Wreckborough

About the game

Wreckborough is a crime sandbox with four camera modes you cycle with one button (three-quarter, over-the-shoulder third person, first person with your own hands and weapon in view, and top-down) set on a small island village whose roads wind to follow its river and its canal. Cars are built from a side profile with a bonnet, raked screens, pillars, wheel arches and trim, each kind its own shape: a hatchback, a low coupe, a black-cab style taxi, a police estate, a panel van and a refuse lorry. Sit in one in first person and you are in the driver's seat: bonnet ahead, dashboard, a steering wheel that turns with your hands on it, pillars and mirrors.

You are a ragdoll whenever you want to be. Crouch in the air to drop into an articulated physical body (six limbs on real joints, simulated by the rigid-body engine) with exactly the momentum you had: it tumbles, bends, bounces off walls and car bonnets, skids along the ground and bowls over anyone in the way, who go flying in turn. When it stops you get up where there is room, crouched where there is only crouching room. A dive on the flat costs nothing, a dive off a roof hurts like the fall it is, and you are up again a moment after you stop (or sooner, on a tap). A punch at a run is a shoulder barge. The bouncy castle in the playground and the trampolines throw you back up while you stay in control: every landing in a row goes higher, up to a cap, you steer in the air, and a trampoline behind the arcade gets you onto its roof. Land on one as a ragdoll and the body itself rebounds. When your car is written off you go out through the windscreen rather than up with it. The street is never empty: people are about from the moment you arrive and drift towards wherever the action is, nobody walks into the sea, the first police car takes a few seconds to be dispatched, and at one bell they tail you rather than ram you.

The island is built from boxes, wedges and flat colours in muted tones (0.23.0). It is Polesworth made into an island: the real road layout from OpenStreetMap, on the Environment Agency's measured ground, with the mound in the country park, the low river corridor and the slopes the village actually has, graded smooth under the roads, level under every building, court, runway and apron. Exactly 1,320 buildings stand on their own footprints (the plots left out are gardens). The River Clanker runs at sea level and the Coventree Canal stays up on its pound, stepping down to the sea through three locks at each end; all four mouths open to the sea, and the bridges keep their clearance over the water so a narrowboat passes under. There is no railway and no station. Last Resort Airport stands in the west at the end of its own road, with light aircraft on the apron and in the hangar; Wreck Sands is on the south-west coast with a path down to it, and a pier runs out to sea in the east with its kiosks and Lucky Penny Amusements. The Abbey with its battlemented tower and porch, the gatehouse arch, timber-framed Tight Barn (the Localhost Meet poster is still there), the garage, the historic school and the modern campuses, the parks, the purple games court and the shops are all where they are in the village, with fictional names (Park Avenue is the only real one) and silhouettes that follow photographs of the real landmarks (the facades are not claimed to be exact). Monumunch is the corner shop on Park Avenue.

People are things to play with. Grab a passer-by with your bare hands, carry them about, lob them across the street, drop them, tie them to a lamp post, or tie them to the back of a car and drive off. Rocks knock people flat, grenades bounce round corners, the grapple hook yanks people over, snaps lamp posts, drags drivers out of their cars and zips you onto any roof. You can jump, climb onto walls and ledges and stand on their edge, stand on rooftops where the police can only shoot up at you, and fall off them. The hotel, the council offices, the police station, the medical centre, the pubs, the flats and the tower blocks, the Abbey tower and the two-storey shops have floors inside with furniture on every one, a dog-leg stairwell in the corner, two flights and a landing per storey, up to a hatch on the roof, and lifts in the tall ones; every floor rests on the walls below it, so a breach at ground level brings the lot down. Doors are doors, with frames and the storeys above them, not slots through the facade, and inside the rooms are rooms: windows on both faces of every wall, ceilings, a name over the door, furniture against the walls. Somewhere high up there is a red spider: eat it and you climb walls and swing on webs.

Destruction is physical. Bins, cones, crates, benches and caravans get knocked flying by cars and explosions; lamp posts, pillars and trees topple; walls burst into bricks. Buildings are built floor by floor: take out a ground-floor wall and the storeys above it drop as slabs and the roof section comes down with them, with you on it if you are up there. Wrecked cars shed wheels, doors and bonnets. Barrels and petrol pumps fly first and go up where they land. People die as articulated ragdolls with stylised blood that pools where they lie; a settings toggle turns the gore off without changing damage.

The police behave like police. Officers only ever arrive by car (vans with a bigger crew when things are serious), pull up short of a player on foot, get out and shoot from behind their car, then pile back in and give chase when you drive off. Ramming is for car chases. Launcher officers are rare, one at a time, and line up their shot with a visible red line before they fire. Weapons are earned: pistols at low heat, shotguns and SMGs as the bells climb, rifles and launchers at five, dropped by the police you beat. A death takes the guns and powers you found or bought and puts the finds back where they were, unless the Keep everything cheat is on. Others are out there to find: a scoped sniper rifle on The Grand's roof (aim

