Inside the playful ambition of LEGO Bricktales and the challenge of giving us the "freedom to build"

LEGO Bricktales is the type of game that will immediately ignite your imagination. Announced at the Future Games Show: Spring Showcase, LEGO Bricktales is an all-new digital adventure that'll send you across a diverse range of intricately built and colorfully arranged biomes – each purpose-built to put your creativity to the test. Challenging puzzles require inventive solutions in LEGO Bricktales, which is also a mantra that speaks to developer Clockstone and publisher Thunderful's approach to designing it. 

"We felt very strongly about sticking to the vision of creating LEGO building puzzles, embedding them in dioramas that are fully built out of LEGO, and then tying it all together with a charming story. Each of those aspects could keep you busy for a game of its own, but the trifecta of it made for an incredibly complex project where we constantly had to juggle and balance those three things," says game designer Tri Do Dinh. "I don't think a day passes where we don't uncover some new challenge to solve."

Learning to play

There's a reason why Tri Do Dinh rates the complexity of building LEGO Bricktales an '11' on a difficulty scale of 1-10, and that's because it's open-ended by design. The game employs a neat trick, wherein all of the puzzles are solved by utilizing a brick-by-brick building mechanic. You'll have to physically piece together creations and, naturally, the instruction manuals aren't included – probably tucked away in the same cupboard that has since swallowed the boxes that once housed the vast assortment of pieces available to you. 

It's an ambitious and playful mechanic, one that Do Dinh believes gets to the heart of the franchise itself. "It started with us trying to answer the fundamental question of 'What makes LEGO… LEGO?' Drawing from our own experience, it became clear that building, especially the freedom to build your own thing, was a huge part of it. You give 10 people the same set of bricks and tell them to build something, you'll get 10 wonderfully unique things back. So it became a mission of sorts to capture that essence of LEGO in a digital game."

LEGO Bricktales has been in development for over three years, and the studio is still working to refine its building mechanic, scrutinize its puzzle design, and strengthen the script to ensure jokes land with aplomb. But the team has been spurred on, not only because the polished product looks wicked cute, but because it has the full backing of the LEGO Group itself. "Back in 2018, LEGO contacted us via email," says Marcel Aldrup, external producer at Thunderful Games. "They were impressed by our portfolio and followed the great success we had with our release Bridge Constructor Portal."

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"We felt very honored being contacted by the biggest toy company in the world, manufacturing toys we all played with as kids and even as adults. We met with LEGO in Billund, Denmark, shortly after to discuss potential ways of collaboration. There was no concrete project planned around that time, but all parties involved agreed to have a game with the focus on brick-by-brick building. Based on this we started working on a prototype and after some iterations came up with the concept for LEGO Bricktales."

When that prototyping began in earnest way back in 2019, Do Dinh says the challenge Clockstone had on its hands quickly dawned on the team. "We realized that going from tactile bricks in 3D and using your hands, to a 2D screen with a mouse, gamepad, or touch controls was an incredible challenge. The trail to what we have now is littered with countless experiments, dead-ends, presentational flourishes, and interesting under-the-hood algorithms that govern how you build with bricks. Some massive changes happened up to the beginning of this year, just to illustrate how it's been such an ongoing process of trying to get it right."

What we saw at the Future Games Show underscores how the effort is paying dividends down the line. While some puzzles are solved by building aesthetically-pleasing creations – such as market stands and music boxes, depending on the needs of the biome – some situations can only be resolved by physically piecing together functional physics-based vehicles, like a crane or a gyrocopter. Clockstone and Thunderful have gone above and beyond to bottle the spirit of LEGO and ship it to us in Bricktales.  

One brick at a time

You'll know Clockstone Studio for the eminently popular Bridge Constructor – along with its collaborative spin-offs, Stunts, Medieval, Playground, The Walking Dead, and of course Portal. My first thought after viewing the trailer… okay, second thought, but because the first was 'oh damn, this is adorable', was that LEGO Bricktales looked like a smart combination of the ideas behind Bridge Constructor and Kerbal Space Simulator fashioned together by thousands of individual LEGO pieces. 

"Oh, that's an interesting comparison," says Do Dinh. "Bricktales definitely carries Bridge Constructor DNA, which was essentially the launching point for the game idea. And while I can't say that Kerbal Space Program was a particular inspiration, it does have parallels, because with our puzzles we had to think about building things out of LEGO that fulfill a certain function, rather than just being built for aesthetics."

"So you start thinking about: how do you even define 'function'? What kind of goals can a LEGO construction fulfill? But we also came to understand that LEGO is very much a thing of its own and thrives by covering that space between building something that fulfills a goal and something that is visually pleasing, so that makes it unique."

Speaking of unique, we have to touch on the biomes that LEGO Bricktales' puzzles are set within. They are gorgeous, detailed, and all fully built from LEGO bricks. There are five biomes in the game at launch – you'll see a dense jungle, sun-drenched desert, a bustling city corner, a towering medieval castle, and tropical Caribbean islands – each of which is full of secrets to find, challenges to complete, and fun characters to meet. Well, help is often the case with the LEGO minifigures who inhibit these spaces. 

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"We wanted to create worlds that you would really enjoy exploring as a LEGO minifigure. Each biome consists of a series of dioramas that have this particular cube-like format and are fully built out of LEGO, because we felt it would really leverage that unique and intricate visual style that LEGO has. Like every diorama is a detailed art piece that you'd enjoy looking at all by itself," says Do Dinh. 

"As for the selection, we went for a nice variation. On the one hand making sure we cover a wide spectrum of atmospheres, on the other hand also paying homage to classical LEGO themes like medieval, city, or pirates while putting our own spin to it. Making the selection was tough, because there were so many other themes that intrigued us but had to be put on a waiting list."

Helping the minifigures you help out of precarious situations will reward you with skill unlocks, and each of these spaces will have their own unique construction spots and sets of bricks that you can play with too. "The game encourages players to use their imagination and creativity to unlock new skills that can help them progress to new levels," says Kate Bryant, head of the LEGO Group's games portfolio. "This new digital experience is rooted in the creative, playful joy that comes from building and problem-solving using LEGO bricks."

It'll be up to you to figure out who everything can click into place, giving you the scope and space to play – working as a makeshift engineer to build bridges to get a digger across a river, or an expert carpenter to build a throne fit for a king. LEGO Bricktales sounds as weird and wonderful as it does imaginative and creative – we can't wait to see more of it in action. 

LEGO Bricktales is expected to launch in 2022 on PC. While you're waiting, why not check out the best Lego sets or one of the best Lego games.