Demolish & Build your way into creating the ultimate jank empre!
I have a weird love and hate relationship with simulation games. There is a very fine line between a game hooking you and boring you to tears. In fact, the only time that I’ve ever fallen asleep during the middle of the day gaming was when reviewing a farming simulation.
Games like SimCity 200 and The Sims are beautiful masterpieces that are equal parts work and fun, while any of the farming simulators on the market make me want to stab pinking shears into my eyes. I can’t explain what makes a game work or not but “fun” is usually a deciding factor in the process.
So, when Demolish & Build came across my desk at work I was cautiously excited. I’m a child at heart so the idea of breaking things and getting paid for it excites me, so much so that I’d totally be happy being in the demo business after playing Demolish & Build, although I don’t think I’ve learned much of anything in the process.
Demolish & Build is not a simulation along the lines of something like Euro Truck Simulator, rather, it’s more close to something like Goat Simulator even though I don’t think the developers intended it that way. The developers use the term simulation to describe the game very loosely.
Your goal is to build a demolition empire after being fired by your boss who speaks very poor English for breaking some statues and with the help of a friend you never meet that sometimes has you cover for him when his wife calls. Add in some terrible “Engrish” translation and you have a game full of comedy gold.
Along the way to becoming a demo king you take jobs around various cities and break tons of stuff in the process. The more sites you demolish the more money you make, which in turn allows you to buy new vehicles and tools which open up more complicated tasks. You can even hire staff to handle certain jobs and sites for you.
Gameplay is handled in first person and has you swinging hammers, cranking wrenches, driving diggers, piloting drones, and everything in-between. It all “works” in a very loose sense of the world. You are essentially a metahuman as you swing your sledgehammer one-handed. It’s a very weird process and the collision detection involved feels slightly off.
Getting between jobs allows for some GTA-like action. Each city it an open-world where you can walk, drive or take a taxi through to various locations, most of which are empty and littered with random blacked-out cars and the odd mannequin human hybrid. There are also the dedicated jobs you can bid on as well as a number of random jobs that you can take as you find them for a quick buck.
One task might involve you demoing some old public bathrooms or an abandoned bar, another might see you tearing up metal scrap you find on the side of the road or mining for minerals on a random pike of rocks. All of this is surprisingly fun even if it seems utterly boring.
There is a fair bit of variation in the jobs but I found that being able to do the same job multiple times breaks the game early on. The map and job system is confusing to navigate and means you’ll probably do the same job multiple times, breaking any sort of realism.
As for the demoing itself, the basics are on point. You have to follow basic guidelines even though I’m not quite sure they are all OSHA complaint. I’ve learned that dust is a real pain in the ass and that you have to water down demo sites to not kick it up as not following rules will result in losing money. I feel like a learned a little about the who process even if a lot of it is just throwing things in a big trash can.
The problem is that the games physics engine is pretty jank at times. Ill often leave a car only to end up on top of it. The hose you use to water down sites will phase through everything and I once decided to walk as far as possible to see how long it would get. I made it across the entire map only to get it stuck in the side of a cliff, spraying water like a geyser.
I’d also say that texture pop-in was an issue but some textures simply never popped in. Most posters on buildings were simply JPGs blown up far too high. People also lack any sort of texture work making everyone look like plastics Barbie dolls. It’s all a glorious mess that means you never quite know what is going to happen on a site.
Strangely enough, the physics in the actual basic demoing work mostly fine. Walls fall, buildings crumble, tiles and windows are cracked, and wires are pulled in satisfying fashion. And nothing beats using a huge excavator like a dunk dingo. There is this perfect balance of simulation and broken mess that really grabbed a hold of me.
I enjoyed the experience so much that I took the game online to Twitch and streamed it for a few hours on night where my insomnia took over. It’s a chill experience that helped relax me, especially when cranking those sweetly terrible radio stations the game has.
Demolish & Build is a broken game that is probably better of because of it. A series simulation would probably have gotten boring quickly while a totally broken mess would have left it unplayable. In the end the game sits in this weird middle ground almost being more artistic experiment that actual video game.
While not a “must-have” title by any means. Demolish & Build is the perfect palette cleanser that you can play and chill with when you feel like you have nothing else to play and it’s a title I strangely find myself continuing to go back to at the most random of times.
“Demolish & Build isn’t great but it is a beautifully broken sort of experience that just might have you coming back for more”
Final Score
*A copy of the above game was provided for review*
About Author
