LEGO Bricktales
- October 12, 2022
- ClockStone
- 40h median play time
Lego Bricktales returns the IP to its block-placing origins with fun puzzles that can certainly challenge the mind. While it doesn't allow you to do whatever you want, the satisfaction that comes with problem-solving each puzzle is quite notable.
"LEGO Bricktales is a single-player Fantasy Simulation game with a good story and masterful mechanics that let you build solutions to puzzles using bricks. Explore beautiful diorama biomes, from jungles to castles, to help minifigures and find secrets, all while building your way to revitalizing your grandfather's amusement park. With a good soundtrack, charming visuals, and plenty of humor, LEGO Bricktales may have some grinding, but it's a fun and creative experience."
Reviews
- The game offers a very creative building experience, allowing players to construct various objects to solve puzzles.
- The visuals are charming and beautifully designed, capturing the essence of LEGO in a vibrant world.
- It's a fun and relaxing game that can be enjoyed by both kids and adults, making it a great family-friendly option.
- The building controls can be finicky and awkward, making it difficult to place pieces accurately.
- The story and dialogue can feel tedious and childish, lacking depth and engagement.
- The game is relatively short, with some players feeling it lacks replayability and additional content after completion.
- story232 mentions
- 25 % positive mentions
- 62 % neutral mentions
- 13 % negative mentions
The game's story is generally perceived as light-hearted and cute, featuring a simple plot that serves primarily as a backdrop for puzzle-solving and building mechanics. While some players appreciate the charm and humor, many criticize the narrative for being repetitive, filled with fetch quests, and lacking depth, often feeling like a filler between gameplay segments. Overall, the story is seen as enjoyable for casual play but not particularly engaging or memorable.
“Cool storyline that guides you through the different areas, with interesting puzzles, both building in the build interface and non-building rooms, to go through!”
“The story is cute, and all the characters have that classic tongue-in-cheek LEGO humor.”
“There's an enjoyable story with different worlds and characters, collecting, but at the core it's a puzzle game you solve with your LEGO building imagination.”
“The plot and dialogues are just boring time fillers, even annoying, and you will just want to skip these.”
“The story started ok-ish, but at the end the quests just had you walk across the map several times for no good reason.”
“There isn't really a mind-blowing story, or even much of a story at all; your grandpa created a portal to 6 different areas to rebuild an amusement park.”
- gameplay104 mentions
- 38 % positive mentions
- 60 % neutral mentions
- 3 % negative mentions
The gameplay is characterized by a blend of creative building mechanics and puzzle-solving elements, offering a relaxing experience with a charming narrative. While the building controls are praised for their flexibility, some players find them finicky and the overall puzzle solutions can feel un-intuitive, leading to a lack of replayability. Despite these issues, many enjoy the casual, low-stakes nature of the gameplay, which allows for exploration and creativity within well-designed dioramas.
“Fun evolution of the Traveler's Tales LEGO games, this has the easy-going puzzle aspects with the added bonus of a fairly solid building mechanic, so it felt a lot more like LEGOs.”
“Excellent gameplay - the puzzles are fun and the appropriate amount of challenging even for adults; the learning curve is not too steep, but there are plenty of challenges that you may have to come back to after learning how the game's physics work and how to overcome them with clever building techniques.”
“With a charming blend of family-safe humor, relaxing gameplay, no violence, and fun creative puzzle solving.”
“The camera can be awkward during gameplay, which may in part be intentional so that you have to actively head towards a secret rather than seeing the path right away.”
“The mechanics are a bit wonky as it can sometimes be hard to maneuver your character in the right direction.”
“That being said, the build mechanics can be frustrating at times (e.g., if you move the camera at all, then the reference point is lost), character movement is slow and they get stuck on collision edges frequently.”
- graphics87 mentions
- 40 % positive mentions
- 56 % neutral mentions
- 3 % negative mentions
The graphics in the game are generally praised for their solid realization of the Lego aesthetic, featuring beautiful visuals and creative use of Lego pieces in the environments. While some players find the graphics to be standard for a Lego game, others appreciate the crispness and lack of pixelation, making it visually appealing and enjoyable to explore. However, there are mixed feelings about the building mechanics and animations, which some players found sluggish or awkward, detracting from the overall experience.
“Beautiful visuals - the isometric style combined with the realistic depiction of lego builds make for beautiful scenery in every level; the models in this game show creative part usage, which is always one of my favorite parts of lego models.”
“The graphics and game design are beautiful, very enjoyable and fun.”
“Graphics: even though it is just lego bricks, the graphics look pretty good, no pixelation, crisp graphics and not very taxing on the system.”
“The graphics are standard for a Lego game, and it can be a little challenging finding all the secrets of the levels.”
“Overall, the hefty price tag, poor controls, lack of graphics, and arbitrary story make this one a no-go for me.”
“(It *is* pretty, but very small. 'Built out of Lego bricks' is aesthetic; you can’t actually affect any environments. Winding paths and skill-locked areas mean it takes time to get around, but it’s not fun and it’s *not* exploring. You also have these pretty Lego environments that show you what you *could* build…but you’re never given the opportunity to actually do so! You don’t even get to fix the amusement park (the supposed driver of the story), just 'design' a few limited ride pieces, and there’s literally nothing to 'explore' in this area.)”
- humor53 mentions
- 96 % positive mentions
- -2 % neutral mentions
- 6 % negative mentions
The humor in the game is a mix of cute, tongue-in-cheek dialogue and classic LEGO silliness, often eliciting genuine laughs from players. While many found the interactions and comedic elements enjoyable, some critiques pointed out that certain jokes, particularly about fetch quests, fell flat or felt repetitive. Overall, the humor is generally well-received, appealing to both younger audiences and adults with its clever quips and light-hearted tone.
