Teardown is more than just a sandbox heist game with fantastic physics-based destruction; it’s a modder’s paradise. Thanks to its voxel-based systems, which use 3D-pixels to make coding easier, and supportive developers, Teardown is quickly becoming one of the best games on Steam for players to try their hand at the game creation process.
TRG talked through the modding capabilities of Teardown with XXXX and why this is such an essential feature for the sandbox heist game. In short, what you get is, on the one hand, a plethora of creative mini-games which bolster the play time and activities for current players to take advantage of, while on the other, you also have a game which is incredibly in touch with its community and wants to do right by them, usually by providing it with the means to mod Teardown.
“A week and a half after the early access launch, there was already modding taking place”, CTO of Tuxedo Labs Dennis Gustafsson says. “ A very direct consequence of this was that we focused on modding much sooner than we had intended to.”
The choice is yours
There are more than 6,000 mods for players to enjoy in Teardown, with some creating entirely new maps while others simply add destructive weapons, such as Doom Eternal’s Chaingun, for players to enjoy during missions or in creative mode. The extensive library is impressive and incredibly fun to browse, so if you’re a fan of the game and haven’t perused the Steam Workshop page yet, I’d highly recommend you do so.
During my time at Tuxedo Labs, the team introduced me to all their favorite fan-made mods, many of which seemed too strange to be true. In one, we entered a lovely Californian beach house full of sandalwood surfboards and rustic lamps. Before I could fully take in the craftsmanship and detail, designer Olle Lundahl took out one of his favorite additions to Teardown: the vacuum cleaner. With this equipped, Olle wasted no time in cleaning up the house. The power of this vacuum was so immense that it sucked up everything in its path, leaving holes in the brick walls and chaos in its wake, proving that anything can be used to destroy your surroundings in Teardown.
It’s remarkable to see what the community is capable of in just four weeks of development
I also enjoyed my time racing around in various in-game vehicles thanks to a racing mod. However, thanks to one of the upcoming DLCs for Teardown, I’ll soon be able to enjoy the incredible driving physics in a polished and updated version. However, if you’re looking for something to enjoy right this minute, then I’d suggest downloading Teardown’s T-rex and Disco mod, as that’ll give you a chaotic and colorful fight that you won’t soon forget.
However, the stand-out mod that I saw during my time at Tuxedo Labs had to be the winner of the recent winter modding competition, Forgotten. This sci-fi horror game takes place on a desolate spaceship where you have to navigate ominous hallways and uncover what happened to your crew before they meet the same fate. While this horrific game does share some similarities with Teardown in terms of its fantastic physics-based mechanics and destruction, it’s remarkable to see what the community is capable of in just four weeks of development.
Community-based
The regular modding competitions are just one way in which Tuxedo Labs loves to support the growth of its game and community. These competitions tend to happen bi-annually and have some seriously great prizes for the lucky winners. Last time, AMD sponsored the sci-fi competition, and winners were treated to some top graphics cards as prizes.
“We like to take care of our modders as much as possible”, Lundahl says. “Like in the art vandals campaign, we released everything so anyone can replicate it if they want to.” Tuxedo Labs don’t want to keep anything locked away from the community and are instead more interested in helping individuals who play Teardown better their modding capabilities.
“Over the past three years, like, I've even seen people that learned how to script starting from nothing”, CEO of Tuxedo Labs Marcus Dawson says. “I think that the voxels themselves allow for people who are a bit intimidated by game development to finally be able to build something. You can go down to voxel-level manipulation of things, which opens up new APIs for modders.” In layman's terms, voxels are more accessible to code with thanks to being binary compared to polygons, meaning you can essentially build objects from the ground up like you’re playing with legos.
Browsing through Teardown’s Steam workshop, even for just a short time, it becomes clear that this sandbox heist game was made for modders to enjoy to their heart's content. The possibilities are endless, with the only limitation being the scope of your own imagination. While I certainly won’t be able to get through all of them, it’s awesome to know that there seems to be a mod for every occasion, whether that be a T-rex disco fight or an Alien: Isolation-themed horror game.
If you’re a fan of the freedom found in titles on Steam, then be sure to check out these other fantastic PC games that are available to play right now.
