Teardown is a 2022 sandbox game with puzzle and action elements. Developed and published by Tuxedo Labs, the game revolves around the owner of a financially stricken demolition company, who is caught undertaking a questionable job and becomes entangled in helping police investigations while taking on further dubious assignments. Teardown features levels made of destructible voxels, and the player follows the campaign through consecutive missions. In most missions, the player must collect or destroy objects connected to a security alarm that triggers a timer. The player has unlimited time to prepare and is given upgradable tools, vehicles, and explosives to create a path within the level that allows them to complete the objectives and reach a getaway vehicle before the timer runs out.

Teardown uses a proprietary game engine developed by Dennis Gustafsson, who began creating the technology after winding down his previous company, Mediocre, in 2017. He initially implemented destructible voxels with ray tracing and, after several discarded designs, conceived the two-phase heist concept. While working closely with the former Mediocre designer Emil Bengtsson, Gustafsson regularly shared development updates via Twitter and the resulting popularity led him not to pursue traditional marketing for Teardown. The game was announced in October 2019 and an early version was available through early access from October 2020, with the full game released in April 2022.

Teardown saw positive reactions leading up to and during its early access phase, and it received favourable reviews upon release. Critics praised the game's physics, interactivity, graphics implementation, art style, and music. Mixed opinions were voiced regarding the campaign progression and story, while some control elements were criticised. The game's support for mods was cited as a major factor for its potential longevity. Teardown had sold 1.1 million copies by August 2022, and the game's success led to Tuxedo Labs being acquired by Saber Interactive under Embracer Group. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S ports, published by Saber Interactive, were released in November 2023, upping the player count to 2.5 million.

Gameplay

Teardown is a sandbox game with puzzle and action elements. It is played from a first-person perspective. The player can freely navigate the game's nine levels, which consist entirely of aggregates of destructible voxels. The player starts out with a sledgehammer, fire extinguisher, and spraycan. The spraycan can be used to paint surfaces, for example to mark routes and points of interest. Other tools are unlocked throughout the campaign, including a blowtorch, a shotgun, bombs, and a rocket launcher, which have limited uses. Some voxel materials require these stronger tools to destroy. Wooden planks can be used to erect structures, such as ramps. Acquired tools can be upgraded using cash earned from collecting valuables scattered throughout levels. For example, the player can obtain more and longer planks and increase the damage caused by bombs. The player can additionally create explosions using propane tanks placed around levels. Vehicles like cars, trucks, cranes, excavators, and boats can be used for traversal and destruction. While operating them, the game temporarily switches to a third-person view.

Each mission comprises one or more objectives, of which some are required and some optional. In most missions, the player is tasked with stealing or destroying a predetermined set of objects connected to a security alarm. Once an alarm is triggered, the player has sixty seconds to complete the required objectives and reach a getaway vehicle. Failing to do so results in a security helicopter spotting the getaway vehicle and the player failing the level. The initial setup time is unlimited to allow the player to plan and create a fast route between the objectives. Level overviews and route replays are presented from a top-down view. In other kinds of missions, the player must raze buildings to an indicated height, move heavy objects to one location, dodge an attack helicopter, evade security robots, or extinguish fires from lightning strikes to avoid triggering a fire alarm. Some levels feature multiple missions with slightly altered world designs, and there are 40 missions in the main campaign. All missions are accessible via a hub world, and previous level progress can be reloaded after a quick save.

In multiplayer, up to twelve players can play the campaign cooperatively, roam sandbox levels, and engage in competitive modes like deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag. Through accessibility options, the player can adjust the game's difficulty, such as by increasing the time they have to complete a level after triggering the timer. Outside of the campaign, the Sandbox mode puts the player into any of the unlocked levels with all tools and their upgrades but without objectives. In the Creative mode, the player can model 3D objects by painting voxels inside the game world. These objects can be saved and repurposed in other levels. Three challenge modes can be played on each unlocked level: In Mayhem, the player must destroy as many voxels as possible within sixty seconds; in Hunted, the player is tasked with collecting randomly appearing items while being chased by an attack helicopter; and in Fetch, the player has to collect as many items as possible in a sixty-second time frame.

