Lego Bricktales Review: A near-perfect video game representation of joyful Lego creativity

Lego brick tales is the kind of game that would have been seismic for me as a kid. I was obsessed with Lego from the moment I picked up my first set, but I still felt that Lego video games embodied the freedom of expression and creativity these magical little bricks provide the real world, mostly intentionally avoided or accidentally avoided. When a game takes that angle, it’s often gold, as was the case with many of the classic Lego games of the ’90s. We finally have a game like this again in Lego Bricktales – and it’s brilliant.

Bricktales is a smart, casual, and fiendishly challenging experience. It’s a low-key genre mashup that blends puzzle-solving oddities with light adventure and exploration elements. Rather than being a franchise action game where the Lego aesthetic is… well, an aesthetic, here it’s at the heart of the experience: this is a game about building.

Bricktales essentially takes place in small dioramas, many of which are based on classic Lego themes such as pirates, castles and theme parks. Your protagonist travels this world with a superpower: the ability to build. Your task is to travel through all stages of the game by building objects and structures that help solve puzzles and open new areas. Along the way, you’ll also acquire some non-construction skills and tackle some easy traversal puzzles.

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If you know the development pedigree of this game, the focus on brick building might not come as a surprise. Developer ClockStone is the same studio responsible for the Bridge Constructor series, which is frankly a genius to fit the Lego universe.

Building in Bricktales is the closest approximation to experimenting with real bricks that I’ve seen in a licensed Lego video game, though it differs in one key way: it’s not entirely free as the story progresses. Instead, you have clear goals: for example, you have to build a bridge to cross a gap and reach a new area. Given the Bridge Constructor connection, a bridge is a perfect example to explain what makes this experience so wonderful. It’s also one of the earliest things you need to build – and they keep popping up in slightly different formats.

So let’s say you need a bridge. The game gives you a fair selection of bricks to work with, but what you build is entirely up to you. There is no “right” answer to these puzzles – in the case of a bridge, as long as it’s structurally intact, you have to test whether it’s really under pressure as you cross or collapse – it’s accepted as a win.

This makes it feel like Lego. That also makes this game accessible to everyone – although some of its challenges are difficult. Your creation can be useful: ugly and simple and a structural behemoth. The kind of thing a kid cobbles together from a pile of scattered bricks. Likewise, you can spend hours perfecting a single, simple build. Your creation is dropped into these beautiful diorama worlds and stays there, but – which is an incentive to go back, edit and do something I never thought of doing in Bridge Constructor – make it beautiful. Why a bridge consisting only of a heavily reinforced plate? What about a truss bridge or a girder bridge? Is a cantilever in Lego form possible? Bricktales cheerfully invites you to speculate.

I’m the kind of Lego nerd who builds a lot of Customs (MOCs, as we AFOL – adult Lego fans – nerds call them) and this just captures the feeling I get when I try to do it with real life create something brick. When I look at my work, I’m happy… but then I go back. I am doing handicrafts. i pinch The desire for aesthetic perfection in this blocky form is a constant companion – and when something clicks, the feeling is intoxicating. Lego Bricktales has that energy in abundance. It is wonderful.

Of course, you don’t just build bridges. In fact, you’ll build a huge variety of things – each with their own set of requirements that you must meet in order to advance. For example, a helicopter needs to have its propeller in the right place and well balanced or it will tip over during takeoff. Sometimes you build vehicles, sometimes it’s paths that help those vehicles traverse the world. I could give more concrete examples, but I don’t want to: part of the fun of the game is figuring out what to build next.

All of this is only really leavened by one key issue: fiddly controls. I started playing Bricktales on the Steam Deck (which is doing great btw) but found building with a controller a bit frustrating. I switched to PC but the keyboard and mouse had similar results; a finicky camera and bricks that don’t snap exactly where you want them. The fine control is there so you can always get the result you want, but sometimes it just takes too long to get the results you want due to the auto-alignment making wrong assumptions. This is especially true when you approach the build in a slightly non-linear way. The game wants you to build from the bottom up, and anything else seems to confuse the auto snap.

This is a relatively minor thing though, and over time I’ve definitely gotten used to the somewhat awkward controls the more I’ve played. What’s even more important is the game’s airy energy and engaging challenges. Even when the controls play up, this is a blissful, relaxing experience, a fluffy blanket of a game, ideal for wrapping up in the colder winter months.

Lego Bricktales is also, crucially, more like those experimental licensed Lego games of the 1990s. Having this game coming so soon after explaining that I missed those games feels like this game and I just should be. The fact that this title is so infused with the energy and ideas of real plastic bricks also makes this an absolutely perfect homage to Lego’s 90th anniversary, which happened this year.

Lego Bricktales is a breath of fresh air and a huge 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 than satisfying builds. Tricky controls, damn it – it’s a low-key contender for game of the year.

Disclaimer: Tested on PC including Steam Deck. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review.