Around the end of next year 2020, Tuxedo Labs launched an Early Access build of their first game, Teardown, which earned instant popularity among independent game developers owing to its fully destructible setting. If the case calls for it, sledgehammers and blowtorches may be used to destroy anything within swinging distance, including bulldozers, cranes, luxury vehicles, trucks, and even boats. Teardown, a contender for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and champion in the Perfection in Design category at the 2021 Independent Games Festival, set the stage for its future emergence as a formidable adversary.
Teardown is a simple game that is first easy to become engrossed in. It is a graphically stunning game with an astounding level of physical detail in its surroundings. As a result of the actual spread of the fire, combustibles, such as wood, are burned to ash. During the course of the fire’s burning, smoke particle effects surround it, resulting in a nighttime aspect that is very striking. If the basis of a structure is savagely damaged, the structure would collapse; hence, experimenting with weapons might provide profitable consequences in a short period of time. In addition to lightning strikes that may rip apart portions of a structure and ignite a fire, users will be able to control their environment to achieve nearly anything with future tools.
There are three methods for initiating the disassembly procedure. The gameplay is centred on the campaign, in which players must conduct a variety of heists and rise through the ranks to become the world’s greatest thief. To advance in the game, players are put in random surroundings with a fixed set of items, and they must execute arcade-style activities. And then there’s Sandbox, the finest of the lot, in which players have fully updated tools and are free to build and destroy anything, maximising the game’s promises of freedom, creativity, and exploration. Campaign mode is Punch-Out!clumsy !’s and easily defeated Glass Joe.
The campaign mode starts with a brief instruction and an email from the mother of the anonymous main character informing the player that the gas bill must be paid and that funds are limited. In a condition of desperation, the protagonist is compelled to accept a questionable job: the general manager of a local mall requests the demolition of a building in order to construct a new wing in its stead, and the protagonist accepts. This easy instruction is followed by the distribution of their first loadout, which consists of three weapons: A sledgehammer, a spray can, and a fire extinguisher. This acts as the starting point for the game’s first official mission.
Exploration of new regions and the acquisition of goods, as well as the achievement of further tasks, allow players to earn money to improve their instruments, so making them substantially more effective at causing havoc or enhancing their agility when pursuing a goal. As players go through the game, the ability to handle materials like as metal and plastic will be unlocked, offering them with extra options as they seek to create an escape route in the quickest time possible. Numerous missions conclude with the activation of an alarm system, prompting players to dash to their getaway vehicle with their loot in less than one minute before the police come to take their property.
Throughout the course of the game, the player must accomplish a multitude of tasks. Participants in this game will steal automobiles, destroy buildings, and toss safes carrying vital information into the ocean, never to be seen again. A top-down perspective of each level’s complete layout is readily accessible, allowing players to plan their heists based on the location of each desired object. A brief replay of the player’s activities is also accessible and acts as a moment of joy and triumph at the finish of a challenging theft. In contrast, the game’s issues begin to manifest when it attempts a full-fledged campaign.
Teardown is a game that might have been successful without a story, and probably should have been. Honestly, something needed to be done to connect the objectives and create a sense of escalating stress as the missions continued. This was required to explain why and how specific events transpired. Such a feature may have gone a long way toward making the game’s effort at “narrative” more tolerable, given that players would not encounter actual characters or hear dialogue.
In its place, players will return to their home base after each operation and sift through a tremendous amount of emails from their ever-expanding client list before proceeding to the next. Disputes can regularly emerge between two customers, resulting in the theft of rare artwork or luxury automobiles, or the destruction of the other’s business. Instead of experiencing the weight of the stakes, players will grab their tools and begin on a similar quest for objects and/or leave a path of destruction over places that are almost lifeless.
