Nothing has felt this destructively satisfying since Red Faction. But oh my goodness, at what cost? Virtue and a Sledgehammer is a game that is, on one level, about smashing down buildings with a massive hammer, and on another, it’s a melancholic exploration of the nature of humanity and consciousness. The two do not seem natural companions, and yet they combine here in such a fascinating way.
You play as Pratelle, a young adult who has returned to her hometown after the death of her mother. And instead of therapy, “you chose the brave option, a sledgehammer.” You’re here to smash everything, to destroy your past, as you wrestle with the memories of your childhood. As you arrive in town, you open the trunk of your car to retrieve your sledgehammer, and don’t even remark on the body of your mother that lies in there too.
The town is now…populated by robots. Look, bear with me here, this isn’t nearly as silly as it sounds. Just how much of Virtue and a Sledgehammer is allegory and how much is literal is, I think, very much up to you, but its science-fiction plot does what science fiction is meant for: it speaks about our reality through its unreality. Pratelle is looking for Nina, her genius sister who herself became obsessed with the nature of what makes a person themself, and in Pratelle’s way are a lot of walls and buildings and robots that claim to be the living consciousnesses of the people who once populated this town. Some will talk to you, others will want to attack you, and most will see your sledgehammer and try to run away and hide. Whether you hit them or not is very much up to you.
The most important thing to say is that smashing stuff feels amazing. The sledgehammer feels hefty, its weight making it so that Pratelle never runs but lumbers, and so that swinging it requires preparation. Slugging it into a wall is enormously satisfying, as bricks and concrete explode outward and rubble falls around you, and should you destroy enough of a building, the rest will come crashing down around you. The destruction feels weightier than Red Faction‘s ever did, and has that same cathartic feeling of therapeutic demolition. If you just tap, Pratelle will jab with the hammer, pushing robots away from her to give her time to swing. Hold down for longer as she’ll take a big arcing swing. Hold down for even longer, and you’ll deliver a colossal overhead strike that takes out walls or metallic foes far more dramatically.
The game sports a superb art style, a mix of stylized cartoon and PS2-like animations where color communicates directly with you. Get hurt and the world immediately becomes reds and blacks, growing murkier and more unreal as you get closer to death. (Fortunately there’s no need to heal here, you just need to be out of danger for a few seconds.) Strange floating objects with a sort of red-and-black electrical form appear here and there and, when hit, add to a meter that eventually teleports Pratelle to a peculiar room of columns filled with memories. Each time you visit you can hit one and relive a key memory, usually with options to chose conversational responses and define the nature of the Pratelle you want to have been. There are also blue-and-white memories scattered around the town to find which also show you a plot-filled flashback, allowing you to piece together the relationships between Pratelle, Nina, and their mother, both good, bad, and upsetting.
Upsetting is a pretty key word here. Virtue and a Sledgehammer is a game that deals with a lot of tough subjects, including suicidal ideation and euthanasia, as well as allusions to abusive relationships and depression, so be aware. However, it’s more careful and less exploitative in its handling of these topics than many games that deploy them out of what feels like morbid bathos. Also, you get to just smash absolutely everything.
There aren’t any deeper mechanics here—this really is a game about hitting things with a sledgehammer and then having Talos Principle-adjacent conversations. I rather liked that. The final section certainly goes on for far too long, the pacing breaking down in the strangest way in the last act as you’re left trudging much too far with little to do. But this leads up to an ending that is nuanced and very much determined by your choices, both previously and in the moment. All told it’s about four hours long, perhaps shorter if you don’t obsessively smash absolutely every last part of every building down. But why wouldn’t you do that? You’ve got a sledgehammer, for goodness’ sake.
This is from Deconstructeam, which previously brought us The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood and Gods Will Be Watching, and it matches the reliably esoteric and novel approach to telling stories in those games. It’s such an interesting creation, a remarkable musing on the nature of being, and most importantly of all, a very satisfying time hitting things with a big hammer.
Virtue and a Sledgehammer is out now on Steam for $15.
