LEGO Bricktales

LEGO Bricktales can often get in its own way, but it’s still a fun adventure that breathes new life into what a LEGO game can look like.

Lego Bricktales is a remarkable approximation of actually playing with Lego bricks, thanks to a variety of clever physics-based building challenges.

Part adventure game, part construction simulator, Lego Bricktales lays strong foundations for a truer type of Lego experience.

LEGO: Bricktales manages to be fun despite some structural shakiness.

Bricktales gets its hooks into you in the same way that real-life Lego might

Lego Bricktales is a breath of fresh air, and a tremendous surprise. It’s not the longest experience in the world – but I loved every minute of it, and still feel compelled to go back and improve some of my less satisfying builds. Tricky controls be damned – it’s a low-key game of the year contender.

This malleable gameplay is the crown jewel on what would otherwise have been an average exploration-adventure title. The presentation is excellent, and the colour palette is vibrant and exciting, but the moments where you have to figure out how to build something are the moments sure to stick with you.

Lego Bricktales isn't perfect, but it offers up a refreshingly unique experience relative to the litany of action platformers based on licensed IP we've been getting for nearly two decades now. We sincerely appreciated the focus on low-stress building puzzles that encourage and reward creative solutions. It's the kind of game that you just take at your own pace and lose yourself for a bit to the relaxing tunes and simple act of building. It's a shame, then, that awkward controls hamper your creativity and hold it back from greatness. Couple that with performance issues on Switch, and we'd recommend playing on PC if you can. Still, Bricktales is the closest thing in years that a Lego video game has gotten to the actual feeling of playing with Lego, and those of you who appreciate the famous toy will find something to love here.

Developer ClockStone gave this a good effort, but there wasn't enough in LEGO Bricktales to keep me feeling interested. Even the story, which is typically a franchise strong suit felt underwhelming with half-hearted humor and nothing really memorable. That's not to say there isn't a foundation for something better in the future. The concept of using LEGO building to progress and doing it in your own way is a strong one, but without better tools, like blueprints and the like, the novelty wears off quickly. For now, LEGO Bricktales is a fun curiosity and little more than that.

LEGO Bricktales ultimately left me with mixed feelings. Although the graphics are solid, the puzzles are quite inventive, and the game is entertaining for a few hours, the unpolished technical aspects combined with the rather strictly limited gameplay give the impression of untapped potential. If you like LEGO and want to try a more original puzzle game, feel free to give Bricktales a shot, but you’re better off waiting for a sale. At thirty euros for about fifteen hours of one-time, slightly repetitive fun, the developers have definitely overpriced it.