I wrote, “LEGO Voyagers might already be my favorite LEGO game ever,” following a preview session in which I played the first 30 minutes of the required two-player, what-if-Hazelight-made-a-LEGO-game adventure from developer Light Brick Studios and arthouse publisher Annapurna Interactive.
Between my first peek and my 14-year-old daughter and me finishing the full edition of LEGO Voyagers, where we played, constructed, and crashed our way through to the end credits in same-screen co-op, one less-than-ideal thing happened: it ended far too soon. Even though we thoroughly enjoyed it, the fact that it ended just when it appeared to be getting into its groove left us feeling let down.
You see, we only rolled credits after three and a half hours, which is even less than the publisher’s slender five-hour estimate. Being short has never caused me to criticize a game. Like LEGO Voyagers, Playdead’s Inside is a dialogue-free adventure that concludes in less than four hours, yet it’s still arguably the best game I’ve ever reviewed at Gamexta.
However, whereas Inside left me speechless at the amazing work of art I had just witnessed, LEGO Voyagers left my daughter and me speechless for a completely other reason: Both of us said, “Wait, that’s it?” Not everything needs to be a Silksong, and this is a $25 game, to be fair. However, it left us both wanting more in a way that made us say, “No, really, we actually thought there’d be more than this.”
Even down to your character and movement, Voyagers is pleasantly inquisitive.
To set expectations, I’m addressing that complaint now since, aside from the campaign’s all too soon conclusion, I adore practically every other aspect of LEGO Voyagers. I’ll begin with the tone, which is very different from the slapstick-with-heart LEGO movies and the more whimsical licensed LEGO games of Traveller’s Tales. Instead, Voyagers is pleasantly inquisitive about everything from your character to your movement.
You and your co-op partner are basically two unnamed, voiceless 1×1 bricks, one blue and one red, with a single, slightly expressive eyeball on one side. You bounce around the play areas in the LEGO-built universe using physics that are reasonably realistic. Additionally, you may jump by pressing A (on an Xbox controller) and snap yourself onto any nearby peg with B, even though it blatantly defies logic. In that B-button snap mode, pressing Y turns your orientation by 90 degrees. Your avatars aren’t completely voiceless, though.
Pressing the X button will make your 1×1 bricks produce cute, tiny sounds. This can sometimes be used to harmonize in specific places, but while playing online, it’s more typically used to get your co-op partner’s attention. (In light of this, congratulations to Annapurna for taking the lead from Hazelight and providing a Friend’s Pass that enables you to play Voyagers online with friends using just one copy.)
In a manner reminiscent of Pixar, our cute 1×1 bricks instantly become likable heroes. The music, which doesn’t always play but has a significant impact when it does, is another element that contributes to the lighthearted atmosphere of Voyagers. I adore small details, such as how Blue One begins with a beach pail on its “head.” It’s quiet yet varied, humming in the background in a way that adds to the background rather than being inconspicuous background noise. It works perfectly here, although most, if not all, of it would go on your “Chill” or yoga playlist and nowhere else.
Shining Bricks
In addition, I would like to praise Voyagers’ genuine visual identity and art direction, which are noticeably less cartoonish than those of the licensed LEGO games. With each piece in the diorama-like worlds resembling the glossy plastic of its real-life equivalent, replete with the LEGO wordmark engraved on each brick, it aims for a certain level of realism. The use of light and shadow helped pull me in right away, and the gentle daytime lighting that permeates many scenes has a warmth and tranquility to it that gives it a soothing, mellow, and playfully curious tone.
The fact that these setups occasionally have water around or flowing through them just makes it more plausible that they are real LEGO sets that you are watching from above as an omniscient participant. The fact that there is absolutely no punishment for dying at all adds to the laid-back vibe; if you fall off the side of a scene or miss a leap and go off the edge, you will immediately reappear exactly where you were before your error.
Because it’s so low-stakes and encourages having fun, your co-op partner won’t even be upset when you snap onto them and throw them off a bridge you’re supposed to be holding down for them to cross or roll you both off a ledge until you’ve done it five or six times.
Although no instructions are ever offered, we instantly realized that the objective of a game like this is to get from point A to point B. This is achieved in the early stages of the campaign by merely gathering loose bricks from various locations and cooperating to construct temporary bridges to span gaps. In the spirit of LEGO, there is no one correct method to construct your future: You could construct a structure that is so clean that a civil engineer would be happy with it, or you might scrounge together a patchwork of parts that don’t care about efficiency or beauty, yet accomplish the task at hand.
We had a lot of fun gravitating toward the latter. (As an aside, a Photo Mode would have been a great addition to help you record the digital memory of your creations and share them with loved ones. It’s also a lot of fun to collaborate with others to overcome challenges. However, basic screenshots were adequate.)
Verdict
Since LEGO Voyagers establishes an amazing foundation that begs for more—more story, more puzzles, and more time in this imaginatively portrayed world—I would want to see the adventures of the 1×1 red and blue bricks continue. I’m sure there’s more sweetness to mine in this plastic-brick well than the three-and-a-half-hour campaign can provide, and the building blocks here—sorry—are rather sturdy.
As a result, unlike the greatest and most memorable puzzle games, its concepts never became sophisticated enough to astound me with their ingenious answers. I do, however, strongly suggest taking a brief look at LEGO Voyagers with a friend or, if you are a parent, your child. When it comes to fun cooperative games, it may fall short of Hazelight’s Split Fiction and It Takes Two, but it’s still a great two-player experience for players of nearly any age.
