ten years with your daughter, which is a much heavier consequence.

The trailer for the game Erosion depicts several possible outcomes where players find their daughter at different stages of her life – as a teenager, in middle age, or even on her deathbed. One particularly impactful scene shows her dying in the player’s arms, a result of taking too long to save her.

The game begins with a captivating story that will also make exploring the open world more engaging, as the environment visibly changes every ten years. Players have extensive control, able to reshape the map using destruction mechanics. Beyond the main story, there’s a lot to do – you can drive vehicles, join cults, gamble, or go fishing. For those who enjoy the game’s shooting, there are duels and bounty hunts, and completing side quests unlocks lasting improvements and alters the game’s future. These upgrades are likely new weapons and abilities, tying into the game’s vampire theme.

Erosion Sounds Like a Dream Come True For Fans of Vampire Survivors

I’m really excited about Erosion because Vampire Survivors totally blew me away with how much replayability it packed in for such a cheap game! What made Vampire Survivors so addictive was all the different ways you could build your character and tackle each run. So, any game trying to capture that magic has to offer a ton of options. Erosion is promising endless possibilities, which sounds amazing. I’m definitely curious to see if it lives up to the hype, but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of content to dig into.

Beyond offering over 100 skills and ways to customize your character, the game Erosion features a wide array of weapons – some surprisingly unusual. You’ll find typical guns you’d expect in a Western, but also more creative options like a bow powered by your own blood, a self-targeting smart gun, and even a launcher that fires bouncing eggs (the Ebony Rooster!). The abilities are just as unique, letting you clone yourself, deploy turrets, or command an army of cats. While Erosion has a serious story – it’s similar to the game Sifu, but in reverse, where you’re trying to save a loved one from aging instead of yourself – it also promises plenty of humor. The idea of building a character around a chicken launcher and cat army, dying, and then restarting 10 years later in a different world with a completely new build sounds fantastic.

Erosion is a Bold Experiment That Will Hopefully Pay Off

Image via Plot Twist

Erosion is a very ambitious game – an open-world roguelike where the world changes with each death and reacts to your choices. It also features side quests and a lot of customization options for your character. That’s a huge challenge for any developer, especially Plot Twist, who are best known for their metroidvania game, The Last Case of Benedict Fox. However, by using a distinctive voxel art style, they can focus on making sure all the gameplay elements work together smoothly. Despite the charming, bouncy character designs, the game promises a dangerous world. If Erosion succeeds, it could be a major breakthrough for Plot Twist, establishing them as a promising developer to watch in the future.

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2026-01-06 13:05