LEGO Bricktales review - "Building with bricks with a difficulty level that's not for everyone"

Finding momentary peace amid the chaos of everyday life can be pretty rare in this fast-paced world, but that kind of oasis doesn't have to be too elusive - not when you have LEGO bricks around. The gentle clicking and clacking of these plastic bricks snapping into place can be so meditative that there's actually an ASMR soundtrack that's all about LEGO bricks alone (aptly titled LEGO White Noise), and LEGO Bricktales aims to simulate that kind of relaxation with its puzzle-adventure game.

Out now on mobile, LEGO Bricktales foregoes the quirky character-based adventure games the franchise is often known for and instead focuses on the actual building this time around, but does it all pay off, or are you better off going back to all the Harry Potter and Star Wars games within the LEGO world instead?

Table of contents:

• LEGO Bricktales visuals
• LEGO Bricktales gameplay
• LEGO Bricktales verdict

LEGO BRICKTALES VISUALS

From the graphics alone, LEGO Bricktales definitely captures the look and feel of LEGO bricks in real life. Everything from the lighting to the colours simulates IRL LEGO bricks really well - not to mention the dioramas your character will explore across varied biomes all look gorgeous as well, so much so that I actually wished I could own those LEGO dioramas myself in real life.

The narrative isn't anything too groundbreaking. Essentially, all you really have to do is travel across worlds helping people build things to make them happy. You'll need to construct all kinds of structures to earn Happiness Crystals, which you can then use to help your Grandpa power up his abandoned amusement park and restore it to its former shiny glory. There are cheeky little wink-wink secrets littered throughout the dioramas, and you'll sometimes have to go back to previous areas to see what you might have missed.

THE GAMEPLAY OF LEGO BRICKTALES

The highlight of the gameplay is, of course, the building mechanics. To help out the NPCs in the game, you need to build thingamajigs with limited LEGO pieces. This, I feel, is where the touchscreen really shines - you can rotate your work in progress however way you want to, and simply drag and drop the pieces to where you want them to go. The game definitely feels like it's made for mobile in that sense - the same is true with the dioramas, as you can freely drag your finger anywhere to make your character move.

One major gripe I have here, though, is that while you can rotate your camera freely when you're building, you don't have the same freedom when you're out in the world. You also only have a single option to zoom out of the diorama, which, on a smaller mobile screen, isn't the most ideal. This is such a shame too, because it can be a challenge to look for hidden secrets when you can't manipulate the camera to see things better around you.

WHAT'S THE APPEAL?

Camera woes aside, what really bothered me about the game was the building itself. Granted, I'm not the most spatially skilled person - I don't have any particular skills when it comes to engineering or physics. I went into this fully accepting my own limitations, but I didn't expect it to be this hard.

The thing is, you'll have the freedom to build, say, a bridge using anything at your disposal - you can craft an architectural masterpiece, or you can go bare bones and just connect bricks from one end to another as long as it does the job. There are no hints or instruction manuals here - the only limit is your imagination, which just means that it's more difficult for spatially challenged people like me.

You also have the option of testing out your build by using a robot to check the integrity and functionality of your structure, and what's perhaps most frustrating here is that when your structure fails, you're not always sure what went wrong. This makes for a lot of trial and error - you can spend hours just trying to get something to work without even knowing why it's collapsing in the first place.

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That said, getting something done does offer an immense feeling of satisfaction, but it's just too difficult to get there, in my opinion.

At this point, I feel like I should mention that I did ask my husband the architect to give the game a go himself - and even he felt like some of the challenges were just too difficult (and that's coming from someone who collects and builds LEGO himself). Everything about the game just screams relaxation, but when it comes to the actual building, all that serenity goes out the window.

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In the end, I do feel like LEGO Bricktales can be the perfect game for a certain smaller group of enthusiasts. The difficulty level is too much for me though, but it's still a good change of pace if you're looking for something to spice up your typical LEGO game.