The thing about real estate is they're not making any more of it, which means that when the old structures have worn out their welcome, they need to be demolished for new ones to take their place.  Usually the trick to demolition is to make a structure fall inwards on itself, causing as little fuss to the surrounding environment as possible, and while that can still be visually impressive, it's nowhere near as entertaining as making a giant mess of things.  Instruments of Destruction is a demolition game about not only tearing down everything poking up above ground level, but creating as many different ways to do it as possible, sending debris and particles flying everywhere as you rampage through the level in your own personalized crushermobile.

Each level of Instruments of Destruction is an island with a set of objectives, one primary and another secondary.  Usually the primary goal is to break a percentage of buildings while the secondary tends to be a wild card, whether that's to push a number of shipping containers into the ocean, detonate mines, avoid doing damage to the island ruins, etc.  Each island comes with three sets of goals, divided up between Normal, Challenge and Expert, and clearing them not only unlocks new vehicles but also more parts to create your own.  While there are a good number of showcase vehicles available, and you can play the whole campaign with them, they're really there to show off what the creation tool can do.

Building a new demolition machine is easy, with a good number of snap-on parts available to design just about anything you can think of.  Wrecking balls are easy enough, but how about a pair of them attached to a swinging arm rising up from a base wide and low enough that the physics don't send it flying out of control?  Spikes are always stylish so attach a bunch to a 6-way connector and use it to shred everything in your path.  Attach the spiked blocks to some arms and put a couple of powered joints on there and they can swing out ahead of you as you drive, crushing any building, wall or tree unlucky enough to be in the way.  The creation tool is flexible enough to build nimble little trucks for areas where you want to be careful what to break, plus massive crushing behemoths with joints in the frame that allow it to bend and contort to clear terrain that would normally be a problem.  And that's before taking into account rocket thrusters, cannons, ropes, various types of hinges and spinny bits, and of course a color editor for when construction-orange gets old.

Once you've built a new machine it's time to test it, and levels can be started and stopped with a quick press of the space bar.  The islands are built for multiple attempts and much experimentation, tweaking and adjusting your vehicle for maximum destructive efficiency.  Each level has three stars to chase after for clearing it at top speed, and while it's always fun to wade in and smash things up without worrying about the judgement, it's good to have a goal to shoot for in designing the next iteration of the Eviscerator 9000.

The Early Access release of Instruments of Destruction is off to an excellent start, with the only potential issue being a shortage of levels.  The ten islands are well designed and having three sets of goals apiece makes for good replayability, but it doesn't take long to see all of the current terrain.  Adding more levels is part of the Early Access roadmap, though, as are new building parts and eventually a level editor.  The content issue is being worked on and what exists is fantastically entertaining, helped in no small part because the breakage looks so satisfying.  Instruments of Destruction's cluster of islands needs to be razed to the ground, and whatever method seems best to accomplish the task is going to be just the first step on creating a newer, weirder demolition machine to call your own.