Rendering analysis

In this post I'll do a "one frame" breakdown of Tuxedo Labs' indie game Teardown .

The game is unique for having a voxel-driven engine, which provides a fully destructible environment. It embraces this boon, by giving the player a multitude of tools that gleefully alter and obliterate the setting, to create shortcuts between spaces. This enables a kind of gameplay rarely seen: where the environment is not just a passive backdrop, but a fully interactive part of the experience.

This is highly notable. In today's landscape of Unity/Unreal-powered gaming titles, it illustrates a very old maxim: that novel gameplay is primarily the result of having a dedicated game engine to enable that play. In doing so, it manages to evoke a feeling that is both incredibly retro and yet unquestionably futuristic. But it's more than that: it shows that the path graphics development has been walking, in search of ever more realistic graphics, can be bent and subverted entirely.…