TNT Sandbox

There is something deeply satisfying about watching a brick tower lean, crack and collapse in a cloud of falling cubes. TNT Sandbox is built around exactly that feeling. It is a voxel demolition game where every house, castle wall and pyramid is made of individual blocks, and every block can be blasted loose. Place charges, light the fuse and watch the physics do the rest.

The game greets you with a menu floating over a small test field where explosions are already going off in the background - a fitting introduction. From there you choose between two ways to play.

Campaign: Demolition Contracts

The campaign is a list of contracts, each one a structure on its own little island. The first, Training Day, sets a target of destroying 70% of the building. Later contracts get bigger and tougher, so you need to think about where to place your explosives rather than simply carpeting everything in TNT. Hitting the target earns stars, and those stars matter: they unlock the larger sandbox maps.

It is a clever little puzzle layer. Load-bearing corners, the base of a tower and the middle of a long wall all fall differently, and finding the placement that brings the most down with the least effort is half the fun.

Sandbox: Six Maps, No Rules

Sandbox mode drops the targets and simply lets you destroy. The map select screen lists six locations, each unlocked by stars from the campaign:

• Test Range - a small regional lot, perfect for experiments.
• Hollow Creek - a forested valley with a dam and a drop below it.
• Cracking Plant - an industrial site with tanks and a fuse waiting to be lit.
• The Badlands - mesas, a slot canyon and a dead town.
• The Sound - open water, six islands and a bridge.
• Maximum Range - a huge city on the river, the biggest playground of all.

You explore in first person, and a destruction counter in the top corner ticks up as you wreck things.

Your Toolbox

A hotbar at the bottom holds your tools. TNT blocks are the basics, but you will also find an igniter, building blocks for setting up your own structures, and heavier options such as rockets, a laser, airstrikes and even a plane. A slow-motion button lets you savour a collapse frame by frame, and a reset button rebuilds the map when you want to start over.

Controls

• Mouse - look around and place or use the selected item.
• Number keys - pick an item from the hotbar (or click it).
• Movement keys - walk, jump and fly to reach the best vantage point.
• Touch screens - tap to select and use items.

Building Before Breaking

The hotbar is not only about destruction. Brick and wooden plank blocks let you add to the scenery, which opens up a different style of play: build a tower of your own design, line a bridge with charges, or stack a wall in front of a building and see whether it shields the structure behind it. Because everything is made of the same voxels, your creations fall apart just as convincingly as the built-in ones.

The bigger maps reward exploring before you light anything. Hollow Creek's dam, the tanks of the Cracking Plant and the bridge across The Sound all have obvious weak points, and finding the spot that brings down the biggest chunk is as satisfying as any campaign target.

Getting the Best Slow-Motion Shots

The hourglass button slows time right down, and it is worth using on every large blast. Set your charges, move back far enough to see the whole structure, trigger the explosion and switch to slow motion just as the first blocks start to fly. Watching a tower lean and break apart in slow motion is the best show the game has to offer.

Demolition Tips

• Hit the base. Charges at ground level under corners bring far more down than charges on the roof.
• Chain your blasts. Lines of TNT along a wall create a rolling collapse that looks fantastic in slow motion.
• Watch the percentage. In contracts, a cheap, smart setup that just passes the target is often better than wasting time on a perfect wipe.
• Earn stars early. The best sandbox maps need plenty of them, so it pays to clear contracts with good scores.

If destruction is your favourite genre, also check out Stickman Destruction, the planet-smashing Planet Destruction and the chaotic Spaceship Destruction.