Hands On: LEGO Builder's Journey Is A Tiny, Beautiful Experiment About The Joy In Play Nintendo Life

Creative block by Share: Image: Light Brick Studio might fly under the radar on Switch, despite bearing the name of the mega-popular brick manufacturer, purely because it's quite different to their normal fare — but we really hope it doesn't. For the past couple of decades or so, the LEGO games have been dominated by other massive franchises — , , , and — but LEGO Builder's Journey takes the familiar plastic in a new, pared-down direction that's more than welcome in a time where games are largely sprawling, bombastic experiences. Strongly inspired by the visual simplicity of games like Monument Valley, but with a mildly sinister dark side reminiscent of and , LEGO Builder's Journey is a narrative game told without words. Its story unfolds through environmental and interactive elements, as you — a young child, represented not by a minifig, but by blank, gender-free bricks — learn to build and play with your parent. Image: Light Brick Studio Light Brick Studio, the developer behind the game, was initially an internal LEGO experiment, made of people from the LEGO Games division and aimed at creating games that replicated the feeling of playing with LEGO — not the building-the-sets, following-the-instruction-manual type of LEGO, but tipping a huge 60-litre, 20kg Rubbermaid tub onto the floor and making a dinosaur who can shoot lasers out of his bum. That feeling of creation, discovery, and childlike wonder is what LEGO Builder's Journey is all about, and after the team proved that they could do it with the release on Apple Arcade, they decided to make the team a little more permanent, spinning Light Brick out into its own independent studio, with funding and support from the LEGO Group. "The narrative in this game is about remembering to play," says Karsten Lund, the managing director of Light Brick Studio, during a preview event for , "and the bricks are the star of the show." Everything in the little LEGO vignettes is built out of real LEGO bricks, with the kind of artistic license and creativity that can be seen in a few of the more recent LEGO sets, . Hot dogs become bridge rails; green cherries make for great foliage; swampy mud bubbles are animated with brown minifig heads turning to flowers as they burst. A direct comparison between PC with raytracing (left) and Switch (right) makes the difference pretty stark - Images: Light Brick Studio On the PC version — — tiny, Wallace-and-Gromit-like details can be seen, like fingerprints on bricks which are covered in light scratches. Fewer of these details are visible in the Switch version, of course, and the lighting, although beautiful, is much less striking without the power of RTX. It's almost a shame to be shown the PC version before getting a hands-on with the Switch version, since it's more apparent that the most gorgeous details are only available to those with big, beefy graphics cards. Ah, well. Builder's Journey on Switch is still a beautiful, miniature experience, told with the kind of precision focus that you can imagine a Master Builder having while creating a masterwork, equipped with magnifying spectacles and tweezers. Each vignette is small, but packed with detail; the story itself is told through charming-but-brief interactions that manage to convey a significant amount of emotion without any dialogue. Another direct comparison between PC and Switch - Images: Light Brick Studio New mechanics unfold gently as you progress, beginning with simple tasks like crossing rivers and climbing cliffs and slowly evolving into slightly more difficult brick-based puzzles which may require trial and error. The puzzles encourage experimentation, and there's a delightful feeling when something looks like it might work the way you hope, and then it does; these moments are a masterstroke of game design that make the player feel smart while doing exactly what the game wants. There are moments when it's not entirely clear what's going on, but any moment of stuckness will quickly evaporate with a little more investigation. The game is short, and you'll be able to finish it in one sitting easily — we spent a couple of hours in the evening, and almost reached the end — but it's a few hours of condensed heartwarming feel-good-ness that's hard to dislike. As an experimental narrative game that shows a new, deeper side to LEGO games, we can't help but hope that LEGO Builder's Journey succeeds, if only so we can have more of its kind, bigger and better, in future. Luckily, the developers agree — Director of Operations Mads Prahm says "I feel like we're just getting started." Image: Light Brick Studio That's the best way to think about Builder's Journey: it's a proof of concept that you can actually play. Playing with the bricks, hearing that nostalgic click sound as they stack, and engaging with your long-forgotten sense of childlike wonder as your creative experiments bear fruit, feels as good as it did when you were eight years old and trying to make a spaceship that's also a robot that's also a fairy princess. If you've got a graphics card capable of raytracing though, it really seems like a missed opportunity to get it on Switch — the true magic is so much more apparent with all the detail intact. LEGO Builder's Journey will be out on the 22nd of June for $19.99 / £17.99, . Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our for more information. Related Games Share: About Formerly of Official Nintendo Magazine, GameSpot, and Xbox UK, you can now find Kate's writing all over the internet. She moved to Canada a few years ago, but gets tea imported from England, because she has good priorities. Comments ) Phew. I prefered the screenies on the right (I thought the colours popped more and was less 'misty'.) Thankfully, that's the Switch version heheh. Same here, comes off much cleaner and easier to view. Ray tracing is cool and all, but this game really doesn't benefit from it. It's Lego, we want those bold plastic look and colours. I love lego, but $20! Maybe I'll pick it up on a sale... You can slap me around the chops the day fingerprints on pixels makes or breaks a game for me lol! If you have an ipad, that’s four months of other games that’ll come to switch half a year later. Seriously, arcade is worth checking out. Just saying. I'm super happy that there are finally lego games without those weird animated characters, this looks beautiful I’m probably gonna buy this on ps5 for the RTX since this game is partially made as an RTX showcase. True, except you don't get to keep those arcade games. Once you quit paying the monthly fee, you lose the game. To some, buying a game for keeps is worth the cost difference of a subscription.
The game is not on PS5. It's on Apple Arcade and will come to Switch and Steam, no other platforms as far as I know I like puzzle games and something with this feels right. I will get it if it scores well
As for RTX cards, it would be cool if I could get one without having to mortage the house. I realised that the second comparison was swapped, so I changed it - I hope that doesn't make you change your mind! Ah, I'm going to have to change my mind now. I preferred that piccy. Still, as it's a moot point me owning a high end PC lol, think I'll stick to my humble Switch. The game itself sounds interesting Just to reiterate what I said on the last article: utterly fantastic game.... that is maybe 2 hours max. $20 is one of the most extreme prices I've seen for a game which sucks because at ~$5-10 I'd say it's a must-have for everyone. As someone above said, this is the price of four months of Apple Arcade, on which you could also play Builder's Journey. ah didn’t know that. That’s a shame. I don’t have a pc that supports RTX and I’d like to play this game with RTX enabled. This looks lovely, I’m interested. It'll definitely go on the Wish List, but I'll wait for a sale. 20 bucks for a 2 hour proof of concept? Thanks but no thanks. Also, I'm not a graphics snob by any stretch, but this difference is massive. I really enjoy Lego. But I've never really liked video game Lego. It's just not the same as sitting there with the real thing. One of these days, I need to get my old Lego out of storage and just spend a weekend reliving childhood... Or, I say that, but it's so dusty in there it'll probably take a whole weekend just to go through and clear the Lego. lol Been eyeballing this. A bit of a bummer about the short playtime, but this seems like the ideal game to feature legos. I wonder if Kate will be reviewing Alba... PC version looks graphically better...but that's a given really.
Going to wait for a price drop on this one, but definitely want to play it. When I moved to Japan forever something like 10 years ago, I brought along two giant tubs filled with Legos from my childhood (meaning there are like 5 colors and DOZENS of shapes!), along with a Sega Saturn and other video game crap that I never touch (just like the Legos!). And yet I've never played a Lego game. I always wanted to, but (a) there are SO many of them, and (b) seeing a screenshot where it's like "oh cool, lots of Legos! But... in a world populated with normal polygonal shapes that aren't made out of Legos" was always kind of disappointing. This game looks like exactly the kind of Lego game I've been waiting for for so many years, and it will be an instant purchase for me... if it goes on sale. Leave A Comment Hold on there, you need to to post a comment...

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