It’s time to lace up the boots, throw on the hard hat and get to work. Demolish & Build 3, developed and published by Polish-based studio Demolish Games S.A., is now on Xbox Series X. Take charge of your own demolition company in this gritty first-person sim where every contract means breaking, cleaning, and rebuilding from the ground up. Smash it, build it, profit, simple as that. Are you ready to run the site? Let’s find out. 

Demolish & Build 3 puts you in full control of a small construction and demolition company starting from a humble little shack on a small plot of land. You are the boss, and the goal is to complete a wide variety of tasks, such as breaking walls, cutting roofs, levelling terrain, and building an assortment of structures to meet the client’s demands. Each job presents different challenges, from simply driving a skidsteer through a building to making precise placements of objects for construction, which can become tedious very quickly due to the controls. Depending on how you perform the job, you will gain both income and reputation. As you progress further into the game, you’ll unlock more advanced equipment, expanding your fleet and taking on more complex jobs. 

I liked the range of construction vehicles you had access to, including excavators, bulldozers, and skidsteers, plus a few more, which all seemed to feature accurate physics compared to real-life operation. You had an assortment of tools that you could put on the machines, such as buckets, shears, and jackhammers, which was a nice little touch.

I did find that at times, the machines would get caught on weird, floating objects or simply get stuck on something, costing you $50 for a vehicle reset. This was a little rough when, sometimes, what you were doing could not be helped and was a part of the job. Moving objects around often felt more difficult than it needed to be, due to awkward controls, which I’ll touch on more soon, and the placement being overly sensitive. Sometimes, as simple as positioning a support beam, it became frustrating and broke the flow of the gameplay. 

The controls were one of the most frustrating parts of the experience, from the oddly inverted movement to the clunky mechanics of placing objects and rotating the camera inside the machine, everything felt unintuitive and poorly thought out. Instead of making you feel in control of the machine, the game often made me feel like I was fighting the controls more. It got to the point where I wanted to turn the game off rather than play it. I’m hoping they are rectified in an update, because it might be great on PC with a mouse and keyboard, but it’s not well-suited for Xbox Series X. 

The sound design was surprisingly quiet overall, with a soft acoustic guitar playing in the background that, whilst subtle, added some character to an otherwise minimal atmosphere. The machinery, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise; engine and tool sounds were more realistic than expected, adding a satisfying layer to the gameplay. However, not everything hit the mark. When demolishing buildings, broken chunks would often get stuck on your vehicle and create a repetitive, glitchy bouncing noise that quickly became annoying. I would have loved to see an option to play music on a radio or even integrate Spotify or a similar service into the game, so you could jam out to your favourite tracks while working. 

Visually, Demolish & Build 3 is a letdown, especially in an era where gamers expect far more from current-generation titles. The graphics appear outdated, with textures lacking detail, environments that look flat and poorly generated, and basic shadows at best. It honestly feels and looks like a rushed port from the original Xbox, not a game built for the power of the Xbox Series X. Whilst there were some moments where some details showed potential, like the machinery models or some slight surface textures, they never quite reached the level of polish needed to create an immersive simulation experience.

The destruction physics, which should be the game’s standout feature, also falls short. Watching bricks snap cleanly, like a biscuit, instead of crumbling or breaking with jagged realism, kills any sense of authenticity. In a game that is all about demolition and construction, you’d expect debris to crumble and splinter naturally, not remain in awkward, cartoonish chunks. Sadly, Demolish & Build 3 is far from visually stunning; it left me questioning whether I’d accidentally booted up a two-decade-old game. 

Demolish & Build 3 tries to offer a gritty, hands-on simulation of the demolition and construction world, but ultimately falls short of its potential. While the variety of vehicles and tools shows promise, they’re bogged down with frustrating controls, outdated visuals, and awkward gameplay systems that feel more like a chore than engaging. What could have been a great sandbox of destruction turned into a test of patience. The game has a solid concept, but it just needs some more polishing.

Written by: Hayden Nelson