From a once villainous role, the LEGO Group has fully embraced video games. For over 25 years, there’s been a varied offering of brick-based games, but recently the term ‘LEGO® game’ has become synonymous with those titles developed by TT Games. But that’s no longer the case. TT Games are no longer the lone proprietor of digital LEGO adventures. In the last few years, LEGO titles have come from various developers and have seen titles such as LEGO Star Wars Castaways, LEGO Brawls and a LEGO Speed Champions expansion for Forza Horizon. Plus an in-house dev team was founded called Light Brick Studios which created LEGO Builder’s Journey.
What’s next for LEGO Games? It seems the answer is quite a lot. Much of the following information is based on rumours or gleaned from ‘game code’. The once piece of officially confirmed information is the multi-games partnership with 2K. The first fruit of this new link-up will be released next week. But LEGO 2K Drive isn’t the only LEGO title coming from 2K. There are definitely more titles to come, exactly what these are is unknown. Rumours point towards more sports titles including a possible football game and one based on a popular sports IP.
TT Games once held the exclusive license to create LEGO titles for consoles. But this has recently changed, partly due to the long delays to the release of LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and poor working conditions reported at the UK development studio. That doesn’t mean TT Games are no longer creating LEGO titles, supposedly been working on multiple LEGO games, with many being canned at various stages of development. The latest rumours suggest a brand new LEGO Harry Potter game, covering all of the movies and presented on a similar in scale to The Skywalker Saga.
Although the LEGO games assault on mobile platforms has cooled a little in recent years, there are still a few titles to keep you busy on the go. LEGO Bricktales recently made the leap to mobile and will soon be joined by LEGO Hill Climb Adventures.
One of the biggest developments in LEGO games is rumoured by a mass of LEGO content coming to Fortnite. This ever-evolving battle royale has taken the world by storm. The LEGO content could see a brick-built world added to the game, along with other LEGO-themed items. It’s unclear if the content will form part of upcoming seasons or will be created using the new Unreal Editor for Fortnite toolset.
Sticking with Epic, last year it was announced that the LEGO Group has inked a deal with Epic to build ‘a world for kids to play in the Metaverse’. How this will present itself is unknown as the Metaverse is still a rather loose term used for interactive digital spaces, with possible integration with VR.
Another known entity to the LEGO Games portfolio is a second title from Light Brick Studios. After creating the wonderful Builder’s Journey, the now independent studio has been hard at work at a new title. Exactly what this will be, remains to be seen.
One thing is clear, now LEGO Games have been open to a broader range of development studios, the offering has also become more varied and hopefully, LEGO Games fans will have plenty of both new and classic LEGO digital adventures to enjoy. This year is also a good one for those who prefer to build LEGO sets based on games. The world of LEGO Super Mario will expand to include Donkey Kong. LEGO Sonic returns as a brand new theme and there are rumours of a set inspired by Pac-Man.
