Every Day We Fight Forever War Mode: Endless Runs

Forever War mode is Every Day We Fight's post-campaign endless mode. It arrived with the 1.0 update on 22 October 2026, and the 1.0 patch notes on the official Steam page describe it plainly: beat the campaign, then keep going. You clear zones, kill bosses, and survive while the difficulty ratchets up permanently.

So the short answer to "what is Forever War mode" is: it is not a difficulty setting you pick on a new save, and it is not the campaign with tougher enemies. It is a repeating cycle of the game's combat that only opens up once the story is finished, and each cycle is harder than the last.

How you unlock it

Finish the campaign. The 1.0 notes frame Forever War as something you do after the credits, not as an option on the new-game screen, and the same wording appears in the earlier "Road to 1.0" announcement that first listed a "New Forever War game mode" among the 1.0 features.

Christopher Odd, who was involved in the game's production according to the Steam announcement, opened his 1.0 launch stream by starting a Forever War run rather than the campaign. In his words, the mode "is unlocked after you beat the game" and you "essentially go into these cycles and each cycle the game gets progressively more and more difficult." His save showed a "Forever Mode +1" counter in the menu, which he read as the first run in the mode — useful if you want to tell at a glance how deep you are.

What a run looks like

• Cycles, not a single victory. You move through repeated runs of the game's combat, and the enemy side gets stronger as the counter climbs. The stream's late-run segment shows the same set-piece locations and skirmishes as the campaign, but with randomized layouts, cover, and drops.
• Bosses are still the milestones. The 1.0 notes tie progression to taking down the heavily armored Rifter leaders — each one that falls shifts the time loop forward.
• Heat still drives risk and reward. 1.0 reworked Heat alongside the new Sabotage and Ambush missions: high Heat means harder fights and better loot, low Heat means the opposite, and you now control the dial instead of watching it climb.
• You choose your starting point. The 1.0 notes say you can "keep your gear or reset to level 1 with just a dart gun and teleporter." In other words, a Forever War run can begin from your finished campaign loadout or from a stripped-down fresh start, depending on how much of a climb you want.

What carries over — and what you lose

According to the launch stream, your stuff carries over from the previous run, levels included, so a mode built on repetition still lets your squad compound its strength. Death is where it turns: the stream reports that dying resets certain things — the timeline renews and you lose your weapons and upgrades — and then you start again from the sewers.

Treat that as reported player experience rather than a rulebook. The exact list of what survives a death is the sort of detail that gets tuned between patches, and the stream does not enumerate it.

One practical lever the stream demonstrates: the custom difficulty modifiers. Presets exist, and individual sliders — XP gain and scrap gain among them — can be adjusted, which the stream used to level up faster for demonstration. If a Forever War run feels like it is dragging because gear is coming in too slowly, those modifiers are the supported place to look before assuming the mode is simply tuned that way.

Forever War vs Iron Man

These get confused because both are described as roguelite-flavoured. The official page lists them side by side among the game's difficulty modes, but they sit at different points in the game:

If you are still working through the story and want the roguelite tension now, Iron Man mode is the relevant option; Forever War waits until the campaign is done. And if you are weighing how punishing either should be, the difficulty settings are where the presets and modifiers live.

The Steam store page for the game lists Windows as its platform.

FAQ

Is Every Day We Fight's Forever War mode available from the start?

No. The 1.0 notes describe it as something you do after beating the campaign, and the launch stream likewise calls it a mode unlocked once you finish the game.

Does Forever War mode get harder each run?

Yes — that is the point of it. The 1.0 notes say the difficulty ratchets up permanently as you clear zones and kill bosses, and the stream describes each cycle as progressively more difficult.

Do I keep my gear between Forever War runs?

The 1.0 notes give you the choice: keep your gear, or reset to level 1 with just a dart gun and teleporter. The launch stream adds that levels and equipment carry over from the previous run, while dying resets some of that progress and renews the timeline.

Is Forever War mode the same as Iron Man mode?

No. Iron Man is a way to play the campaign more roguelite-style, chosen when you start a new game; Forever War is the endless post-campaign mode added in 1.0.