Unfinished: Teardown (11/10/2020)

This was fun, but how is Jan not on a quicklook for a game called "Teardown?"

Great video guys! @vinny I'd love to see a Breaking Brad style video where you get all six of those cars into the lake!

I enjoy this game in some ways, but some of the mission structure seems like a big miss to me. Breaking stuff to make highly efficient paths is cool. Dragging poorly handling vehicles across the level doesn’t play to any of the strengths of the game. Suddenly you’re asked to be careful about not breaking stuff, limited from using your tools, and restricted to roads and other safe paths – all while at the mercy of the game’s comedy physics. This game spends so much effort creating a world where you can break anything, but then puts rules in place to prevent you from doing that one thing to solve the missions.

This game is a pizza buffet that kicks you out after eating two slices. Just let daddy bring the whole pizza to the table.

I really like the look of this game. Especially the particle effects and lighting. Well it does have similar Minecraft vibes, the style is definitely more Lego for me.

When I saw this on the home page, my immediate thought was "This had better be Vinny and Abby or I riot". Hell yes.

Teardown is such a cool game.

I 100% understand why most people who show this game wouldn't, but I wish Vinny had walked up to the TV and shown the news. Mostly because of what it sounds like when they talk. It's just all gibberish, but it's gibberish in a Swedish accent and with the very same speech pattern I recognise from Swedish channel 2 news anchors. It's wild for me to hear that represented in such a goofy yet accurate way, and most people outside of Sweden probably wouldn't come close to vibing with it the way I do.

@toxicantidote: this is a really neat thing you pointed out! I cant relate necessarily but its cool to know the background thats there, and that you feel seen! thanks

Good overview, but a bit disappointing that it was the same two levels as the playdate. No need to show the solutions, but rather to get a better sense of the kinda of environments on offer.

I've been really enjoying this game. I will spend like 45 minutes testing and perfecting a plan, knocking out walls and what not, it's very relaxing. Then it's a very hectic 60 seconds trying to get all of the objectives it's super satisfying when you nail it.

Pro Moves: I put the car on the lift all the way up and parked the dump truck underneath it, then backed it up to the water and dumped the car out.

The parts with Vinny screwing up the run are super funny.

Loved the cold open on this quick look!

@hatking: Took me a while to get used to the mission styles but I do sort of get it now. A lot of it is a puzzle game rather than a demo game (though there is the sandbox mode if you just want to cause havoc)

A few missions are a little different but I agree they could do with a few more 'destroy x,y,z' missions rather than just carving out an escape route. Variety is king.

I'm still having fun doing a lot of the missions, it does feel like an 'early access' game (boy, some of those physics) but I like the idea and I think it has the potential to develop into something special.

The Vinny and Abby combo's are good.

@aevovle: Right, but a good puzzle game sets up a world and lets you solve the puzzle within that world's ruleset. This seems to set up a solution and then breaks the rules of the world to make sure you only solve it the right way. Making the security boxes sit on the only indestructible piece of geometry in the game is a weak work around to an obvious solution to most of the game's puzzles. Abby's idea of knocking out the electricity is honestly really ingenious. And, if the creator is going to go through the trouble of making things like generators and power plants, that should absolutely work. It's doubly frustrating because what is cool about this game is so much about the behavior of the world, in terms of how it reacts to the player - and, mission design defying that central conceit of this game seems like a pretty obvious miss. It'd be like if every Grand Theft Auto mission took away your ability to steal cars.

Oh my god Vinny the fov, the fov BLEEERRRUH...

Man I'm going to miss this Vinny/Abby dynamic. WHY DO THEY ALWAYS LEAVE!?! :p

It's a real fun little detail and absolutely hit my Finnish brain in a very similar way. But that's kind of cheating since Swedish is the other official language and has a whole state-run TV channel here.

Reminds me of the Swedish-flavored gibberish of Magicka too. Turns out no one can do Swedish Chef quite like the Swedish can.

Yeah, I don't know if it's the FOV or the way the depth of field looks in this, but there's something oddly nauseating about it.

In the real world, if you cut the power the alarm goes off. It's just a video game trope that we all just take for granted. If you could fuck with the alarm in the ways mentioned in the video, you'd just invalidate the games failure state.

@hatking: The alarms serve a mechanical gameplay function of giving you a set timer and restricting your movement. The entire premise of the game is to make a destructive path to the exit. Your "fun" and challenge stems from destroying the environment in creative ways. If you could simply knock out the alarms and then take your time with everything with no fail state then it would be an empty sandbox with no real challenge.

@humanity: Right, but I'm saying this is the easiest possible workaround to the most obvious solution. Like if in a Hitman game they were like "you have to kill this guy, but, uh, he's invincible to thrown things." If your design and ruleset allows for such a straightforward approach then either your design or ruleset are the problem—not the player's instinct for that solution. I'm saying that if this is a world where the idea is that you can destroy it thoroughly, then there shouldn't be an exception just to make these mission work. I don't think the problem is that you can't destroy the alarms, I think it's the whole structure of these missions depending on you not destroying these alarms.

@hatking: Every game world needs specific case rulesets to function. Hitman lets you dress up as anyone in the game world, but there are special enemies that can see through your disguise in order to make it harder for you to get to your target - if you didn't have those special enemies that you needed to avoid then every mission would be a cakewalk. It's just a necessity for balanced gameplay. The same way you can blast through a ton of things in a lot of shooters but when your progress needs to be gated then a wooden door will withstand even the biggest rocket launcher explosion.

I mean I understand the sentiment, but thats just game design.

Toe to tip, that's a Bart!