So I Tried… Teardown

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went with the newly released console version of Teardown.

What I thought it was

Going off the few trailers I’d seen or screenshots on Steam, I assumed this was like an anti-House Flipper title, where demolition and destruction are the aim of the game. As someone who enjoys dismantling structures as much as they like building them, a voxel-based title with small, open-world areas to play around in sounded fun. Unfortunately, thanks to a backlog of games that never seems to be decreasing in size, I ended up overlooking Teardown until it was announced as a PlayStation Plus title. Sorry pile of games still waiting, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer!

What it actually is

Whilst I think I was fairly accurate in saying the main aim is to demolish objects and structures, Teardown has much more to it than I thought. For starters, there’s an actual mission-based campaign mode, where you’ll receive jobs from various clients that may not be quite legal. These are picked up from a computer in the game's central hub, where you’ll unwind after a mission, purchase upgrades, or play with whatever new tool you’ve recently unlocked.

In my first 30 minutes of play, I’d been successful in three missions, although there wasn’t much risk involved. The first simply involved levelling a house, and with a few conveniently placed gas canisters, I made short work of that cultural heritage site! The second tasked me with stealing three computers, while the third had me pilfering three different items, but this time an alarm system triggered as soon as I collected one. This meant failing spectacularly on my first go around; however, after a test run in which I navigated the map from point to point as quickly as possible, I succeeded in my illegal activities during the second attempt.

Despite playing for such a short amount of time, I could tell this was a lovingly crafted game, with truly gorgeous voxel art environments just beginning to be demolished in the most creative ways imaginable!

Will I keep playing

Absolutely! This is one of those games I can jump back into whenever I need something a little less story-focused, and I’m intrigued to see how Teardown raises the stakes, as well as what other maps are available to explore.

And that’s just the campaign mode! The main menu also has options for sandbox and challenge modes, as well as future paid expansions (the free Art Vandals campaign can be found here). Not only that, some of the more popular mods for the PC version are also available — with hopefully more available in the future — so there’s even more content to get stuck into. My favourite is the dog companion; he’s such a good boy!