Hello there bricky builders! You see, I live my life with few regrets. Regretfulness is not a trait fit for a bold inventor who is always looking for the next project to screw up..., um, I mean iterate. What I do regret though are two things - The fact that I didn't buy that gas powered pasta machine on the flea market some odd years ago, and the fact that I didn't make a "brick or treat" pun for Halloween. I know, I know, sometimes the grand opportunities of life just whiz past your head and you are left wondering what could have been... But nevermind, the past is the past, what's important is now: New Content:

• A brand new Christmas diorama! Accessible once you have finished the desert world

Improvements:

• Savegames are now stored separately for each account, enabling multiple people to play. If the cloud service reports a problem with syncing, it should resolve itself on retry

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug where the city story couldn't be completed 100%. We thought we squashed this one before, but unfortunately not
• Minor bugfixes

This is what awaits you in the new Christmas diorama:

• A storyline where you travel up North to find a mysteriously crash-landed flying vehicle that dropped gift boxes from the sky, who or what could it possibly be?
• 3 new construction puzzles. A mix of festive decorations and some rocket engineering to cap it all off
• 4 new wardrobe items
• 1 new music track

Ah, and so it goes, you busy yourself with little things here and there, next thing you know snow is falling and the year is already over. Where did all the time go? What I do know is - if you spent any of that time enjoying the game and building interesting things, we greatly appreciate it, we really do. Who knows what the next year will bring, but for now we hope that you have a wonderful end of this one. Scientific and winterly greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-12-11 15:00:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

As of today LEGO Bricktales VR is now available on Meta Quest 2 & 3, it's the same game that you know and love but now in VR (and MR)! Immerse yourself in stunning LEGO dioramas and use the 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. [previewyoutube=MT9Adn5JI8s;full][/previewyoutube]

Connect with the Community

Keen to discuss your creations with fellow brickbuilders or are you stuck on a particular puzzle? Join the Discord and meet other fans of the game! ~ ClockStone & Thunderful

[ 2023-12-07 18:13:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey builders, The season of savings is upon us as the temperatures drop and the leaves change color. That can only mean one thing - It's autumn! As we cozy up indoors there has been no better time to buy and play Lego Bricktales as it's currently 50% off as part of the Steam Autumn Sale!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-11-22 18:19:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! Trick or treat? As a scientifically minded person who is all about maximizing potential and efficiency, why not both? Or at least that's what I thought when I built a machine that could launch both raw eggs and candy back in the day. That is, until the separator unit malfunctioned. Then it was all sweet omelets... But anyway, let's not dwell in the past and ask instead - what is now? This is what's now: New Content:

• A brand new Halloween diorama! Accessible once you have finished the jungle world

Improvements:

• Performance improvements when building

Changes:

• Removed the fire stairs puzzle in city world due to technical problems

Bugfixes:

• Various minor bugfixes

This is what awaits you in the new Halloween diorama:

• A storyline where you are whisked away into a mysterious magical swamp and get to find out how ghosts actually get their shrouds
• 5 new construction puzzles, it seems there is a witch who needs help, but find out for yourself (if you dare)
• 3 new wardrobe items (finish the story and you'll be rewarded)
• 1 new music track

Back to the question of trick or treat, I would say this counts as a treat, don't you think? Scientific and spooky greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-10-24 14:02:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there brick builders! Lego Bricktales is coming to VR! LEGO Bricktales will be LEGO's first game to release in VR and will include support for Mixed reality! [previewyoutube=gjZG94IKHtc;full][/previewyoutube] Lego Bricktales VR is now available for pre-order and will release on December 7th! Pre-order now and get an exclusive Alien Trooper outfit! - The Thunderful & ClockStone team! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-09-27 18:45:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! Summer is here, the sun is shining, which means I really should revisit my idea of the Infinite Ice Cream Machine. As I always say - a bit of brain freeze should be no hindrance to true scientific progress. But of course I'm not just here to tell you that summer is hot and ice cream is cold, so here are some other news: New Content:

• A brand new summer diorama! Accessible once you have finished the jungle world

Bugfixes:

• Various minor bugfixes

And this is what awaits you in the new summer diorama:

• A storyline where you help an ambitious band pull off a once in a lifetime beach concert
• 6 new construction puzzles. Stage design, fireworks, animated lights, the whole show.
• 3 new wardrobe items (help one of your new beach buddies pick up some trash and get spiffy gear in turn)
• 2 new music tracks, one perfect for chilling on the beach, and an upbeat chiptune rock song that is guaranteed to make you bop your bricky heads!

Ah yes, the joys of music. I do have to wonder what the youngins these days listen to... Scientific and summerly greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-07-12 13:20:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! My, my, how time flies. One moment you are enjoying a cup of supremely homogenized hot chocolate in the winter time, the next you are looking outside the window and it is already spring! Rest assured, as usual I have a number of improvements and fixes lined up. But it also seems like a white rabbit has found its way into the park, wonder what that means? New Content:

• A brand new Easter diorama! Accessible once you have finished the jungle world

Improvements:

• Added a "What's New" window in the menu to keep players updated about bigger changes
• Improved touch controls
• Minor graphics and lighting optimizations

Bugfixes:

• Fixed bug where player could get stuck with the dimension skill active
• Various minor bugfixes

[previewyoutube=2PzC8NlPpzA;full][/previewyoutube] Btw. this is what the free Easter update adds to LEGO Bricktales besides the new diorama:

• A storyline where you have to help the Easter bunny save Easter
• 5 new construction puzzles. Four with a specific challenges and one being an open area where you can build more freely
• 1 collection quest - Easter eggs will be hidden in the other existing worlds that you can find and use to purchase items
• 3 new wardrobe items (purchasable with eggs players have found in the world)
• 1 new music track

I think as my next experiment I'll try to build an ultrasonic egg cooker. It feels strangely topical. Scientific and Easterly greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-03-21 14:03:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Friday, friends! As I announced in the last broadcast here on Steam - and as you can see from the announcement of the Easter update for LEGO Bricktales - we are far from done with the game. And we want to continue to provide it with new content. There will be some free content additions, such as the Easter update. How it will further continue is not yet completely determined, and of course the feedback from you is crucial for this! It would really help us a lot if you could fill out this short survey. Among other things, it's about your personal opinion about LEGO Bricktales, your wishes how we should expand the game and which brands you find interesting to do so. All this should take no more than 5 minutes.
We really appreciate your support and feedback so far, and we really look forward to expand the LEGO Bricktales universe together with you! Have a pleasant and relaxing weekend! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-03-03 13:51:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends! Besides the current Midweek Madness, there is even more good news out the LEGO Bricktales universe: A free Easter update will hop to your screens really soon!
It introduces an egg-cellent new story set in an Easter diorama. Youll meet the friendly Easter bunny who has a problem with making eggs for this years Easter celebration. Disgruntled chickens and snow damage keep them from reaching their goals, so you will need to use your quick thinking and puzzle-solving abilities to help them save Easter. But let's not spoil too much! We will let you know when the free update is available. steamhappy Until then, happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-02-27 18:01:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Monday, friends of the brick! We hope you had a good start into the new week so far. If so, please let us kindly make it even better for you! And if not, hopefully we can make your Monday a little bit friendlier, because LEGO Bricktales is 20% off during a Midweek Madness as of now! steamhappy We also recorded a new stream for it, which you can watch in the broadcast player on the LEGO Bricktales page. Julian, Tim and I play a bit again and talk about, among other things, what has happened in terms of updates and expansions in LEGO Bricktales since its release. And what surprises the future might hold... Oh, and if you have already played LEGO Bricktales it would be great if you could give us your feedback in this little survey. That would really help us a lot. And it won't take long either, I promise! Well, enough fooling around. We wish you all lots of fun in LEGO Bricktales! Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2023-02-27 18:00:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends of the brick! Well, if that's not the perfect end to a successful year! steamhappy On December 8, the annual German Developer Awards took place in Cologne. There, games made in Germany, Austria and Switzerland that were published in the course of the past year are awarded in various categories. LEGO Bricktales was nominated in four categories, and in the end we won three of the four categories:

• Best Game Design
• Best Graphics
• Best Casual Game

We are overjoyed and really proud that the evening went so well for us and LEGO Bricktales! And we would like to congratulate all the winners and the nominees, because the competitors were really phenomenal! Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-12-13 08:17:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! I know, I know, it's been a while since you heard from me, I just needed to pivot from a hydraulic to a wind-powered hammock, and that ionized banana peeler doesn't peel all that well, it makes great smoothies though. R&D takes so much time... But, I'm sure you are more interested in the changes and fixes I made elsewhere: Improvements:

• Added UI scaling options
• Reworked UI for build mode
• Tutorial improvements
• Bricks can be nudged horizontally with arrow keys on keyboard when selected
• Added achievements button to main menu
• Improved mix of two City music tracks (removed troublesome frequencies)
• Set Vulkan as default graphics API on Linux
• Minor diorama changes that ensure playability when players use the "Help, I'm stuck" teleport feature
• Improved controls for touch devices

Bugfixes:

• Medieval [spoiler] destroy crates when raising water level in skill cave so players can always complete the destruction achievement [/spoiler]
• Caribbean [spoiler] fixed player getting stuck with hoverboard at the end of a rail (hopefully...)[/spoiler]
• Various minor bugfixes

My next invention? Just right for the winter season, a hand cranked rotor stator homogenizer for hot chocolate. Cozy cocoa beverage or not, I do hope you have a quiet and relaxing time leading into the end of the year. Scientific greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-12-05 14:46:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends of the brick! Good news to all of you - depending on your timezone of course: It's Thursday already. And the even better news: weekend already starts tomorrow. Woohoo! steamhappy Means you all hopefully have time to "sit back and relax"! Wow, what a transition... Don't we actually deserve a Steam Award for that already? Ha ha, because that is exactly the point. Like every year, Steam has opened up the possibility to nominate games for The Steam Awards with the Autumn Sale. And YOU have the power to decide! As we understood from your awesome feedback, our beloved LEGO Bricktales is a creative and relaxing experience - on your PC and on the Steam Deck. So, if that's your feeling, we would be more then super happy if you would nominate LEGO Bricktales for The Steam Awards category "Sit Back and Relax". That would be really appreciated! I hope you all have a relaxing weekend and enjoy your time off! Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-11-24 12:44:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Monday dear builders! And what a happy Monday that is! steamhappy You, who have spent hour after hour building your way through the dioramas of LEGO Bricktales, you will now receive an additional reward: As of now the Steam Community Items are available:

• 6 Emoticons
• 5 Profile Backgrounds
• 5 Trading Cards
• Badge (5 Levels + Foil Badge)

Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-24 13:09:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings fellow brick builders! Last weekend at RazerCon 2022 we announced Chroma support for LEGO Bricktales - and published it in the same course. So, if you have Razer Chroma peripherals connected to your computer, you should notice very quickly after launching the game that the RGB Illumination responds to the game. "A nice gimmick, but unnecessary!" you think? And hey, you might be true. But to be honest: In our opinion, a fancy RGB illumination is a perfect fit for LEGO Bricktales! If you happen to have a box full of LEGO bricks at hand, take a look inside please. So, what do you see? A large number of different, bright colors: red, green, blue, and so on. Not exactly 16.8 million colors like in the RGB color space, but you know where I am coming from. Ultimately, it's the many different colors that make building with the bricks so creative and breathe life into LEGO sets. And it's nothing different with LEGO Bricktales. [previewyoutube=9Zca_00Ovd8;full][/previewyoutube] All the different worlds that are included into the game have their own overall basic color: Jungle is green, desert is yellow, caribbean is blue, etc. And so the color mood of the game can be perfectly extended beyond the monitor by illuminating the mouse, mouse pad, headset and keyboard. And in case you use LED strips or ambient lights, you can immerse your whole room in the lush green of the jungle or the sandy yellow of the desert. This has a pretty cool effect! And talking about effects: All the 5 skills that you unlock in LEGO Bricktales have their own lighting effect as well! Taking a look on the skill selection wheel each skill has its own color as well: Electricity is yellow, hoverboard is purple, xray is greenish and so forth. Using those illuminates your whole setup in the corresponding color including special lighting effects. This makes it twice the fun to break crates and bushes with the smashing red stomping skill. So, if you've got the hardware (lucky you!), LEGO Bricktales will automatically play the effects from now on. Well, that is, you can turn them off, somewhere, probably, but why would you? They're awesome! steamhappy Happy (RGB illuminated) brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-21 14:30:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! And yet again, it's me, Grandpa. The good news is I built the hydraulic hammock. The bad news is it launched my test dummy into a nearby building, which is the opposite of relaxing. The other bad news is there's still some things to be fixed with the game. The other good news is I did get some improvements in. So I think overall that's good! Improvements:

• Added button in the options screen that teleports the player to a safe spot in the diorama in case they got stuck.
• City [spoiler] improved stability and performance of fire stairs spot. [/spoiler]
• Caribbean [spoiler] reduced friction of water drops for the water collector so they move more fluidly. [/spoiler]
• Caribbean [spoiler] reduced minimum amount of water drops needed to finish water collector by 2. [/spoiler]

Speaking of improvements, I do have this idea for an ionized banana peeler that should make it easier for anybody to get their recommended daily intake of potassium... Anyway, scientific greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-21 12:46:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends of the brick! It's been almost a week since the release of LEGO Bricktales, and things are slowly getting back on track for us. And I can't say it any other way than that we are super happy with how the game is being received by all of you! The second game update has also been released and fixes a few problems that you thankfully reported to us. We can not thank you enough for all the feedback - you are the best! Over the weekend, we also had some time to take a look at how LEGO Bricktales is rated by the press. And we are really happy and proud about that! Therefore, we would like to share a small excerpt from the press with you:

• Forbes "[...] Lego Bricktales is one of the most beautiful LEGO games to date."
• 4news.it / Score: 8.2 "LEGO Bricktales is a puzzle adventure that can provide a fair number of hours of entertainment. Its light and undemanding gameplay blends perfectly with some of the constructions that, on the other hand, require us to concentrate more and take longer to complete. The freedom that the developers have decided to allow us in the construction of our works is undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of this game."
• VG247 / Score: 4/5 "LEGO Bricktales is a breath of fresh air, and a tremendous surprise. Its 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 satisfying builds."
• TheSixthAxis / Score: 8 "LEGO Bricktales is a wonderful adventure that's full of the charms of playing with the iconic construction toy in real life. It's a gorgeous digital rendition with all its exquisitely crafted dioramas a delight to behold, and with puzzles that lean on Lego's greatest strengths."
• IGN Espana / Score: 7 "LEGO Bricktales offers a building adventure at the height of the famous toy franchise."
• GodisaGeek.com / Score: 8 "LEGO Bricktales is a puzzler that takes you back to the early days of LEGO, when the freedom to build what you want took centre stage. There're plenty of opportunities to build, explore, and bask in the gentle humour that we could all do with a little more of."
• GamesRadar+ / Score: 3.5/5 "LEGO Bricktales is a relaxing and entertaining way to spend your time that does manage to recreate that tranquil vibe of building something, anything, out of LEGO."
• GamersHeroes / Score: 8.5 "LEGO Bricktales is exactly the kind of game you would expect as both a work of Thunderful Games and a product of the LEGO brand. Seeing your creations come to life, even visually sickening ones, is a rewarding experience and a must-play for LEGO enthusiasts."
• gamepressure.com / Score: 8 "Whats better than building your own LEGO structures? Not having to clean up after yourself when you are done playing. Lucky for youLEGO Bricktales lets you do just that."
• Fortress of Solitude / Score: 86% "LEGO Bricktales is a great game and definitely worth adding to your collection as a LEGO fan. With a mix of puzzle-solving and adventuring, youre able to combine an element of exploration and finding creative ways to solve tasks."
• TheGamer / Score: 3.5/5 "LEGO Bricktales is a puzzle adventure that tested my physics knowledge in ways Ive not encountered since I last tried - and failed - to help my kid with their science homework."
• Games.cz / Score: 9/10 "A unique Lego game based on playing with bricks. Excellent building puzzles offer an unprecedented number of solutions and the beautiful world is a joy to discover. In fact, it's a wonder that a game like this hasn't been made for a long time - it perfectly shows the creativity and playfulness typical of Danish building bricks."
• GameStar.hu "The great thing about LEGO Bricktales is that it doesn't reinvent anything, it just returns to the days when even on the video game front, it was all about building and children's brainstorming, rather than relying on outside franchises. [...] LEGO Bricktales is the best thing to happen to LEGO in the video game space in recent times."
• ScreenRant / Score: 3.5/5 "Overall, LEGO Bricktales, much like the similar LEGO Builder's Journey, is a great little puzzle game that provides a real sense of LEGO building to the player. The customization and cute story keep the game interesting and the sandbox mode is a great way to practice building real LEGO sets. There is never just one specific answer to a puzzle and mixing things up makes for a fun and enjoyable game that would work for LEGO fans of any age."
• Eurogamer "Part adventure game, part construction simulator, Lego Bricktales lays strong foundations for a truer type of Lego experience."
• IGN / Score: 7 "LEGO Bricktales is full of good ideas, and while there will always be a place for the licensed LEGO adventure games, this is a change of pace Id welcome more."
• Out of Lives: "Quite frankly, this is a LEGO game like no other. If youre bored by the prospect of collecting studs this is the LEGO game youve been waiting for. LEGO Bricktales unlocks your creativity while challenging your understanding of physics and architecture at the same time."

