Lego Bricktales

You'd think there'd be a bona fide brick-building video game after all this time, but this is The Lego Group's first try with the concept. In Lego Bricktales, you play as a customizable minifigure and explore dioramas built entirely of Lego pieces. These timeless settings include a medieval kingdom of wizards and knights, a city of towers and cars, and more spread across time and the world. Some rewards are only obtainable by building structures in new ways beyond the main solutions, or revisiting old areas with previously inaccessible spots with new abilities. This adds to replayability, but it would've been nice if it led to more content like secret puzzles, instead of just collectibles. The same limits on scope extend to the Sandbox feature, which isn't accurate because you're confined to revisit and remix previously completed puzzles.

A lack of guidance can also confuse players with some puzzles and story objectives, not to mention several truly challenging builds that will stretch your creative muscles and patience. Even if there's unnecessary padding with fetch quests here and there as well, LEGO Bricktales includes dozens of wonderfully designed building puzzles and brainteasers that test your environmental awareness and ordering skills. You're given a moderately sized pile of bricks to build contraptions and structures tested for integrity, and even weight distribution without instructions. While daunting at times, this is a brilliant design that incentivizes real ingenuity by having players engage with basic physics and architecture. The controls aren't perfect -- placing bricks on complicated creations can slow things down by needing to adjust your camera and jiggle around parts until they go where you want them. While lacking content hand having clunky controls, Lego Bricktales is a wholesome, gorgeous title that sparks imagination in ways no Lego game before it has accomplished.