How to play

1. Tap PLAY. The first time you start at home, a step inside your own front door in Park Avenue, with your fists and a pocket of rocks (and a sledgehammer leant by the door); after that PLAY carries on where you left off, in the car you were driving. When you die you come round outside the nearest pharmacy, surgery or medical centre, with all your gear, unless it was the police who shot you (or you were busted): they keep your guns and tools.
2. On foot, twin sticks: the left ring moves you and the right ring aims; both stay where they are drawn, so a touch anywhere on that side works the stick without it jumping to your thumb. The FIRE button bottom right: tap to fire; hold it and it becomes an aim stick (drag to aim, a line shows where you will hit), let go to fire. Automatic guns (SMG, rifle, minigun) keep firing for as long as you hold; the pistol, the magnum, the shotgun and the sniper aim while held and fire once on the release. F
3. Tap the weapon button (Q or Tab on a keyboard) for the weapon panel: the world slows while it is open, tap a weapon to take it, tap outside to cancel. Keys 1-9 and the mouse wheel pick weapons directly.
4. JUMP (or Space) jumps. Run at a fence, bench or garden wall and you vault it (the jump button shows a vault); jump at a wall or container and push towards it to grab the top and climb on. CROUCH (C) folds you down: slower, smaller, out of sight behind low walls and cars, and the only way under the stairs. You cannot stand up where there is no headroom.
5. Cars are things to stand on: jump from the kerb onto a bonnet, step up onto the roof, and ride along if it drives off. Houses have pitched roofs you walk up and over.
6. With bare hands, face a passer-by (or a copper) and tap GRAB. Carry them, then pull to aim and let go to throw them. Tap the action button to DROP them, TIE UP to a lamp post, or TIE TO CAR when you stand beside a car; then drive off. Anyone you have knocked down can be grabbed whatever you are holding.
7. Batter or shoot an officer and he drops his gun; walk over it to take it. The grapple hook is in the scrapyard, grenades are at the police station, a scoped sniper rifle is on the roof of The Grand, an assault rifle at the depot, a magnum behind the Red Lion and a minigun on an industrial roof, and a red spider is hiding on top of the Abbey tower: eat it to climb walls and swing on webs. What you pick up is yours until you die (the Keep everything cheat keeps it). An officer behind a patrol car
8. Grapple: hook a wall to zip onto its roof, hook a person to yank them over, hook a lamp post or tree to snap it, hook a car to drag the driver out. From a roof the police can only shoot up at you. With spider powers, fire a web at the sky and you swing from it (the line runs up out of sight and your body hangs along it): the web is a pendulum that keeps your speed: push the stick on the way down to pump, tap again (or JUMP) at the top to let go and fly on, then cast the next one to stack the spe
9. Walk in through the door of the hotel, the council offices, the police station, the medical centre, a pub, the flats, the tower blocks, the Abbey tower or a two-storey shop. A proper dog-leg stair in the corner (two flights and a half landing per storey) takes you up and out through a hatch onto the roof; stand on the lift platform and tap LIFT UP to ride it. Every floor rests on the walls below it. Every named building is what it says: the fish bar has a fryer, the launderette washing machines,
10. Walk up to a car and tap ENTER (or E). The left thumb steers; the BRAKE and GO pedals sit bottom right. Hold BRAKE to stop and keep holding to reverse. Tap EXIT to get out.
11. Stand at any shop till with a gun out (or aim with your fists) and HOLD UP for cash. Point a gun at a passer-by up close and MUG them. Walk up to a payphone for a job: getaways, rampages, shop sprees, demolitions, police chases and courier runs.
12. Hurt or kill someone and an ambulance comes, sirens on. Two medics get out, walk to the casualty, kneel and treat them (the hurt get up, the dead are taken away) and drive off. Sit in a parked police car with no bells on you and dispatch sends a CALLOUT (drive to the marker, then catch the runner on foot and tap ARREST) or a PURSUIT (ram the marked car off the road). Sit in an ambulance at the medical centre and a CASUALTY is called in: get there, tap TREAT and kneel for a moment, then get the a
13. Everything breaks. Take a sledgehammer to a wall (two swings knock a section out, and every blow cracks the walls beside it), or throw remote charges: they stick to walls, cars and people, and DETONATE sets them all off at once (a ring of them round a house brings it down; a box of four is at the depot, more at Big Bang Supplies). Knock out enough of a building's ground floor (two blasts, a rocket at a small one, or a fast run through it in a car) and the whole thing comes down, onto whoever is
14. Heat (the bells at the top) rises with every crime. Police arrive by car, get out and shoot from cover, and ram you if you are driving. Lose them by breaking line of sight, then keep your head down until the bells go out. Or pay it off: walk up to the front desk inside the police station with cash and tap BRIBE (the price rises with your bells); the bells go out and for two and a half minutes the police look the other way, whatever you do.
15. Tap the camera button (or V) to cycle the camera: AUTO (the default: first person on foot, behind you at the wheel, on a web or in the air, top-down in a car chase, three-quarter on a rampage), three-quarter, third person over the shoulder, first person, top-down. Your choice is kept. MAP on the pause menu (or M) shows the whole island with its districts and landmarks. In first person the right thumb looks around, dragging up and down aims up and down, the FIRE button (or a tap) shoots, dragging
16. Aiming on the move: while you hold an aim you face where you aim and strafe, the line shows exactly where the shot will go (it snaps to someone close to the line), and the third-person camera holds still until you let go.