I got to play Teardown! The version I played has a tutorial, and 2 full maps, which can
be played in either Sandbox, or Challenge mode. The campaign was not available. And
what is here may or may not be in the final game, and it is still all a work in progress.
I tend to skip tutorials, but with this game I felt I kind of needed it. It’s a series
of invincible, dev-textured rooms to teach you how to move, to interact with items, and
eventually… how to destroy them. First impressions are all important and my
first one was: ‘ooh, it’s really round!’ …which is probably the last thing you’d
imagine in a game full of blocky voxels. But because it uses RAYTRACING, it’s not constrained
by the same limitations as standard games, so this sort of projection is likely more
accurate. But coming from other games, it feels weird, and can be disabled in the options,
which I did for this video, so we can all focus on the game rather than the barrel lens
effect that’s used to represent it. Also, it’s using Dennis’s own implementation
of raytracing, so you won’t need a Geforce RTX card to run it. But you’ll want some
powerful hardware. He recommends a quad core processor and a Geforce 1070, but for solid
60 fps gameplay at 1080p, you’ll want a Geforce 1080, Radeon 5600, or faster.
Eventually you’re let out into the wilderness and are given the simple task of crossing
this river. Which took me far longer than I care to admit because I got carried away,
breaking into a nearby building and setting fire to it all. The Daily Mail’s going to
have a field day with this one. And then I couldn’t find the boat because it got lodged
under a tree I cut down. The first PROPER first impression I had with
this game was ‘this destruction feels meaty!’. And that’s good. Smacking something and
watching it fall apart, and seeing all the loose bits tumble to the ground, feels as
satisfying as it should… and it doesn’t get old quickly.
The trees are the most immediately gratifying thing to smack, since they can be felled in
one well-placed hit, and bundles of leaves tumble off them and branches snap as they
should if they hit the ground with enough force. Even in the time-trial segments of
the game I couldn’t help but go out of my way to give one of these a good thump at every
chance I could. I eventually got over the river and completed
the level, perhaps not in the way I should have… but in a way, that’s good practice
for the game to come, which is all about completing objectives in ways you’re not supposed to.
SANDBOX With the tutorial over, I moved on to the
sandbox. There were two levels in the demo I played, but one was locked until I had earned
a total of 12 points from the challenge mode of the first one. But let’s be honest- the
first thing everybody’s going to do is to jump into sandbox and to try and destroy the
entire map. So it’s worth pointing out the limits here.
You can’t burrow down into the ground. It seems like most of the level is sat on a thin
layer of ground, with an invincible layer of bedrock underneath. Which is fair enough.
The levels themselves are contained within a square arena. As you approach the sides,
you’ll see a sign appear highlighting where the edges are.
But aside from that… nothing’s off limits! And everything can break, and collapse, if
hit with the right tools. The whole world isn’t physically simulated
at all times. A building will not collapse until the last connecting voxel is destroyed.
In an earlier interview, Dennis explained that this was done to make the consequences
of the player’s actions predictable. You won’t accidentally collapse a building when
you hit the wrong support. You can instead leave one strand connected to be destroyed
as and when you need the building to collapse. And so on. But once things have collapsed,
they’ll physically move and crumble as you’d expect from then on. It does what you’d
hope it would! And smaller structures, like this wooden one
here, do move, break and twist in real-time as you shoot chunks out of them.
And so will the pipes around the level. These soft, rubbery connections between objects
isn’t something that hasn’t really been seen until Teardown. And as you can imagine,
it is satisfying to watch things bend and break as you put them under pressure.
When it comes to dealing out destruction, you have a number of tools at your disposal.
Your sledge hammer can smash wooden things nicely, and some other surfaces as well. But
tougher buildings and materials require you to shoot them with guns, to attack them with
blowtorches, or to blow them up with explosives. The bombs are the most fun, and result in
a sizeable explosion. Then there are the pipebombs, which I wouldn’t trust as far as I can throw
them since you don’t know where they’re going to end up detonating. You’ll find
these items dotted about the level, but they do appear finite in number, and have limited
ammunition. So this does restrict the amount of destruction you can deal in a single ‘playthrough’.
But not by much.
And then there are the vehicles! And these are extremely effective for destroying stuff.