Besides all the positive and productive feedback we got (and get) from you, such press reviews are additional balm for the battered developer soul. And that motivates us even more to continue working on LEGO Bricktales! So, please keep sending us further feedback. We will look at everything, and continue to improve the game. Big bricky promise! Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-18 13:59:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there bricky builders! It's me again, Grandpa! So I was planning to spend the weekend thinking about how to build a hydraulic hammock, but these bugs, they don't sleep! At all. So it was time to pick up the hammer again and get to fixing things... Bugfixes:

• Fixed Missing footstep sound for walk animation.
• Fixed various brick colliders.
• Fixed issue where rotating a crank wheel to open secret doors could lead to an open door that still couldn't be used.
• Fixed positioning issues where player potentially could get stuck.
• Z-Fighting and mesh clipping fixes.
• Fixed palette focus tutorial being visible in simulation.
• Caribbean near the end [spoiler] fixed issue where player couldn't cross the gangway onto the ship after successfully solving the puzzle. [/spoiler]
• City [spoiler] fixed inconsistent lever states when in the substation to restore electricity. [/spoiler]
• City [spoiler] fixed rail in underground lab being too near to the wall causing people to get stuck. [/spoiler]

Known Issues:

• Player getting stuck in Desert world when [spoiler]trying to insert hieroglyphs into obelisk to open pyramid door[/spoiler]. Community thread HERE

I do think we make a good team though. You just tell me what's wrong, and I will do my best to unwrong it! Now back to my hydraulic hammock... Scientific greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-17 14:21:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends, We announced Razer Chroma support for LEGO Bricktales at RazerCon a minute ago - and have published it in the same course! So don't be surprised if you start LEGO Bricktales with your Razer Chroma equipment that your peripherals illuminate corresponding to the gameplay on your screen! And - to celebrate that - we've started a sweepstakes that you can participate in AS OF NOW! We've teamed up with Razer and LEGO to offer you these awesome prizes:

• 1x Razer Blade 14 Gaming Laptop
• 1x Razer Kraken V3 Pro Gaming Headset
• 1x Razer DeathAdder V2 Gaming Mouse
• 1x LEGO Set "Loop Coaster"
• 1x LEGO Set "Motorized Lighthouse"
• 1x LEGO Set "Great Pyramid of Giza"
• 10x LEGO Bricktales Steam Key

How to take part? Click HERE or on the artwork above to enter our sweepstakes page on Gleam and follow the instructions there! Good luck everyone. We keep our fingers crossed for you! Thunderful & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-15 19:35:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Oh hello there bricky builders! Grandpa here. I do hope you have a jolly ol' time playing the game and coming up with your own wonderful LEGO constructions! But alas, the science of game development is tricky and there might have been one or two errors that slipped past my admittedly somewhat scattered attention, ahem... But rest assured, I have been tirelessly working on this machinery to make sure things are getting fixed. Pesky little bugs... Bugfixes:

• Animal collect quests finished for some players without having all collected: Community thread HERE
• "Delete Profile" - "Yes"-Button not pressable with controller
• "Hidden" objects partly visible before finding them :)
• Bricks sometimes falling down when released even if validly connected to another brick above
• Carousel spot seats not valid when placed too high but still within builds bounds
• Minifigure in desert market-stall spot had wrong colliders preventing some bricks from getting placed properly
• Fixed some brick colliders to better match their visuals
• Removed debug line in medieval well-spot
• Restored missing footstep sounds
• Vase in desert market-stall spot could be validly placed in the air

Improvements:

• Various objects repositioned to block the player less while moving around.
• Spoilers for Medieval world: [spoiler]Player-Minifigure could rotate when water-skill animation was already running. Skill was therefore cast into unwanted direction.[/spoiler]

Known Issues:

• "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime error" - crash for some players when starting the game: Temporary fix HERE