“The dialogues are more than hilarious and funny, lots of cool places to explore with hidden secrets and there are many things happening.”
“The humor in the interactions with LEGO figures is filled with quips and schtick.”
“Dialogue in this game is surprisingly hilarious and an unexpected highlight for me.”
“The humor in this game falls flat, relying too much on unfunny snarky remarks.”
“The attempts at humor feel forced and often miss the mark.”
“I found the jokes to be stale and lacking any real wit or charm.”
- music36 mentions
- 56 % positive mentions
- 36 % neutral mentions
- 8 % negative mentions
The music in the game is widely praised for its relaxing and thematic qualities, with each world featuring unique tracks that enhance the atmosphere and encourage creativity. Composed by Maximillian Stroka, the soundtrack is described as fantastic and well-suited to the game's family-friendly, exploratory nature. While some players found the music too intense for certain levels, overall, it contributes positively to the game's aesthetic and experience.
“Each world has its own theme-appropriate music, and each zone within that world has its own track, and they're all fantastic.”
“The game's soundtrack is amazing, too - composed by Maximillian Stroka, it perfectly accompanies you along your journey and it's super relaxing!”
“Very relaxing pacing and excellent music.”
“Oh, it's worth noting that most of the soundtrack goes so hard for absolutely no good reason.”
“One thing I'm not seeing people mention is the music.”
“For me, music is an important part of a game, and they went all out here.”
- grinding28 mentions
- 0 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 100 % negative mentions
Overall, players find the grinding aspects of the game to be tedious and repetitive, particularly in the building and puzzle-solving elements. While some enjoy the initial fun and creativity, many express frustration with the convoluted tasks and limited building options as the game progresses, leading to a less satisfying experience. Despite these criticisms, some still recommend the game for its enjoyable mechanics and humor, especially for fans of similar puzzle games.
“The main problem for me was that the 'side quests' (if you can call them that) were tedious and distracting, and should be ignored if you want the best experience.”
“My final moments in the game were spent frustratedly scouring every inch of the sometimes maze-like levels, navigating in tedious and convoluted ways, looking for pointless crap in order to have a bigger number for my completion percentage.”
“I was driven to frustration tediously adjusting bricks to allow the robots to awkwardly make their way down a fire escape or across some platforms.”
- replayability14 mentions
- 43 % positive mentions
- 36 % neutral mentions
- 21 % negative mentions
The game offers limited replayability, primarily due to its few set ways to solve puzzles, which can make the experience feel repetitive after the initial playthrough. While a sandbox mode allows for some customization and creativity, many players feel that the overall replay value is low, depending on individual preferences for gameplay. Some reviewers express hope for increased replayability with longer ownership, but consensus leans towards a lack of depth in replay options.
“The game has light replayability in that you unlock a 'sandbox' mode meaning you can customize your finished puzzles more.”
“Overall, a solid game that I suspect will have good replay value (but I'll need to own it longer to be sure).”
“🔲 Infinitely replayable”
“Replayability and self-expression, however, are two areas where I feel this game lacks.”
“I'd say replay value is low due to this, but again, it depends on what you are looking for in this game and how you like to play.”
“The game has light replayability in that you unlock a 'sandbox' mode, meaning you can customize your finished puzzles more.”
- stability6 mentions
- 67 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 33 % negative mentions
Overall, the game is largely considered stable and bug-free, providing an enjoyable experience, particularly on the Steam Deck. However, some users reported minor bugs when revisiting and enhancing pathway builds, indicating that certain aspects of the game could be improved for better functionality.
“The game runs great on the Steam Deck.”
“Pretty much bug-free and a nice non-violent story with the typical silly humor, so I enjoyed it.”
“Furthermore, I found that going back into the pathway builds to make them better looking while retaining functionality was far more difficult and even downright slightly buggy than they were worth.”
- optimization4 mentions
- 50 % positive mentions
- 0 % neutral mentions
- 50 % negative mentions
Overall, the game's optimization is praised for stellar performance on PC, while the Switch version suffers from notable performance issues and awkward controls, making it less recommended for that platform.
“Performance on both platforms has been stellar, but I'm just not the right audience for this game.”
“Couple that with performance issues on Switch, and we'd recommend playing on PC if you can.”
“Performance problems and awkward controls feel extra disappointing given their importance here.”
- atmosphere2 mentions
- 150 % positive mentions
- -50 % neutral mentions
- 0 % negative mentions
The atmosphere of the game is enhanced by thematic music that complements each level, creating an immersive experience for players.
“The music is thematic to each level and adds a great touch to the atmosphere.”
“The sound design perfectly complements the visuals, creating an immersive experience.”
“The atmospheric elements, including ambient sounds and music, draw you into the game's world.”
Critic Reviews
LEGO Bricktales Review
LEGO Bricktales is exactly the kind of game you would expect as both a work of Thunderful Games and a product of the LEGO brand. Seeing your creations come to life, even visually sickening ones, is a rewarding experience and a must-play for LEGO enthusiasts.
86%LEGO: Bricktales review
LEGO: Bricktales manages to be fun despite some structural shakiness.
75%LEGO Bricktales review
LEGO Bricktales is puzzler that takes you back to the early days of LEGO, when the freedom to build want you want took centre stage. There're plenty of opportunities to build, explore, and bask in the gentle humour that we could all do with a little more of.
80%