I’m admittedly not the neatest man, and as such, I actually don’t like puzzles. If there’s a puzzle in a sport, I’ll in all probability simply lookup learn how to remedy it. They’re not my factor, and I gravitate extra towards simple video games because of this.
So it might shock you to listen to that Lego Bricktales, which is completely made up of physics puzzles, was considered one of my favourite video games at PAX East 2022. I can’t make that make sense, however I’ll clarify it to the perfect of my skills.
Piece by piece
Lego Bricktales is, on the surface, a quite simple sport. Within the demo I performed at PAX, I used to be somewhat Lego man wandering round small, intricately crafted environments. In accordance with a PR one that helped me out throughout my demo, the sport may have quite a lot of different-themed biomes when it launches. Gamers will construct by jungles, deserts, and Caribbean Islands full of pirates.
However throughout my time with the sport, I solely noticed the within of some form of laboratory (the place I discovered the fundamentals) and that jungle space.
In different Lego video games, gamers often journey by some curated world based mostly on a well-liked IP. An enormous Lego Star Wars sport simply launched as a matter of truth, however Lego Bricktales isn’t like that. It additionally doesn’t appear to be telling its personal unique story like Lego Metropolis Undercover. As an alternative, the sport is all about its puzzles, and as such, all about constructing issues with Lego.
All through Lego Bricktales, you’ll be offered with easy issues. There’s a lever it’s worthwhile to attain that’s throughout a niche, as an example. The sport will then provide you with a immediate and also you’ll enter a clear constructing area the place you construct a bridge out of Lego elements. After all, that is one very particular puzzle, but it surely’s a straightforward instance. After constructing your bridge, you’ll then run a simulation the place a robotic rolls over your building. In the event that they make it by to the opposite facet safely, your creation is plopped straight into the sport’s world so that you can truly use.
The method of truly constructing issues that I skilled wasn’t the perfect, however I blame the controller for that. Lego Bricktales truly has some fairly intuitive controls for transferring small Lego items round in a 3D area, however throwing an Xbox controller (or actually any controller that isn’t a keyboard and mouse) into the combination made the entire expertise clunkier than it ought to have been.
Nonetheless, it was extraordinarily satisfying to construct out my very own creations with a particular variety of items. The sport even offers gamers too many items for a construction, which factors to 1 sensible revelation: There is no such thing as a one proper reply to any puzzle. My aim was to get the robotic from level A to level B, that’s it, and I ended up constructing issues that the PR particular person guiding me hadn’t seen earlier than.
Construct to your coronary heart’s content material
I’m going to circle again for a second to the truth that the sport routinely gave me extra items than I wanted to construct one thing. Certain, that meant that there are a number of options to each puzzle, and that’s nice. However extra importantly, it signifies that gamers can construct to their coronary heart’s content material.
Not every bit I used to be given was helpful for constructing. Some had been facades, meant to offer Lego’s often rough-looking bricks a easy end. The sport actively offers its gamers the means to embellish the solutions to their puzzles. You don’t need to — I didn’t — however you possibly can, and that speaks to the center of Lego. So far as I may inform, the options to puzzles aren’t one thing you’ll be capable of return and revisit. As soon as they’re within the sport’s world, that’s it, they’re a everlasting fixture that you simply’ll in all probability see one different time.
However in response to the PR particular person guiding me by my expertise, gamers received’t simply be restricted to constructing physics puzzles. Lego Bricktales may even embody a free-build mode, and that’s one thing I believe anybody can get enthusiastic about. At one level or one other, we’ve all seen what individuals can do with a bucket stuffed with Lego bricks; they’ll recreate the Taj Mahal or another historic landmark. Whereas I’m unsure if that form of constructing will likely be potential, having an simply accessible digital area to construct in with Lego is one thing I can’t assist however see the novelty in.
Lego Bricktales is about to launch someday this 12 months, though its full slate of platforms hasn’t been introduced. The sport will not less than be coming to PC via Steam, the place it may be wish-listed.
Editors’ Selection
