Instruments Of Destruction, from one of Red Faction Guerilla’s demolition tech wizards, is out in 1.0 now

Instruments Of Destruction goes to the trouble of having a voiceover offer a preamble to each of its missions, but I don’t need it. Its launch trailer knows I don’t need it, as its own voiceover makes clear: “Take this vehicle, destroy those buildings. Do I really need to explain why?”

Nope! You don’t. And the smashing simulator’s 1.0 release is out now.

This is the work of Luke Schneider, among others, and Schneider was the lead tech designer on Red Faction: Guerilla, the famed first-person demolish ’em up. While Guerilla often had you destroying architecture with a sledgehammer or some carefully placed explosives, Instruments Of Destruction sets you loose from its very first mission with some extremely powerful machinery. Expect wrecking balls, rocket-powered diggers, missile-launching mechs, and many more impossible machines.

These are all prototype vehicles you’ve been charged with testing across a series of levels, each one an island where the main objective is to destroy some suspiciously empty buildings, and the optional objective is to, perhaps, avoid destroying a particular type of building, or to punt some particular objects into the sea. What I’ve played of it has been breezy fun so far, although there’s promise of depth via hidden bonus objectives, high score tables, and the ability to construct your own vehicles.

There are around 50 missions in total, but I don’t get the impression that Instruments Of Destruction is something I’m going to mainline until complete. Instead I think I’m going to keep it installed for a long while and dip in for short bursts of bursting buildings.

You’ll find Instruments Of Destruction on Steam, where it’s currently £13.16/€14.27/$17.