Concept Destruction Review
Concept Destruction from Publisher Ratalaika Games and Developer Thinice Games
Enjoyable cardboard demolition derby. Well executed and easy to play with surprising solid driving mechanics.
Cardboard Demolition Derby
The game is a demolition derby with remote controlled cardboard cars. The play area is a cardboard arena sitting atop a large table in the concept garage. The arena is still littered with the scissors, pens, sticky notes, highlighters, tape, and rulers used to make the cars. To win you must cause the destruction of your rivals by inflicting enough damage to cause them to eject their batteries before they do the same to you.
There are a total of 8 different cars that you will unlock while playing the game, each with their own stats.
While driving around your car will get damaged from smashing into other cars, walls and objects in the arena space. They did a great job making it easy to see the amount of damage your car takes in different areas. If you take enough damage on the left side your door will fall off and so can the tires. You also see that part of your car crushed in. If/when your car takes too much damage you will lose your battery and your car is dead.
The car physics are better than typically found in games like this. The handling responds to the damage taken in a realistic way. If you lose a tire your car will drive like it only has 3 wheels and will lean to the side that’s missing a tire. The controls are good and responsive which is always nice to see. Like most of the arcadey driving games you have no gears to shift through just gas, brake, e-brake, and boost.
There is a “School” option which is the game’s tutorial. It provides a helpful place to start teaching you the basics. It is broken down into 3 sections: learning how to drive and control your car, explaining the way you damage other cars, and learning how to roll back onto your wheels. The last section is very useful as your car gets turned over a lot.
They also built a photo mode and gave it more options than we expected. You are able to take the camera anywhere on the level and even go through walls and buildings. There are some issues with clipping when you move the camera through a building like some of the walls disappear for a second and come back. You can also spin the camera in 360 degrees and adjust the focus if you’re trying to take an artsy shot. You might even be able to spot an easter egg or two while in photo mode since you’ll be able to see things you can’t normally see.
After you complete the level by winning or when your car gets destroyed you are provided with a results screen. This will show your score, the amount of cars you killed, the time left in the round, your car battery percentage, and a breakdown of the damage your car took. It was nice to see the breakdown of how much damage each part of the car took while you fought for victory in the cardboard death match.
Overall the game does a really great job presenting information visually. Not just on the results screen either. When selecting your car, they clearly display the stats so you can see how the cars compare to each other. They also clearly show where and how much damage you’re taking during the derby so you can effectively protect your weak areas while trying to maximize the damage you’re dealing to your opponents.
There are 8 levels in the game, each with a different theme. They range from a fancy plaza complete with fountain, stonehenge, a really cool football stadium, and a forest among others. Some of the levels reminded us of the Micro Machines games for those of you that remember them.
Concept Destruction is available on Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.