LEGO® Builder's Journey

A few years ago I got a good deal on a large Wall-E Lego set and it transported me right back to my younger years. It was fun and challenging to put together, and the whole experience awoke the inner child in me. Seeing the finished product was so satisfying. In fact he’s still on my bookshelf on constant lookout to make sure my inner child doesn’t go back to sleep. Then in walks this new game to the Apple Arcade. It’s a stunning, much more mature and refined reinvention of the Lego game franchise and it’s breathtaking. No hokey Marvel tie-ins, no goofy characters. Think Monument Valley with 3D graphics and dynamic lighting that is so beautiful you’ll stop playing just to take it all in (fun tip: splash the “water” around for a surreal experience). It had the same effect my Wall-E Lego had on me, capturing my attention in a way very few things can manage. It’s a frustratingly short experience, but absolutely worth your while. I hope Lego realizes the potential here and expands this into a new franchise. Even the short playthrough was captivating and moving enough to melt me; I uttered an audible warm-hearted squeal when the little guy found his hat again. Please Lego, for the love of all things holy, expand this into a full length game.

This is a game about a journey between a father and a son. The story is told in the Monument Vally style. The puzzle is designed based on the nature and variety of Lego bricks. The game starts by building a sand castle, then follows the story, you will be quested by building bridges and so on. The video game gives Lego bricks new life in an amazing digital world. For instance, mud bricks will actually flow and sunk like in real world. Light burb bricks will actually lit up. The puzzle design is great, but because of the nature of Lego, the bricks that the game provide sometimes are not straight forward enough to understand. Specially in the bridge building puzzle, I took me a while to solve it. The story telling is engaging. The most memorable moment by far is the father is forced to work therefore has to leave his son play along. The game will let you to repeatedly do some boring brick building to exchange some credits. In the mean time, your son has to build the half finished castle by himself. The control is the flaw of the game. Switching between different bricks, hold to drop and left up operation often conflict with each other. Because of the camera angle and no other visual assistants, it’s really hard to tell where will be the brick be actually dropped. With all things considered, this is the type of game that I will keep playing until see the end of the story.

LEGO has always had a niche carved out for more subtle and artistic building sets (Architecture series for example), but rarely, if ever, has that made it into their video game properties. Builder’s Journey, however, distills LEGO building into its most pure properties - imagination, emotion, intelligence - in a universe that allows room for exploration and pontification in a way that LEGO sets, games and films lately tied to 3rd party licenses do not. Although the game is incredibly short, I hope it is just the beginning of a new direction for LEGO games (and maybe even some abstract sets), as it is a breath of fresh air among the desperate LEGO fan service cash grabs of late (I’m talking to you LEGO Stranger Things).

This game reminded me of panic room - every stage, there are some hidden clues somewhere you need to figure out to move on to the next stage. Sometime it’s straightforward sometime it took me quite a while to figure out. I am glad I did not look for walkthrough although I wanted to look for it a couple times. Only complaint is the game feels a bit too short. I can see this is a good fit to be an classic Apple arcade game: with a game this short it would be hard to justify a price tag, but the quality is high enough that most people interested in puzzle style game should give it a try.

I got an email saying this game was available for Arcade, and I figured I’d try it out because it’s LEGO and LEGO is usually pretty cute and fun. Oh boy, didn’t realize this game was going to be that well developed. It’s a sweet and simple little narrative puzzle game that has beautiful music, fantastic graphics, and isn’t too challenging yet still keeps your brain working. Honestly, everything about it was actually done really well. I was not expecting something like that from this game. It’s one of the best games I’ve played yet on Arcade, even if it’s really short. I hope there’s a sequel or something similar.