Should you still find some of the little beasts (which can't be possible at all!), then ... ahem ... please let me know. I constantly keep an eye on the Steam Community Hub. Academic word of honor! Scientific greetings! Grandpa https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-14 16:27:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

High five, friends of the brick! Since this is the most pleasant update of the last weeks and months, we also want to be pleasantly brief: LEGO Bricktales is finally available! steamhappy Wow, I can't tell you how happy I am (and how happy ALL OF US here at ClockStone and Thunderful are) that I can - representing everyone of both teams - finally write you these exact words! [previewyoutube=KeslQQNl1sk;full][TRAILER][/previewyoutube] Thanks to all of you out there for joining us on the long and bricky road to release! Hopefully you'll have as much fun playing LEGO Bricktales as we had developing it. And now, no more talk! Have a good time exploring the world, dioramas and construction spots instead! Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-12 15:02:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are sooooo close, friends! We've released a bunch of games now, but right before the release it's always like the first time. We are damn proud of LEGO Bricktales and confident in our work, but still extremely nervous about how the game will be received by all of you out there... And so that we can all sleep peacefully (or at least reasonably peacefully) on the last night, we would like to outline in this update what kind of game LEGO Bricktales is and what you can expect of it. Unfortunately, that's all we can do today. Nervousness and all that. You understand... So, let's go! LEGO Bricktales in a nutshell:

• Puzzle adventure game where you explore dioramas fully built out of LEGO bricks and solve problems through building
• 5 distinct worlds, 1 hub world, for a total of 40+ dioramas
• 1 self-contained story for each world and one overarching story to connect everything
• Intuitive and creative brick-by-brick building
• 68 construction spots
• A sandbox mode where you can freely build within a construction spot after you solved it
• 24 decorative bricks with 24 different unlockable colors for the sandbox mode
• 208 additional decorative parts for the sandbox mode, unlockable in 5 packages, 1 for each world
• 5 unlockable skills to interact with the dioramas and reach new areas as you go (or come back)
• 116 different wardrobe options (heads, headdress and hair, bodies, legs)
• Hidden collectibles and treasure chests to unlock bricks and wardrobe items
• Full mouse + keyboard and controller support
• Estimated playtime of 7-8 hours to finish the story, plus some more hours to reach 100% completion

This is LEGO Bricktales. No more, but also no less. And believe me, we are really looking forward to sharing our "bricky baby" with you tomorrow! Stay safe, lots of love and see you around building yourself through the brick tales! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-11 13:55:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there builders, I hope you are all enjoying your well-deserved weekend! steamhappy With the fifth part of our little making-of series "The Different Worlds Of LEGO Bricktales!" we published the last part of it yesterday. In case you have missed one or more of the updates (and want to learn more about LEGO Bricktales), I have summarised all of them here for you: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1898290/view/3303976637117366036 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1898290/view/3303976637134683272 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1898290/view/3293844171235128824 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1898290/view/3293844171254152034 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1898290/view/3318614513080397274 Meanwhile, as Wednesday's release draws closer, we're still putting the final bricks in place, metaphorically speaking. To make sure everything is lined up to hand this game over to all of you. A lot of time went into this, and we present it to you with a lot of pride. But we'd like to think the pride in seeing you create amazing things with it could surpass this. We're done building, if only for a brief moment, now it's your turn. Stay safe, lots of love and see you around Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-08 07:55:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Here we are, friends! The final piece of this making of series. I hope you enjoyed my musings so far and are looking forward to playing the real deal. Today we'll have a look at the in-game world of LEGO Bricktales, the underlying story, the different biomes and the beautiful visuals that come along with it. Have a look at the end of this for some exclusive new shots of what awaits you. Story writing for games is interesting. I suppose if you look at a novel for example as a narrative piece that's untethered from outside dependencies, a game story almost seems to swing the opposite way. Here we have to consider its marriage to all the other elements of a game, whether they are apparent to the player or just behind-the-scenes details. How does the story justify the game mechanics? What are technical limits we have to deal with? What can we communicate through graphics, animation or audio? What do we want to show? Story, no matter how much or how little emphasis you put on it, is just one wheel in the machine of a game and you have to make sure it fits right. So what does that look like for Bricktales?
Remember our vision? Now make it make narrative sense. The groundwork for Bricktales' story was very much utilitarian, since the bigger key points of the vision have been established beforehand. So first it was a matter of rounding up the boxes that we wanted to tick:

• You control a minifigure, building is a central game mechanic
• There should be multiple different worlds with a contained narrative each
• There should be an overarching narrative to wrap around everything
• We wanted the freedom to visit a variety of LEGO themes that are very contrasting

So launching off these initial considerations, we arrive at the next few stepping stones:

• You are a hero of sorts who travels to different places and helps people through building with LEGO bricks (albeit without the typical comic book underpinnings of spandex and cape)
• How do you travel to different places? A portal!
• How do you get a portal? Your scatterbrained inventor grandpa built it!
• Why do you want to travel around and help people? Your scatterbrained inventor grandpa needs happiness crystals to repair his neglected theme park!

