Light Bick Studio’s first game on behalf of LEGO, released last winter on Apple Arcade, landed its ticket to other horizons, like other temporary exclusives from the service. The Switch and the PC opened their arms to it, and it was on this last medium that we knew had an added benefit, ray tracing, that we went for.
No more transitions between Danish bricks and film or comic stars! Goodbye Batmans, Indiana Jones and others Luke Skywalker. With LEGO Builder’s Journey, more action, more destruction, more grimacing minifigures who’d love to tell us everything is super awesome until we throw rainbows through every hole. Place reflection, calm, simplicity. a contemplative experience that a child’s heart cannot refuse.
Point and brick
in the LEGO Builder’s Journey, you don’t play anyone. You are an invisible hand, a discreet cursor whose job it is to put LEGO pieces together. Build pirate ships or X-Wings and play with them or display them behind a virtual showcase? Not at all. Here you advance the story of two characters, a father and his child, stacks of dice or round stones, who are given fun adventures that separate and bring you together. You don’t have to say more, because the story itself prefers absolute silence and relies on plays of color and light as well as mood melodies to convey the mood of the moment. With some success this must be recognized.
To return to its principle LEGO Builder’s Journey presents more than 30 isometric views where you need to put those familiar plastic fittings in place and create a way to output the table. We take the part, a dry left click rotates it, a long click allows it to be placed or released. No difficulty, unless the interested party leads to a connection be ing broken by a slight manipulation with the right mouse button. To get started, you know at a glance which object to pick up and where to place it. Then the possibilities expand, mechanisms require a little more judgment. Sometimes even speed. Setting up a pattern that isn’t very clear or repetitive can make certain passages a little more confusing. Again, unless we have not memorized how far our heroes can jump or how to turn a rotating part, nothing is going to slow progress.
The most important thing is the journey
Maybe we will prove a little disappointment there: the experience LEGO Builder’s Journey runs tight. It takes 2 hours for the game’s credits to scroll in the worst case, which will be an affront to some. For those who see the glass half full, a good reason not to resist. Perhaps to share it with a loved one, a toddler, and to marvel at the magnificent paintings without interfaces, pure, that Light Brick Studio offers us. To take your time, to enjoy. Family? Casual? So what ? Its intentions are clear and its atmosphere and attraction magical enough that we only remember good things.
Especially if you have a PC that is equipped with an Nvidia RTX card. If you need an example of what ray tracing can do, here it is: a sublime rendering at all levels, like in a dream, allowing you to use lighting effects and dazzling reflections in the service of an artistically successful journey. And one more point for the final evaluation. Test on a PC with Ryzen 9 3900X, 16 GB RAM and an RTX 2080 Super, LEGO Builder’s Journey spun like magic on a screen in the resolution 5120×1440. But with the help of DLSS and excited fans.
