R
emember the first
time you brought a
house down in Red
Faction: Guerrilla? It
felt like the start of
something new. The beginning of
an era of games that would be more
tangible, more physical, and more
breakable than ever before. Of
course, that didn’t happen. Games
largely focussed on making static
scenes look even shinier with
sharper textures and ray-traced
lighting. But thanks to a small
Swedish developer, we have a
window into that delightfully
destructive alternate world – and
believe me when I say Teardown’s
window shatters very nicely indeed.
At its core, Teardown is a game of
heists. Each new mission gives you a
series of computers to steal, safes to
nick, or cars to plunge into the ocean,
challenging you to use a limited
toolset to carve out a path towards
the perfect crime. Don’t get me
wrong, it’s a fun wee challenge – but
it’s not why I’ve opened up Teardown
almost every day for the past year.
I’m playing Teardown every day
because smashing things up never
gets old. Teardown might be a voxel
game, but Tuxedo Labs has taken
great care to build its sandbox levels
with true-to-life materials. Smashing
a wall with a sledgehammer will
crumble plaster while leaving
tougher brickwork exposed.
It is the closest (and safest) means
games have come to the experience
of grabbing a hammer and going to
town on a run-down construction
site. But that faithfulness to life isn’t
just met by the materials. See,
Teardown may be the best (and only)
convincing argument I’ve seen for ray
tracing. With every last voxel at risk
of being tossed around the map,
baked lighting wouldn’t cut it – and
while Teardown’s own ray tracing
solution isn’t as taxing or as accurate
as RTX, it manages to perfectly paint
your rubble with accurate lighting.
There’s a phenomenal feeling that
comes with seeing the light bounce
through the hole you just shotgunnedout of a shack roof. Tear the roof off
a house in a storm and the furniture
inside will become soaked, reflections
dappled against their now-slick
surfaces. Teardown may use voxels,
but it uses them to create something
utterly gorgeous.KNOCK ’EM DOWN
That, alone, would be enough to keep
me sticking around. Tuxedo Labs
itself has done a good enough jobadding new maps to tear apart,
letting you cut about a riverside
village and urban shopping mall with
abandon. But over the past year, mod
support has completely transformed
Teardown from a fun curiosity into a
worthy successor to the king of
physics sandboxes, Garry’s Mod.
Teardown’s basic destruction can
be enhanced. Feel like fires are going
out too soon? Download a mod to
keep the flames burning as long as
possible. And while Teardown doesn’t
track structural integrity (buildings
will remain ‘floating’ if even one
voxel is connected to the ground),
there are mods to fake this by having
explosions cause chain reactions of
shockwave damage. This is best seen
on miniature city maps, where one
tower collapse can bring an entire
neighbourhood to rubble.
In recent months, we’ve also seen
mods that add completely new and
bizarre modes of play to Teardown.
My favourite is Basilisco, a terrifying
killer robot snake that floats through
the skies with a piercing red
spotlight. Evading this beast on a
rain-soaked night map turns
Teardown into something akin to a
survival horror game. You’ll hear a
ghastly shriek and turn to find what
was once an apartment block is now
a pile of bricks.
Tuxedo Labs has even been
teasing ‘Part 2’ of Teardown lately –
adding more physics toys like ropes
and thrusters, along with some truly
horrific AI robots to stalk you
through a map. I’m not just excited
about how these will offer more
opportunities to break apart the base
game – I’m thrilled to see what the
community will do to build on and
expand these tools.
Dropping into the Steam
Workshop to see what’s new in
Teardown has become a fun routine.
It feels like popping down the shops,
only instead of planning a new recipe
for dinner I’m outlining what I want
to smash up this week. Either way,
something’s getting ruined.NEED TO KNOWRELEASE
Oct 29 , 2020
PUBLISHER
In-house
DEVELOPER
Tuxedo LabsLINK
teardowngame.comTEARDOWN MAYUSE VOXELS,BUT IT USES THEM TO CREATESOMETHING GORGEOUSCARNAGE REPORTAnalysing a symphony of destruction3At some point it appears a fire
swept through thehouse,
burning the lower levels.4... hold on, did someone toss
an entire boat at this
building? I give up.13(^24)
1
The shape of these holes and
signs of blast marks suggest
bombs were used to force entry
into the building.
2
Once inside, it looks like the
suspects used
sledgehammers to break into
the office.
EXTRA LIFE
NOW PLAYING (^) IUPDATE (^) IMOD SPOTLIGHT (^) IHOW TO (^) I DIARY (^) I WHY I LOVE (^) IREINSTALL (^) IMUST PLAY
RIGHT: The eastbound
train hasbeen
diverted, somewhat.