Virtue and a Sledgehammer turns destruction into a form of therapy

If you’re one of the latter, Virtue and a Sledgehammer is an indie to watch this summer. You play as Pratelle in the narrative-driven experience, who’s ruminating on her relationships with her mother Merche and sister Nina as she pummels her way through a town in rural Spain. The homes are now inhabited by a gaggle of block-headed robots — who are also very fun to punch — though you’ll have to play the game yourself to discover how that happened. It’s the latest collaboration from indie studios Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour, and was recently picked as one of the Tribeca Festival’s 2026 gaming selections. Deconstructeam’s Jordi de Paco and Selkie Harbour’s Guille Fernando spoke with Polygon on a video call about how Virtue and a Sledgehammer evolved from a conceptual gameplay demo about the joy of destruction into something deeper.

There’s something undeniably thrilling — even cleansing — about breaking stuff in video games. And unlike in real life, there’s no risk of fatigue or possibly injuring yourself. “You are using your body to the maximum level, and then you get to break something, and there is also the potential of rebuilding what you are leaving behind,” says Fernando. “Maybe you’re building up the future in a way. It makes room for new things.”

But in practice, Virtue and a Sledgehammer’s journey from concept to playable reality wasn’t quite so romantic or philosophical. De Paco tells Polygon the initial prototype was just about the joy of destruction — they didn’t necessarily have a story in mind. And the robots were there primarily because they were easier to replicate than individual human characters.

“So we have this playground, and we ask ourselves what kind of stories and what kind of narrative we can develop through this. And the most obvious answer was to talk about transhumanism, but we think that SOMA already did that really well, so we wouldn’t want to do that again. So we kind of just used this as a foundation for feeling estranged from your origins, and we thought it worked really well,” says de Paco.

Creating a narrative-driven experience that’s all about destruction also presented some formidable technical challenges. “The structure has been the main challenge of the whole development,” says Fernando. “The moment you can break everything, the level design becomes very complex, because how do you create interesting exploration? The direction we’ve gone is, if the player wants to just go from point A to B on a straight line, they can do it. But the game is constantly pulling your attention to different parts of the environment, so you want to destroy stuff and also see what’s going on. There is a dynamic narrative system that’s kind of emergent, depending on what the character does, and you see what the robots actually do and how they react against you. And it’s also a way of realizing who you are for them.”

Virtue and a Sledgehammer has an arresting aesthetic that’s akin to a low-poly anxiety dream. According to de Paco, much of the game’s look is a direct homage to two recent games. “Part of it is thanks to the special framework that we have developed to make Unreal Engine games look not like Unreal Engine,” he explains. “But apart from that, we drew inspiration from two fronts: one is Alan Wake 2, with the mix of the red lights and the deep green of the forest, and the second is Signalis, which is an amazing example of low-poly aesthetics.”

At a time when bland photorealism is increasingly becoming the default visual style for games, Deconstructeam and Selkie Harbour were passionate about giving their game a unique look. “It’s easier if you don’t have a big team,” says Fernando. “It’s also less boring to do it.”

“I think we should kind of stop doing that, just for the sake of human lives,” adds de Paco. “I think a lot of people suffer trying to pursue this type of realism, and in the end, it doesn’t make [a game] better. It just makes it more realistic, which is not necessarily better than any kind of art direction.”

Unsurprisingly, the folks working on a project where you beat countless robots into dust have some strong feelings about AI. And don’t expect this game to be a both-sides meditation on the topic. “There are many questions posed by Virtue and a Sledgehammer, but there are some moments in the game where we make clear that AI is not one of those questions. This is not a debate. AI sucks,” says de Paco. “Why would we want to experience art by no one? I want to read things written by someone, or any art made by someone with an intention. There’s a lot of communication involved in the process of actually making something. So if we remove that process, we lose all communication, I think.”

That perspective is likely to resonate on this year’s festival circuit. Virtue and a Sledgehammer is one of 12 selections at this year’s Tribeca Games Festival, which honors unreleased games for excellence in artistic storytelling. Tribeca has been an important springboard for indies, and previous selections include awards-season darlings like Despelote, Blue Prince, and Thirsty Suitors. For Fernando and Selkie Harbour, it’s an early taste of global recognition. But for de Paco and his colleagues at Deconstructeam, it’s been a longer road to get this level of attention.

“We’ve been making games for almost 15 years now, and we haven’t been recognized a lot in festivals or anything. I mean, laurels have always eluded us,” says de Paco. “So to start seeing laurels in things we do makes me feel like: should we have been making 3D games all this time? It feels good to be playing with the adults now.”

Virtue and a Sledgehammer launches on Windows PC later this summer.