There are few things in gaming more primally satisfying than destruction. Tearing through an office with telekinetic powers in Control, leveling a building in The Finals, or carving a new doorway with a rocket launcher in Red Faction: Guerrilla—it all feels incredible. But how do developers pull it off without melting our consoles? A fantastic new video from Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit lifts the curtain on the clever techniques and design philosophies behind the art of digital demolition.
Technique 1: The Swap and Sticker Show of ‘Control’
The most common form of destruction in games is what you see in titles like Remedy’s Control. When you shatter a wooden desk or blast a concrete pillar, you’re witnessing a simple but effective illusion. As GMTK explains, developers essentially store two versions of an object: the pristine version and a pre-broken version. When you attack it, the game instantly swaps the intact model for the shattered one. It’s a magic trick.
Control elevates this by making objects out of many individual pieces that can be destroyed independently, making the destruction feel more precise and dynamic. The game then masterfully hides the “swap” using two other tricks:
- Particle Effects: When an object breaks, a cloud of dust, wood splinters, or metal sparks bursts forth. This isn’t just for show; it’s a visual smokescreen that covers up the moment the models are switched.
- Decals: Those satisfying bullet holes and craters that appear on walls aren’t actually dents. They’re just high-quality stickers, or “decals,” that create the convincing illusion that you’ve damaged the surface.
Technique 2: The Voxel Revolution of ‘Red Faction: Guerrilla’
Some games take a far more complex approach. Instead of pre-broken models, titles like the iconic Red Faction: Guerrilla use a system of volumetric destruction. Think of the game world not as solid objects, but as a dense grid of 3D pixels, or “voxels.” When you detonate a charge, you aren’t breaking an object; you’re deleting the voxels in that area. This is what allows for true, emergent destruction—you can carve your own path through the world because you are genuinely altering its geometry.
As GMTK points out, this method is incredibly memory-intensive, which is why so few games attempt it. Red Faction pulled it off by using a clever two-layer system: a detailed visual mesh for players to see, and a simpler, lower-resolution grid underneath that handled the actual destruction calculations.
Technique 3: The Jenga-Like Collapse of ‘The Finals’
So how does a modern multiplayer game like The Finals let players level entire city blocks in real-time? It uses a sophisticated system of stress-based physics. The buildings in the game are pre-fractured into hundreds of interconnected pieces. Each piece has a strength value and is constantly being subjected to forces from the pieces around it.
When you blow out a supporting wall, the game calculates the new stress on the surrounding structure. If the force on a piece exceeds its strength, it breaks. This can trigger a catastrophic chain reaction, causing the entire building to crumble in a beautifully chaotic and realistic way. To make this work in a multiplayer setting, The Finals offloads these intense physics calculations to its servers, ensuring every player sees the same glorious collapse.
So Why Isn’t Every Game Fully Destructible?
After learning about these techniques, the obvious question is: why don’t more games do this? As GMTK concludes, it comes down to two major factors: technical cost and game design.
The performance and memory demands of advanced destruction are immense. But more importantly, a fully destructible world can completely break a game’s design. If players can just blow a hole through any wall, they can bypass carefully designed puzzles, story triggers, and combat encounters. In a shooter, destructible cover changes the entire flow of a fight. For a game like The Finals, destruction is the core mechanic. But for most other games, it’s just flavor, and the cost—both technical and in terms of design—is simply too high.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Game Maker’s Toolkit?
Game Maker’s Toolkit (GMTK) is a popular YouTube series created by Mark Brown that offers deep dives into the art and science of game design, analyzing the mechanics and philosophies behind how video games work.
What are the main techniques for creating destruction in games?
The three main techniques are: 1) Prop Swapping (swapping an intact model for a pre-broken one), 2) Volumetric Destruction (using a grid of 3D pixels, or voxels, that can be destroyed), and 3) Stress-Based Physics (calculating forces on pre-fractured objects to create realistic collapses).
What is a “decal” in game development?
A decal is essentially a sticker or a texture that can be projected onto a surface. In the context of destruction, they are used to create the appearance of bullet holes, scorch marks, and craters without actually altering the geometry of the object.
Why was Red Faction: Guerrilla’s destruction so special?
Its use of volumetric destruction allowed for true, unscripted demolition. Players could destroy structures in any way they could imagine, leading to emergent gameplay where they could create their own paths and strategies on the fly.
Why aren’t all games fully destructible?
It’s a combination of high technical costs (it requires a lot of processing power and memory) and major game design challenges. Unpredictable destruction can break level design, ruin the flow of combat, and allow players to bypass important content.
Conclusion
The satisfying crunch of a collapsing building or the splintering of a wooden barricade is rarely as simple as it looks. It’s a complex dance of clever tricks, powerful physics simulations, and careful design choices. The next time you unleash chaos in a game, take a moment to appreciate the incredible artistry behind the destruction. It’s one of the most complex and fascinating illusions in all of modern game development.