Teardown's promised racing mode has a name: Rally, and it's free
Tuxedo Labs revealed Rally at the Big Break Showcase, a multiplayer mode that sends players around race tracks stocked with explosives and hammers to use on each other. It's a free update for everyone who owns the game.
When Teardown finally got multiplayer in March, Tuxedo Labs said more was coming, including a competitive racing mode. That mode now has a name. It is called Rally, and it was announced with a trailer at Coffee Stain's Big Break Showcase.
What Rally is
Rally drops players onto purpose-built race maps that are, in keeping with the rest of Teardown, stocked with things that can go wrong. Explosives, hammers and environmental hazards are all fair game against the other drivers, and players can physically block each other on the track. In a game whose entire engine exists to let you demolish scenery, a race course is less a route than a suggestion.
The mode is a free update for anyone who already owns Teardown. Tuxedo Labs has not given a release date for it.
How it fits
Teardown's multiplayer update landed on March 12 and brought the base campaign into co-op for up to 12 players along with Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Treasure Thieves, two new maps and a large pool of multiplayer-compatible community mods. The studio said at the time that more multiplayer content was already in development, specifically naming a competitive racing mode, so Rally is that promise arriving rather than a surprise. A Greenwash Gambit DLC multiplayer update followed in August.
Why it matters
Teardown's destruction physics are the whole appeal, and racing is one of the few formats that turns them into a competition rather than a puzzle. Making it free keeps the multiplayer player base in one place instead of splitting it behind another DLC.
Why it matters
Teardown's voxel destruction is more interesting when other people are in the way. Rally turns the engine into a competitive format, and keeping it free avoids fragmenting a multiplayer population that is only six months old.