I did enjoy ploughing them through buildings and honestly, when it comes to timetrials,
the sky’s the limit with these things. I can imagine people constructing ramps to launch
vehicles off, at which point even the sky isn’t the limit any more. The only thing
to look out for is the debris, which will slow the vehicles to a crawl and may even
jam them in place. So enter buildings in cars at your own risk! Having dabbled with everything
for just a few hours, the possibilities at the moment seem almost endless.
And the other really impressive effect is the fire, and the smoke it produces. I could
talk about it, but I’ll instead set fire to these benches and will let this whole structure
gradually collapse as the fire spreads, and as the smoke billows out from every opening.
It truly feels like a next-gen effect, and is something I don’t think you’ll ever
really tire of seeing! And while it doesn’t matter in the sandbox
gamemode, in the challenges, if a fire gets too big it’ll trigger the alarm, which is
why you’ll find your fire extinguisher so handy. But even without fires, it’s fun
to spray it all over the level, to watch it dribble down walls and to ooze out of holes.
You have a health bar, but it’s forgiving and regenerates very quickly. You can only
really die if you stand in a fire for a long period of time, or if you get caught in a
tight space with lots of explosions going off around you. Which I’ll admit, happened
a few times to me. I think that health isn’t there to be a challenge, but more simply to
disincentivise repeated, reckless behaviour. But you can get away with a lot.
CHALLENGES
It is fun to destroy stuff. But I’m also pleased there are challenges, which allow
you to apply your tools to a more focused cause.
In this demo, there were 2 challenges per level, each available in 4 difficulties. As
you go up the difficulty levels, you need to complete more objectives, and you have
fewer items at your disposal. These challenges were all different- I had
the keycard one, where you have to physically press a button at each objective, and then
reach a getaway vehicle in a set amount of time.
‘Propane’ was kind of the same, only the objectives had to be shot, meaning that I
didn’t necessarily have to be there in person to trigger them. In fact, since they explode,
it’s perhaps better not to be. ‘Computers’… was exactly like keycards,
only with computers.
So most of the levels I played did play relatively similarly. But how much fun were they? You
might think that running from point to point would be boring, but I actually found it overwhelming.
I couldn’t remember where all those points were, so would find myself frequently checking
the map as the time was ticking down. Which you most definitely don’t want to be doing!
The game definitely rewards replaying and mastering a level. I feel like you’ll have
to play some of these levels dozens of times before you feel comfortable with a set route.
You’re free to quick save and quick load whenever you like during the planning stage,
which helps massively by avoiding the frustration of making a mistake and having to restart
the whole process again. Some of the objectives require quite a lot of preparation.
And when that timer starts counting down, it’s intense. The music doesn’t help matters.
It’s the most anxiety-inducing track I’ve ever heard! Clock ticking, lights flashing
everywhere… the only way it could be more tense is if there were enemies hunting you
down.
And the last gamemode I played was ‘chopper’, where you must reach objectives with an attack
helicopter hunting you down, firing bullets at you and launching the occasional missile,
which destroys the level as much as you’d expect.
In a way, this is less scary because you have as much time as you like to finish it. But
you do have a murderous helicopter hunting you down, so there are pros and cons. But
at least you can see where it is at all times through walls. And, brilliantly, it doesn’t
instantly know where you are! If you creep out of a place without being seen, the helicopter
will remain hovering there for a while, looking for you. So I actually found this gamemode
to be quite different from the others, and a refreshing break from the time trial game
mode. And it makes it excited to see what other
challenges will be thought of for the final game. The current ones work extremely well
with the game’s destruction, and I frequently alternated between thinking a challenge was
too easy, before realising that it was more complicated than I had anticipated and then
wondering how the hell I was meant to complete it. And then figuring it out and thinking
I was too overpowered again. I quickly became familiar with the controls and basic gameplay
mechanics, but I can see there’s a huge amount of depth and complexity when it comes
to mastering the challenges. You’ll be able to beat them on easy settings without much
thought, but the harder ones will really get you thinking. I know already this game’s
going to develop a dedicated, hardcore speedrunning community.
So thank you to Dennis for giving me a preview, and if you have anything you’d like me to
show more of then just let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do. Just
remember that this is an early preview and doesn’t represent what the final thing will
be like.