Howdy Cowboys,
Erosion is a roguelike dungeon crawler but dying skips time forward. How old will your daughter be when you reach her? How will the world outside the dungeon change each decade?
This Playtest features a very early build of the game that includes 2 Dungeons Tiers and their Boss battles, 2 Biomes of the Overworld and an assortment of Quests spanning 2 branching Timelines (2 decades of in-game time).
Your feedback is one of the most important parts of this playtest. Share bugs, discuss builds, compare timeline choices, and help us shape the future of Erosion as development continues. We can't wait to hear what you discover out there in this wild game.
On average, it should take 2-3 hours to discover all content in this Playtest but there are a lot of variables! You can choose how many Dungeon runs you want to challenge and how far off the beaten path you’ll explore in the Overworld.
Fight your way down the Pillar to save your Daughter. Upon death, explore the Overworld, take on Quests to build up your strength at your Camp before returning to the Pillar for another descent. Discover how your actions, or lack thereof, change the world around you when the decade skips forward.
Once you've spent a bit of time with the game, please let us know what you think! You can do that by answering the survey that will be linked in game, discussing here in the Steam forums, or joining our Discord server.
We know that the branching Timelines is a big part of what makes Erosion a unique roguelike. So far, we've mostly been working on the combat gameplay and getting all the systems in place so to be completely frank, there isn't a lot of time-jumping in this Playtest! Now that we've got all those systems working, we can focus on adding more quests and branching paths. We have many of them planned already but for now, we wanted to give you a taste of what's to come!
Outside of the main branching quests, there are many side activities like Poker, Bounty Hunting and classic cowboy Duels, that you can find across the upperworld outside of the dungeons.
Why are the bosses inspired by classic arcade games? Maybe you’ll spot a few more references throughout the mysterious Dungeons
You can use your vehicle as a fast travel node to get around the Overworld
There’s a few side quests and activities scattered around the Overworld. It can pay to explore!
Since this is a very early Playtest build, there's some issues that we haven't resolved just yet. We wanted to list them here so that you
Gameplay
If players choose to Save & Exit after reaching the Pillar (Dungeon) in Timeline 0, loading the same save will start in Timeline 1.
Incorrect “Future Changed” notification may appear upon killing an enemy in the Overworld.
Resources may occasionally drop outside of the player character’s range.
Quests and Bounty Boards
Occasionally some Quests may not properly reset to their original state after death and selecting “Reset” option.
Navigation and Map
The Map may not always suggest the most optimal way to get to the tracked destination.
Side Activities - Poker, Sandfishing, Duels, Racing
Poker minigame (Located in Neu Amsterdam) is only available in Timeline 1
In Poker, opponents are missing their dialogues
UI and Localization
Some text may be missing, have spelling errors, or appear outside of UI elements.
Some dialogues may display incorrect information, including wrong character names.
Certain languages are still going through full localization.
Technical Performance
In rare cases during in-game cinematics, selecting “Skip Prologue” from the Game Menu may result in an infinite loading screen.
A snapshot of the game level can be briefly seen after selecting the “Skip Prologue” option from the Game Menu.
Certain weapon/ammo/mod combinations may experience lower than anticipated FPS in Corpohell (Dungeon 2).