There are not many better ways of going through a day than building LEGO. Feeling the pieces click together of plastic blocks turns into a legendary creation is staggeringly fulfilling, such that computerized portrayals haven’t had the option to reproduce forever. So while the latest LEGO games have rather made progress as senseless activity platformers with authorized connections, LEGO Brick tales heads down something else altogether. It discards the mainstream society characters and centers the battle for a unique story with building-based puzzles. It’s not exactly equivalent to building LEGOs, in actuality, yet it comes very close — in any event, while you’re battling with the camera or dark mission goals.
In LEGO Brick tales, you’re a blocked individual entrusted with assisting your erratic granddad with controlling the amusement park where he evidently lives before it gets closed down for good. Think Doc Brown from Back to the Future, yet rather than a beefed-up DeLorean, Granddad’s constructed an entry to ship you to distant grounds. Your main goal: assist with outing local people across a modest bunch of biomes and gather Satisfaction Precious stones, which can be utilized as a power hotspot for the amusement park’s attractions. Assisting a paleontologist with investigating a wilderness sanctuary, tracking down a tragically missing privateer vessel, and relieving a realm brimming with harmed laborers are no sweat while you’re attempting to reestablish Granddad’s park to its previous brilliance.
Each degree of LEGO Brick tales is intended to seem to be an itemized lifelike model when zoomed out, which is suggestive of the Commander Frog stages in Super Mario 3D World. Not at all like large numbers of the most well-known LEGO games, there’s no platforming or battle to be had here. All things considered, LEGO Brick tales joins the investigation and building puzzles for a more grounded approach as grounded as hopping into an entryway and arising in old Egypt or bygone eras while creating extraordinary capacities like producing power can be.
These riddles normally require building something out of LEGOs to continue, whether it be a flight of stairs, a post tower, or an event congregation fascination. Engineer Clock Stone is most popular for the Extension Constructor series, so it’s not completely shocking that a considerable lot of LEGO Brick tales’ riddles likewise include building scaffolds to get characters across gorges. You do this similarly as you would with actual LEGO sets: step by step.
Similarly, in actuality, fabricating these manifestations can be brilliantly harmonious. It’s anything but an open sandbox; every one of these riddles has a set number of blocks in different shapes and certain boundaries that must be met, like level and width limits. Material science and presence of mind apply here, so scaffolds ought to be built up and durable, ways ought to be clear, and anything that floats in the air should be appropriately adjusted. Before any creation can be finished, you’ll need to give it a preliminary attempt to ensure it doesn’t promptly go to pieces under the heaviness of its guinea pigs (who end up being lovable robots).
These sections are LEGO Brick tales’ most noteworthy strength, yet they can likewise be its most prominent shortcoming. Assembling a difficult design and afterward seeing it on the planet and involving it as planned is unbelievably fulfilling, however, meeting the goals is infrequently more baffling than fun. It’s not generally clear why something you’ve fabricated isn’t working as expected; at a certain point, I went through north of an hour building and modifying an emergency exit just to watch the test robots more than once dive to the ground as my flights of stairs self-destructed. It may be the case that you’re feeling the loss of a solitary piece required for support, or the entire design may very well be unstable. It would be simpler to sort out whether or not the camera controls were better, yet I felt like I was battling them for a superior review point all through the whole cycle with no guarantees.
The camera is effectively my greatest mark of disturbance with LEGO Brick tales, both in its structure portions and keeping in mind that investigating. During the last option, you have no control over the camera and move simultaneously; to zoom out and get a 10,000-foot perspective of the area, you’ll have to stop the activity completely. This causes searching for buried little hiding spots to feel like a task in some cases, which isn’t ideal when LEGO Brick tales urges you to go off in an unexpected direction to track down collectibles. You, fortunately, have more control while building, yet it can in any case be precarious to put pieces in the manner in which you need to, not to mention get a legitimate perspective on what’s causing issues.
After you’ve finished a structure puzzle, you can return and remake it in sandbox mode, which slackens the principles of a piece and allows you to involve extra pieces in different varieties and styles, however, there’s no genuine motivation to do this. I wish I’d seen greater innovativeness and bizarreness in plain view in these difficulties the initial time through, as opposed to a similar record of white, dark, and earthy-colored fundamental pieces again and again. As a matter of fact, the riddles match the variety plan of the climate, so it’s not awkward to find a pontoon kept intact with earthy-colored pieces addressing sections of wood when you’re on the oceanfront. Only one out of every odd riddle should overflow with capricious materials and unicorn rainbow style, yet having some more assortment would have gone far.
Everything that is expressed, it’s not difficult to set these inconveniences aside and simply partake in the experience. Returning and visiting old regions after you’ve opened new capacities in the amusement park permits you to find loves that were beforehand blocked off. It’s like other LEGO games in the manner it energizes investigation, and the collectible animals — ladybugs, loner crabs, bunnies, etc. — are inspiration enough to retread recognizable ground. Regardless of whether you’re not a completionist, the story requires around 12-15 hours to finish, with a lot of heart, humor, and shameless references to keep things fascinating. If that wasn’t already enough, LEGO Brick tales moves along as expected on Steam Deck, and going this way and that from my PC to my love seat supported by cloud saves made the experience significantly more agreeable.
The Verdict
It’s a disgrace that LEGO Brick tales can frequently get in their own particular manner since a tomfoolery experience reinvigorates what a LEGO game can resemble. Building block structures feels nearly as great on the screen as it does, in actuality, and in any event, when I was feeling disappointed by restricted camera controls or a dark goal, I regarded myself as grinning and clenching hand siphoning when I, at last, tracked down my direction forward. LEGO Brick tales is brimming with smart thoughts, and keeping in mind that there will constantly be a spot for the authorized LEGO experience games, this is a difference in pace I’d invite more.
