Teardown Review

Long time readers will be familiar with how much I love physics-based destruction. There’s a certain game franchise set on Mars that I’ve always adored just because you could destroy basically anything. Well, Teardown may not be set on Mars, but it goes one step further and lets you destroy almost everything! Set in a first-person perspective, the entire world is created from voxels (think 3D pixels), and “teardown” is more than a name, it’s a mission statement.

Teardown has just left Early Access, where it was released in October 2020, and I’ll be honest: I’ve not seen many Early Access games with Overwhelmingly Positive reviews numbering the thousands. Heck, there are AAA games that don’t have the total number of user reviews this has, let alone positive!

You play the sole employee (because I never saw Mum take any of the jobs…) of a demolition company named Löckelle Teardown Services which is in a bit of a financial crisis. Luckily, the boss (your mum) gets a line on a job that might not be on the level, which takes you on a journey leading up to committing (amongst other offences) grand larceny and industrial espionage!

But the story isn’t too important, told solely via email and the text crawl along the bottom of each day’s news broadcast. I recommend following along so that you know why you’re stealing at least three cars in 60 seconds, but if reading isn’t your strong suit you can find your targets on the map screen. Okay, if reading is your strong suit you can also find your targets that way, I suppose.

The objectives in each mission vary from destroying a building to stealing some keys, but you start each one next to your escape vehicle. You have as much time as you need to plan what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it, then only one minute to complete your task and reach the escape vehicle. Some missions have no time limit so are more relaxed affairs, but for the most part they all play out the same way — meticulous planning that can quickly go awry. And then there are a couple which no amount of planning could have helped…

You have various tools at your disposal, and unlock more as you successfully complete missions. Teardown’s main tool is the sledgehammer, capable of destroying anything that isn’t brick, stone, or metal. You also have a fire extinguisher and a can of spray paint in your initial loadout. You soon unlock a blowtorch, planks of wood, and a whole assortment of armaments — some more useful than others. Pipe bombs are only the beginning, let me tell you!

Okay, I think I’ve beaten around the bush long enough with innuendo and hyperbole. The main game mechanic in Teardown is destruction. That means that you can blow a hole in the side of any building, knock down any wall, and smash every window to your heart’s content. Of course, you’re supposed to be completing an objective (unless you’re in Sandbox mode), so you probably shouldn’t destroy everything, but it’s nice to know that you can.

See, if you want to get that heavy safe into your van, you’ll need to get it out of the building. But since it’s attached to a sensor on the wall that will activate an alarm if you pull too hard or knock the sensor down, dragging it out through the door is not something you have time for. But that window can be smashed open, and those planks would make a good ramp up to the windowsill! Then you only have to drag it to the van, along with the other couple of things you have to grab, before the security service arrives!

There are nine levels in total, but a whole host of missions across them. Steal safes, tools, and barrels in some missions, then destroy towers, evidence, and food courts in others, there’s a surprising amount to do. I’ve gotten stuck on a mission near the end of Teardown and I’ve sunk almost 20 hours into the game! There are dozens of ways to complete each mission, so while I understand the frustration of planning for half an hour only to discover that the plan is untenable because you accidentally sunk a speedboat 15 minutes ago, there is a way to do it.

If you’re finding it too hard to grab five items from opposite corners of the map in time, Teardown has some options to make things a little easier. More ammo, more health, and more time can all be added when you’re having trouble. Hell, even with 120 seconds I almost managed to fail one mission — some of them are really difficult! Sometimes there are guard robots or attack helicopters…

As someone who really likes pixel graphics, of course I’m a fan of voxels. Teardown’s graphics are fantastic, everything looks great, and the level of detail is actually surprising. The level designs are brilliant and really show off what you can do with voxels. Not what I can do, because I have the artistic talent of a dead battery, but what developer Tuxedo Labs can do.

Speaking of others, though, Teardown has modding enabled through the Steam Workshop. It’s not just levels though, people have made cutting tools, better planks, portal guns… At time of writing there are over 2,000 items in the Workshop!

While I already mentioned the Sandbox mode, I haven’t yet talked about the Challenge mode. You can only do challenges in levels that you’ve unlocked in the campaign, and they consist of Fetch, Hunted, and Mayhem. Mayhem is self-explanatory — destroy as much as possible in the time limit. Fetch sees you grabbing as many randomly selected items and escaping in a time limit. Hunted has one of those attack helicopters I hinted at earlier, and you have to avoid being shot by it while picking things up.

The main thing that I like about Teardown is how everything has a weight to it. For example, you can drag most of a tree into the ocean, but a barrel of liquid is going to cause you issues. Similarly, if you throw a chair at a wall it’s not going to do much damage, but drop a safe onto a boat and it’s going to do some damage. My one issue is somewhat related, because you can destroy every vertical surface on the ground floor level of a building, but so long as there’s a single voxel connected to the upper floors, you may as well have done nothing. It’s not a problem at all, but it’s something that I couldn’t help noticing.

If planning heists and destroying everything that you can see are two things you enjoy in games, then I highly recommend Teardown.