Wait, happi.. what? This is were we got to play with the synergy of underlying story themes, values of the LEGO Group and the circumstances that the game was made in. Broadly speaking, LEGO products always had an undercurrent of playful humor and wholesome entertainment. In contrast to that, the entire world went through a pandemic as we were developing the game.
Clean energy by helping people. If only it were so simple. In the wake of this we felt like we really wanted a game that simply exudes a wholesome vibe, like a little haven of positive energy. So we ended up fully leaning into the story conceit of having a very direct gain by helping others, in this case actual raw energy that manifests itself in a crystal. It's very reminiscent of Pixar's Monsters Inc. in a way. Be kind to each other, thats the mantra. Now the stage was set to venture out into different worlds, so where to? And more importantly on our side, how the heck do we build all those worlds? Let's start with the latter point. I've alluded to the fact that committing to full LEGO dioramas would be quite a step. To illustrate, an average diorama would be about 70x70 knobs in size, some of bigger ones even getting close to 100x100. If you were to build one in real life they would span up to 1m into each direction.
Very early tile system prototype. We've never crunched the numbers, but the count of bricks easily sits in the multiples of ten thousands. If you were to place all the bricks by hand, a small change like moving a building just a bit to the side could turn into a week-long odyssey of taking entire chunks apart and painstakingly reassembling them. We'll probably delve into the tech more deeply at another time, but in the end we spent a good portion of a year with developing a tile-based approach to building dioramas to make iteration at a reasonable pace possible. But even with the tech in place, our artists (highlighting our chief builders Nathalie and Stephan here) had to learn how to design aesthetically pleasing LEGO constructions, at a scale and quality that goes way beyond any childhood creations of theirs. It's a bit like pixel art, or Minecraft. LEGO bricks create a unique visual appeal by simplifying shapes and adding a level of abstraction that spurs your imagination.
How it started how its going. Theres levels to this. But conversely, LEGO bricks offer a myriad of parts to build with, so designing with them is a skill that is distinctly unique. How do you balance the mix of knobs and smooth surfaces? What parts and techniques do you choose to achieve just the right rounding of a piece of terrain? What limits do you have with how thin or broad you can make a road, or a tree branch or just about anything else? How do you present any shape with the blocky bits that you have? Composition matters, and can get incredibly complicated as LEGO enthusiasts all over the world can attest to. Their incredible work certainly has been a great source of learning and inspiration for us. But never mind the tech and the skill involved, we still havent answered the question which worlds we wanted to show then? Well, in some way we were spoiled for choice because there are so many possibilities, so many distinct locations one could travel to. I can't say where the portal might lead to in the future, but here are the biomes we ended up with for now. Theme Park Your hub and home base so to speak. A disheveled theme park that you restore to full glory as you go (and design the different rides along the way).
Jungle If you are taking a trip far away, why not go into nature and surround yourself with greenery? Preferably without plane crashes and potential mountain spirits, but you have to take what you get.
Desert Bright yellow desert, scorching heat, ancient tombs, a looming curse and oh hey, look, a cat! Here, kitty, kitty!
Medieval The king awaits ye! Theres a dragon causing ruckus and thou shalt take a sword and wait, has anybody ever thought about a non-violent solution to this?
City That big portal in the road sure will cut into the city repair budget, not to mention the evil alien bots roaming the streets. But nothing that the power of music and a bit of high voltage cant solve (itll make sense, youll see).
Caribbean Arrr, answer me the age-old philosophical question, what is a pirate without rum, or a ship? A sad pirate! Well, theres options other than rum, but a ship seems rather essential, dont you think?
Thats it for now, some insight into the different worlds that the game has to offer and how they came together. The release of Bricktales isnt far away, and we cant wait to see what you think of it. Even more so, we cant wait to see what kind of wonderful, intricate and unique constructions you will come up with. So see you around, and as always, stay safe and keep building. Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-07 14:25:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there Next Fest fans! With LEGO Bricktales being part of the current Steam Next Fest October we are very happy to announce our second (and last) bricky Next Fest broadcast here on Steam! Watch once again Thunderful's Julian and Tim play the game while sharing some background information about it. So, feel free to tune in: October 7th, 5:00-5:45pm CEST/8:00-8:45am PT Happy Steam Next Fest to all of you! steamhappy Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-06 10:22:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

