Have you ever dreamed of building machines of monstrosity for the sole purpose of demolishing buildings into millions of pieces? Probably not, but hey it’s definitely an awesome thought, and that’s exactly what this new game, Instruments of Destruction, is all about.

Brought to you from the lead designer of Red Faction Guerrilla, Luke Schneider, Instruments of Destruction will give players an arsenal of construction vehicles, fully customizable for whatever mayhem you have planned. 

Instruments of Destruction Reveal Trailer

Key features:

• ADVANCED PHYSICS-BASED DESTRUCTION – You can demolish every structure in the game piece by piece. In addition, every object you see in the game world–save for small decorative plants and rocks–is part of the physics system. Each element of the world interacts with each other and together they create a physical, visceral world to play with.
• BUILD UNIQUE VEHICLES – Build a vehicle your way, with an ever-expanding array of parts and pieces. Using an intuitive vehicle construction system that also lets you customize your vehicles’ appearance and controls, you’ll always have fun creating your next awesome invention.
• SINGLEPLAYER CAMPAIGN + PROGRESSION – The first time you unlock a level, you will be provided with everything you need to complete simple objectives, and will be required to use certain parts and adhere to certain limits.
• HARDCORE MODE – Complete a level in the campaign, and you’ll unlock the same level in sandbox mode, and later it will become available in hardcore mode. Hardcore is similar to the main campaign, but will use more timers, add more difficult objectives, and limit the parts in different ways.
• SANDBOX MODE – Finally, sandbox mode lets you use any unlocked part, and as many parts as you want (up to your current max based on progression), to complete more relaxed challenges on any completed level, or to just build and destroy stuff for fun.
• FUTURE PLANS – Those 3 modes will be present at EA launch, but additional features and content will be added during Early Access. Additional details will be coming as new features are nearing completion.

Instruments of Destruction is being developed by Radiangames, a one man studio lead by Luke Schneider who worked on the Red Faction Guerilla series 10 years ago.

While messing around with different ideas, using a rolling sphere to smash through the buildings and use a vortex to pull the debris towards the sphere was quite fun, so Luke continued that direction for a few weeks, with the sphere morphing into an Obliteration Robot: Ballistic Edition. OR-BE gained many powers, including a Katamari-like ability to absorb broken pieces into a larger and larger ball of debris. A couple different control types were attempted, and it was pretty fun to smash through walls, jump high in the air and slam down, and use collected debris to take down other buildings. 

Luke said in the press release, 

But something was missing, and Luke was distressed by the lack of replayability outside of the destruction itself being satisfying. The setting itself was also unclear, and the art direction wobbled between cel-shaded-like visuals and a simpler direction. After some hesitation, Luke went in the direction of making OR-BE himself more complex, and using physics-based attachments instead of choosing various upgrades from a grid of possible powers and modifiers. The difficulties in taming the physics system and combining parts into one cohesive unit would be the largest technical challenge the game would face, but slowly the problems were overcome.

At this time, Luke was also discussing the game with a potential partner. In one of the calls, the partner mentioned robots weren’t particularly appealing to a lot of people and would pose marketing challenges. They asked if monsters or medieval contraptions were be a better fit. Luke’s preferred solution came to him while driving a couple days later. Construction vehicles were a perfect fit for the theme and direction of the game, and he’d enjoyed doing the 3D modeling on Speed Demons (another vehicle-heavy game). Throw the destroyable buildings onto an island so there’s some danger/tension from falling into the water, and the final direction for Instruments of Destruction seemed obvious in retrospect (the name took a few weeks to decide on).

Screenshots:

While no release date has been given for Instruments of Destruction, Luke did confirm that the title will be entering early access later 2021. At this time only PC is the focused platform for release due to resources, though because of that, Luke can focus on making it as best as possible on the platform.