Lego Bricktales Review – A Welcome Deconstruction of Toy’s Typical Game Formula

Part adventure game, part building simulator, LEGO bricks provide a solid foundation for a more authentic LEGO experience.

When I think about Lego today—the toy itself, and its many video game versions—it’s easy to get distracted by decades of licensed property now immortalized in plastic bricks. I want to build my LEGO NES console, or the upcoming Lord of the Rings Orthanc tower sitting next to my TV. In LEGO video games, I am reminded of times I roamed in Hogwarts or the Batcave or the gigantic Star Wars galaxy in the recent Skywalker saga. It was only after some more thought that I remembered the old model I started using, as a child of a fairly distant past.

That’s not to say those early series are forgettable! I still have those castle bricks I put together, or the rockets I fired from the secret base I built under the coffee table. But when I think about those, I think there are less and less discrete sets you can buy (or wait for each birthday) and more of the Lego blocks I’m slowly accumulating – building and then deconstructing each model into a giant piled in a large storage bin. Dive into it, pull something out and see what I can do – it’s playing with it, not just building with it. While Lego Bricktales is somewhat limited at this level of creation, especially at first, it ultimately offers the most Lego-like video game experience since a fully sandbox Lego world.

Working through your avatar and a rather obscure story of their grandpa, you’ll slowly unlock a miniature hub world that contains portals to various classic LEGO settings: pirate beaches, medieval castles, and of course, cities. Each area has its own network of LEGO dioramas for you to explore, easy to solve puzzles, and a collection of mini LEGO sets. I love seeing these themes using only virtual LEGO bricks – something that licensed TT Games games often deviate in their setting – and reminds me of various other isometric puzzle games or the earliest real Minecraft Sectional blocks of Lego bricks. I also love the way my hero minifigures rock in these worlds, sometimes with heads spinning like characters from the Lego Movie. But this is the last point – the mini build yourself – where LEGO Bricktales truly stand on their own.

Lego games have long used Lego itself as a background – a filter through which you can make a fun licensed parody. Instead, Bricktales offers real construction, giving you fully physically balanced bricks in the most capable creator mode. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since Bricktales was made by Bridge Constructor series developer ClockStone, you start with a bridge. This is the canyon you have to cross, the game says, and here are the bricks you have to cross. Will it stand up? Can it hold the weight of a Lego car? To finish your build, you often have to sit back and watch and hope it’s done.

Sometimes you’re tasked with building to an exact design, but more often you’ll be given a pile of bricks and let you figure it out yourself: ramps, winding walkways, multi-level fire escapes. I’ll be happy to say that I solved some of these issues in a few minutes by playing quickly, but then spent half an hour perfecting what I thought was probably the absolute best-designed solution. It’s very satisfying to see some of the models you build then come to life: cars, trucks or cranes transporting other minifigures (or yourself) to the next area. At any given time, you can clearly see how many pieces you have left to complete the puzzle – this number is sometimes very limited, which means you’re always trying to see the bigger picture. It reminds me of scooping bricks out of that storage bin as a kid and knowing that my brick collection won’t last forever.

Things got trickier as the game went on – so much so that I wondered what audience this was for. (Don’t expect something as simple as TT Games’ LEGOs, usually you just have to walk around and slam things around to make progress.) In its trickier builds, Bricktales’ rather simple build mode does show its rougher edges . Playing on a console – where I think a lot of LEGO fans will play – I found that moving parts into place was sometimes too slow. Editing can also feel taxing, and unlike real LEGOs, you can’t break multiple pieces at once as you test and rebuild. Games can be picky about how their logic works — especially in puzzles where you build paths for robots. You need to figure out how these robots are going to interpret the bricks you put down, lest they start to turn around and become their compatriots and get stuck completely. It is here that the light of this creative mode dims.

But then you’re back in the open world of Bricktales, where your creations are: now seamlessly part of the game environment for you to walk through or marvel at! While Bricktales itself is relatively short, there’s a very welcome option to revisit any build and experiment with alternative designs, this time further customizable with additional colors and brick themes, which you can buy with collected in-game currency.

Like the model I made on the bedroom floor, there are a few things in Bricktales that need to be improved. It’s a simple adventure game with a fun creative mode – but I’d like to see it take it a step further: as intuitive as the blocks it simulates, and with more infinite game options, having rather expensive real blocks can sometimes be tricky Limit this kind of game. For now, though, Bricktales has made me rethink my general impression of LEGO and how LEGO is used throughout video games — a powerful platform to build on in the future.

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