High five, friends of the brick! Sure, it's still one week till the release of LEGO Bricktales, but there is also some awesome news to share with you TODAY: LEGO Bricktales was recently reviewed and got verified for the Steam Deck! Woohoo! So, what does that mean for you? It's quite simple! You can enjoy LEGO Bricktales and its "brick by brick" building on the Steam Deck wherever you are: at home on the couch, inside a plane, on a bus or a train, or even during your lunch break at work - just about anywhere! Once the game is out, grab your Deck and enjoy LEGO Bricktales! And until then, you can play the demo on your Steam Deck. Have fun! Oh, and please let us know what you think. steamhappy Happy Steam Next Fest week to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-05 11:56:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya friends of the brick! With LEGO Bricktales being part of the current Steam Next Fest October we are very happy to announce our very first bricky broadcast here on Steam! Watch Thunderful's Julian and Tim play the beginning of the game while sharing some background information about it. steamhappy So, feel free to tune in later today: October 4th, 5:00-5:45pm CEST/8:00-8:45am PT Happy Steam Next Fest to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-04 13:42:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello there, builders! I've previously written about why we made building with LEGO bricks one of our design pillars, but now it's time to dive into the how, and the challenges that came with it. When Joni Mitchell sang "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone" she hardly meant the 10 fingers and 3D vision we are usually endowed with, but hoo boy, in the context of building it surely applies. Consider this, with real, physical LEGO bricks there's all these little things we don't pay much attention to, but ultimately contribute to our building experience: Turning your construction around to look at it from all angles within seconds, focusing your eyes on a particular piece, the tactile feel to assess shapes, using your fingers to precisely place a brick while little knobs guide it into the right position, there's really no competing with that. But at least we could try to create a digital building experience that's worthy enough and maybe can even offer some new possibilities.
Our earliest documented movement prototype. Yes, we had a brake button. No, it wasnt good. First comes the input method of choice. Barring some future experiments we support mouse and keyboard, gamepad, and touch. All 3 work with the concept that you have a pointer to manipulate your bricks with. Intuition would say that it's simple enough, wherever the pointer goes you draw a line into space and plonk the brick onto whatever it hits, right? What you see is what you get. Well, not quite. Depth is out the window so you end up with tricky situations where one moment you hit something that's close up front, and the next moment you move the pointer across something that's way in the back, and within few millimeters of movement you end up with a brick that's jumping around more than X-Men's Nightcrawler after 5 cups of coffee. No dice. How about a relative approach? We grab a brick and the pointer movement just tells you which direction the brick should go. This is a variant we had early on. All sorts of values drove the movement, speed ramping up and down, resistance when you were bumping against other bricks, or even when you were on a surface or off a surface.
Early projections prototype. It got a bit crazy. In some places it felt nice, but in the long run it proved tough to dial in reasonable values for different situations and input methods. Not to mention the code that governed the movement of a brick became complicated enough to give a programmer block-shaped nightmares. In the end we settled on something that I'd best describe as: let the brick follow the pointer as much as possible, but with some restrictions and tweaks in regards how far it can travel. As you play you might notice little things like a brick riding up a wall or a rubber-band effect appearing when you bump against an obstacle. There's numerous little things like that we which we put in there to affect how a brick moves. Next up on the list of challenges, spatial perception. Interestingly enough this is a problem that 3D platformers also have lamented since their very inception. It simply isn't all that easy to gauge depth on a 2D screen. In turn, if you want to position something, whether it's Mario jumping over a pit or a LEGO 2x4 brick, you're going to have a harder time. What do they do in the case of 3D platformers? Slyly add a shadow that projects straight down regardless of the light angle. Similarly we ended up playing with some visualizations to support your spatial awareness. And similarly to our movement experiments, we went way overboard in the beginning.
Early prototype after changing to 3D palettes. We tried everything: lines, projections, planes, shadows, all of them combined, some more intrusive, some less so. And while most of those additions added some information for the player, we had to be careful not to make it look like some view through a cyberpunkian set of AR glasses. Your focus should be on the bricks, and ideally we'd have a view that is as clean as it can be. So again after what felt like throwing buckets of paint at a wall we ended up dialing all the visualizations back to what we have today. Hopefully enough to help you, but not so much that it becomes intrusive. One very interesting detail that we came across when dealing with the topic of spatial perception was the palette of bricks that one builds with. Early iterations of the game put all the bricks into a 2D menu. They'd be tidily packed away and it gave us a lot of flexibility to have a variety of them. But something was lacking. Something about squeezing LEGO bricks into a 2D interface took away from the building experience, even if we couldn't quite put our finger on it.
A lot of math under the hood. A quick experiment to place the palette in the 3D space gave us the confirmation, and it's subtly ingenious. From the moment you start seeing LEGO bricks in three-dimensional space in front of you, your brain immediately starts perceiving them differently, turning and tilting them in your head, going through the countless permutations in which you can combine them. It made for a stark difference in how a player could approach a puzzle, so the feature of having 3D palettes stayed, even if it meant having to laboriously figure out how to arrange them. I could probably dig into the nitty gritty of how building works more, but for now that was some insight to illustrate how rocky the road has been, just with the controls alone. But we are not done yet. Now that the player has the tools to build with, what is it that they should even build? Let's start with laying some groundwork. We knew we wanted the building to be goal-oriented, and we knew that we wanted to involve physics.
A cart to collect coconuts. Alliterations optional. With physics, LEGO bricks again displays their unique quirks. The stability of a cluster of bricks is defined by its knobs and tubes and how they connect together. Putting weight in certain places creates unique forces of torque that distribute within. But up until a cluster breaks apart it is simultaneously amazingly rigid. With stock physics engines you have the give and flex of joint connections and small imprecisions that make it incredibly hard to model such behavior, especially when it must run smoothly. So our resident physicist and mathematician Michael ended up writing a custom physics engine just to simulate LEGO bricks realistically. With physical simulation in our bag of tricks we could then start thinking what kind of challenges the player could encounter. How do you define goals for building? How do you define success? How do you distill something like a table, or a car into a clear set of criteria? In the end we tried to come up with a large variety of building challenges that range from the very physical, like a bridge (we really can't escape our past, can we) or walkway, to the very aesthetical, like a throne. Sometimes stability is important, sometimes balance, other times you are tasked to incorporate specific parts or place them in a certain way. And most of the time we give the player the freedom to find their own solution. Because when you can get creative, building with LEGO bricks becomes special.
