After being available for PC and consoles since last year, LEGO® Bricktales has now made the leap to mobile devices with an Android and iOS version of the game. LEGO Bricktales is a physics-based adventure game which offers something different from the usual smashing and collecting of other LEGO titles. After checking out the console version of the game last year, here’s a review of the mobile version.
Product Description
In LEGO® Bricktales, discover an innovative brick-by-brick building mechanic to design puzzle solutions from your own imagination. See your creations brought to life in a beautiful LEGO world where every problem has a constructive resolution.
Embark on an epic adventure across a world of beautiful LEGO diorama biomes crafted brick by brick as you search for inspiration to help your grandfather reinvigorate his rundown amusement park with your little robot buddy in tow. Your journey will take you to the deepest jungle, sun-drenched deserts, a bustling city corner, a towering medieval castle, and tropical Caribbean islands. Help the minifigures of these worlds by solving puzzles and unlock new skills throughout the story to further explore these worlds and uncover the many secrets and mysteries they contain.
From purely aesthetic creations, such as a market stand or music box, up to functional physics-based puzzles like building a crane or gyrocopter – each diorama offers a variety of construction spots with the freedom of intuitive brick-by-brick building. In each spot you are given a set of bricks and it’s up to you to figure out a unique build that will work. On top of specific puzzles and quests, there are additional builds in the amusement park so you can customize the rides to make them your own!
- Game Title: LEGO Bricktales
- Publisher: Thunderful Games
- Developer: ClockStone
- RRP: $4.99/5.59€/£4.99 (pricing may vary)
- Availability: Android & iOS
If you’ve played the console/PC version of LEGO Bricktales then the story and basic mechanics of the game remain unchanged. But the basis of the game follows a young builder who needs to help his eccentric inventor Grandpa to bring his amusement park back to life by travelling to different worlds through a mysterious portal. Each world is an entirely brick-built biome which you can traverse by helping out people in the world often by building something. You can read more about the overall view of the game in my original review here. For the purpose of this review, I’ll focus on how it plays on a mobile device.
In terms of appearance, the game looks very much like its other versions but the main difference is the way it controls. Obviously, smart devices have touchscreen input which vastly affects how you traverse the game’s world and more importantly, how you build digitally. Building in a digital space has always been tricky, previous LEGO games have tried to recreate it but many simply automate the process. In LEGO Bricktales building is a key aspect of gameplay, being used to further your process in the story. Once at a build spot, you enter a grid-like space where you’ll also find a selection of elements and an outlined area in which your build must sit or reach a certain point. You’ll also be presented with your goals. How you build is slightly different when using the touchscreen.
You can directly tap on pieces and place them as well as being able to zoom in and twist the screen around with ease. This is far more user-friendly than the console/PC versions. Although I still found myself making use of the on-screen buttons to place elements as these allow you to nudge them into place a little better. If touch controls aren’t your thing, then you can easily use an additional controller such as an Xbox pad or DuelSense controller. Simply follow the relevant instructions to connect the controllers to your device and the in-game controls automatically switch to them. With a cursor arrow appearing on the screen and other on-screen prompts switched to match the new control method.
Overall
Regardless of which platform you play the game, LEGO Bricktales remains an interesting LEGO adventure. its focus on getting the building right has paid off. It can still be frustrating at times, especially when your carefully crafted digital build collapses as the test robot tries to clamber over it. But this is also part of the fun, it may not seem so having spent hours failing to build the solution, but when you nail it the sense of achievement is immense. I would say that the more complex a build is needed to progress, the touch controls can become a little tricky. Thankfully, the lower price point of the mobile version makes the game a much more attractive purchase, especially on Android where it’s cheapest.
LEGO Bricktales is also available digitally on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. The mobile version is available for Android devices through Google Play and iOS devices from the App Store.
Thanks to Thunderful Games for providing access to the game for the purposes of review. Version reviewed iOS (iPad). The thoughts within this review are that of BricksFanz and do not reflect those of the LEGO Group or Thunderful Games. Providing a product for free does not guarantee a favourable opinion of the product.