Modding Custom levels and structures can be modelled using the program MagicaVoxel and imported into the game. On PCs, Teardown includes a level editor and integration with the Steam Workshop. Most game elements are scriptable using the Lua programming language. Early on, players created art using the in-game tools, while mods had appeared by November 2020. Certain mods provide alternative gameplay in different genres. More than 6,000 mods had been submitted to the Steam Workshop by September 2023, up from 1,100 in May 2022 and over 5,000 in March 2023. Modding competitions are held biannually. Teardown on PCs highlights developer-curated mods in the main menu. On consoles, select mods are released as part of "Mod Pack" collections. Six such packs were released by September 2026.

Plot Teardowns story is primarily told through emails that the player character receives. The game takes place in the fictional Löckelle Municipality, and the player controls the owner of Löckelle Teardown Services. The company is facing financial hardship due to a lack of clients, so the owner accepts a dubious job from Gordon Woo, the general manager of the Evertides Mall, who requests an old building to be destroyed during the night to make way for the mall's construction. On the day after the demolition, the owner's mother, Tracy, alerts them to the fact that the razed building was under cultural heritage protection and that a traffic camera had caught the company vehicle entering the site. Parisa Terdiman, a Löckelle Police Department criminal investigator, agrees not to pursue an investigation if the owner helps her investigate Lawrence Lee Junior and his company, Lee Chemicals. Under her orders, the owner repeatedly breaks into the premises of Lee Chemicals and into Lee's private properties to retrieve information about a mystery client.

While Lee and Woo repeatedly request destruction jobs aimed at the other, Terdiman discovers that the Lee Chemicals client is BlueTide, an energy drink producer run by Mr. Amanatides. As no official records exist on Amanatides, Terdiman asks the owner to retrieve communication data from BlueTide's premises on Hollowrock Island, as well as accounting data from Lee Chemicals. Through Woo, Amanatides learns of the owner's services and hires them to increase BlueTide's security by obtaining confidential information on autonomous guard robots. As Terdiman investigates an unknown addictive substance found in BlueTide's drinks, a leftover shipping label recovered from Hollowrock Island reveals that Amanatides controls the Evertides Mall and uses it as a repackaging hub for the substance. Shipping logs from the Evertides Mall lead the owner to the Muratori Islands, where Terdiman orders them to secure evidence and destroy the local supply chain.

As a result of the disruptions on Hollowrock Island, at the Evertides Mall, and on the Muratori Islands, Amanatides fires Woo as the mall's manager and plots revenge against those who he believes harmed BlueTide's business. He orders the owner to retrieve a truck, autonomous robots, and nitroglycerin. Amanatides uses these components to assemble a destructive machine he dubs the Truxterminator. Terdiman and the Löckelle Police Department raid Hollowrock Island and apprehend Amanatides, who reveals that he had already deployed the Truxterminator to destroy the town of Cullington, where he had spotted a Löckelle Teardown Services company vehicle in Tracy's driveway. Tracy is unaware of her fate as she is trying out her new tanning bed, so the owner arrives in Cullington and safely guides the Truxterminator through the town and into the sea.

Development and release

Technology and prototypes Teardown was developed by Tuxedo Labs, an indie game studio founded by the Swedish programmer Dennis Gustafsson. Gustafsson had previously been involved with companies developing middleware for game physics. Together with Henrik Johansson, he founded the mobile game studio Mediocre in 2010, where they worked on Smash Hit, PinOut, and the Sprinkle series. After shutting down Mediocre in 2017, Gustafsson began working on technology for destructible environments using voxels, an idea he had been looking to pursue for some time. Destructible voxels appeared easier to implement because regular polygons would have led to arbitrary geometry with overly complex collision detection. He implemented the voxel technology alongside real-time ray tracing, which the simplicity of voxel-based scenes made possible. The voxel style was inspired by MagicaVoxel, which Gustafsson had discovered on Twitter. Ultimately, ray tracing was used for most graphics elements, allowing for more realistic lighting. Reflection colours use the "screen space reflection" model instead of full-path tracing "for performance reasons". Smoke is simulated using a fluid animation system Gustafsson had authored for Sprinkle. Unlike traditional voxel engines that manage all voxels in a single volume, Gustafsson chose to use several volumes that contain a smaller number of voxels to allow for local translation. The resulting game engine and custom tools were written in C++. In the engine, voxels were implemented using an 8-bit colour palette, where each material determines a voxel's colour, roughness, emissiveness, reflectivity, and physical type.