When you think of LEGO® games, chances are you have a preconceived notion of what it will be. While these games used to be a wide variety of things (1997’s LEGO Island, anyone?), in the past decade or two they’ve mostly been the same game with various IP. Whenever something unique is done with the eponymous brick, I’m generally interested, and Bricktales certainly delivers a different experience.

Anyone that’s enjoyed building up bricks has undoubtedly found themselves straying from the instructions provided (assuming you had a set and not just a plastic bin full of an assortment like I mostly did) and creating something of your own. It’s that creativity that’s generally missing from the Traveller’s Tales games. Usually, the game is what it wants to be, then the LEGO element seems like an afterthought for the aesthetic and humor. The worlds look great, but the building aspect is generally more collect-a-thon based and automated, and much less involved. I’m a firm believer that starting out, Minecraft succeeded because it allowed for the base creativity in a digital world. Of course it grew, but the original idea was very simple and relied on the creativity of its users to be sticky. Everyone was able to play and do what they wanted in a sandbox, and that was appealing.

The worlds in Bricktales are built with LEGO, but they’re more dioramas than worlds. They look very much as if they were built in the real world, then scanned digitally. Within each diorama there are missing sections that require you to find solutions. The solutions are completely up to you, assuming you can make it with the bricks provided and it can withstand the physics test. The tests themselves vary based on what you’re building. However, not realizing who the developer was upfront, I had a feeling early on that this was the Bridge Constructor team. While I’ve never played any of those games, I have seen trailers, and this was very reminiscent. A quick Google search confirmed my suspicion.

Outside of creating “bridges,” you’ll build supports, transportation devices, and solve word puzzles. Once you have successfully developed a functioning device, you are welcome to enhance it with a large assortment of flair. While the bricks you are provided for the solution are limited, the sandbox once completed is huge. And despite saying the options are limited, I had tons of leftovers for many of my solutions, even in the first (forest) world. It really allows the player to build their vision with a set amount of bricks, allowing for creativity, but also forces the player to think about what they need based on what’s available. This is especially true as you must do it all within the confines of a bounding box. Exploring the different set pieces is arguably even more fun than the puzzles themselves; finding collectables and gathering currency to trade for bricks and minifig pieces fits nicely into the loop.

While on paper this sounds great (looks it too), the actual building aspect can get very tedious. The game is quick to provide navigation tricks during the tutorial, but I couldn’t help but get frustrated and turn it off on several occasions because getting a brick to go where I wanted it was, at times, more difficult than the first boss of Elden Ring. I’m sure the experience is smoother on PC, as it very much feels like it was built with a mouse and keyboard in mind. It’s by no means impossible to play on console, but the difficulty of the game shouldn’t originate from its UI.

There’s a lot of cool ideas in LEGO® Bricktales, and builders of the amateur and master levels can find enjoyment in this. The biggest flaw is the UI when it comes to building in the Z-axis. However, if you can power through this, or you’re on PC, this will be a breath of fresh air for brick lovers.

7 out of 10

Pros

• Gorgeous Set Pieces
• Creativity Flows
• Varied Puzzles

Cons

• Frustrating Building UI

LEGO® Bricktales was developed by ClockStone and published by Thunderful Publishing. The game is available on NS, PC, PS4, PS5, X1, XSX. The game was provided to us for review on PS5. If you’d like to see more of LEGO® Bricktales, check out the official site.

 

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