Might as well do it with style then. Speaking of creativity, to top it off, the puzzles have what we call a Sandbox Mode. Once you solve a puzzle you can activate said mode and in addition to having you regular brick limits removed, you also get new sets of bricks that you can use to take your constructions into new, creative and beautiful directions. These bricks include different colors and one set for each of the 5 worlds you travel to, and you can unlock them as you progress through the game. So make sure to uncover all the secrets to maximize your creative potential. This concludes our peek into what it took to realize building as a game mechanic, the challenges we as developers faced and the type of challenges you'll encounter in the game. We're almost through, in the next and final piece for this series I'll delve into the story, the different worlds you'll travel to in the game and some of the techniques we employed to build the 40+ beautiful dioramas. Until then, stay safe and keep building. Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-04 13:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there builders! Once again, it's about time for the fabulous Steam Next Fest! Until October 10th hundreds of demos are live here on Steam, connected to hundreds of streams, developer specials, and much more. Exciting times for sure and you definitely don't want to miss this! And you guessed it already: LEGO Bricktales is aboard for Steam Next Fest in October as well! Just scroll down the product page and click the "Download" button to get your hands on the demo! It includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first diorama worlds in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different and creative ways. I hope you enjoy playing our demo! If you're having a good time, do us a favor and click on "Follow" as well as on "Add To Your Wishlist" and leave your feedback in the Steam Community Hub. That would really help us a lot. And as you are trying some demos already, check out the additional three titles from Thunderful that are also part of Steam Next Fest: Paper Cut Mansion, Wavetale and Togges. Enjoy! Happy Steam Next Fest to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-10-03 17:00:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Friday, friends of the brick! I wonder, when LEGO bricks were first designed, did the LEGO group ever think about the distinct sonic qualities that they would possess? I can't imagine there was conscious sound design happening, but physical LEGO bricks certainly has gone on to create a soundscape that fuels everything from childlike joy, to meditative building to creativity and multiple generations worth of nostalgia. Anybody who has played with LEGO bricks knows the distinct rustle of digging through a pile of bricks, or the unmistakable one-two punch of two bricks connecting. First the bright click of the pieces colliding, then the punctuation with a light creak as they lock together. And yet, creating the sound effects to accompany LEGO Bricktales wasn't just a matter of going to the proverbial plastic well. We had to toy with what the bricks represented, pardon the pun. It's an interesting conundrum of the fantasy that LEGO bricks draws you into. Yes, if we were all unimaginative and heartless it's just ABS plastic in the end, injection molded at a precision that would make NASA engineers blush. But do you think the kid that drags a LEGO car across the carpet and goes "brrrr" thinks the engine block is anything less than a roaring high octane V8?
Zap! The result was a two-pronged approach when it came to giving the game audio life. We consider two situations the diorama and the building puzzle. When in a diorama, whether you run around with your minifigure, watch a cutscene or zoom out to observe the entire level from all angles, we try to immerse you as much as we can in the idea that what you see is LEGO bricks, but what you experience is the environment and story of a world that is vibrant and alive. In this context at best we lightly hint at the underlying plastic origin of things and rather lean wholly into what they represent. Portals warble and buzz with electric hum, motors burn gasoline in rapidly firing cylinders, trees shake and leaves rustle with a light crisp, water is, well, wet. It certainly sounds wet. The trademark plastic click is only a small punctuation here and there, like a little wink and nod.
Place bricks and chill. In turn, whenever you enter a so-called construction spot, we flip the coin and almost do the reverse. We clear the stage, we pare down the environment to give your building prowess and the separate bricks the spotlight, and accordingly, we pull you back into the focused soundscape of small plastic clicks and clacks that you might be very familiar with. Relax, build, solve the challenge, do it your way. That was one area of work for me and our long-time audio master of choice, Maximilian Stroka. On the other side of the aural fence, conversations with him to nail down the music were ongoing. I have to be honest, it felt like me placing the most annoyingly complicated Starbucks secret menu order under the sun. It kind of went like this: "The camera perspective is a bit like a 3D platformer, but it's not a platformer where you run and jump, so we don't want something that's really energetic and hyper. It's more of an adventure game, we still want something that propels the player through the story, like a beat. But no, wait, it's also a puzzle game, so multiple times throughout the game you sit down and devote a long time to building, so it should be laid back as well. Can you do something like that? Relaxed, but not too relaxed? And yes, we have outdoor and indoor dioramas. In one moment you are underneath a sunny sky, the next you are in a damp cavern. And yes, we have 5 different biomes, all completely distinct in locale and visuals. So can you do all of that, but in 5 completely different musical styles, some modern, some old? And did I mention? We are still working on putting everything together, so rather than give you screenshots to spur your creativity you just have to imagine everything from the scattered descriptions I'm giving you. Thaaanks." In all honesty, I think he knocked it out of the park.
"Give me a desert bazaar track. With a slight hint of mummy curse." Some of the specifics of the music were pretty interesting to figure out. LEGO Bricktales isn't meant to show real world locations, but still we'd end up drawing inspirations from different musical styles across the globe, trying to be respectful towards our influences but also wondering what exactly it could be that reinforces the vibe of a particular biome. In some cases it seemed more straight forward, worlds like the Medieval biome had clearer source materials to draw from. Others were quite the puzzle to find a good fit. I remember discussing the City biome and trying to thread the needle between something that feels like a city musically, but at the same time shouldn't sound like a sprawling metropolis, we weren't going for sheer size nor busy streets after all. Our musings took us into the directions of a subdued J Dilla style MPC beat, but with the story detail of an otherworldly attack by alien robots and filtered through Max' musical sensibilities it became wholly its own thing over time. The final Caribbean biome was a fun surprise for me as well. In one track Max manages to evoke the old-timey feel of a pirate hideout, and right next to it the beach features modern arrangements of organ and steel drum without feeling out of place. Not to mention the mysteries that lie in the caverns down below.
And here and there we got to have fun and fall out of line a bit, like a synth-heavy minimalist ambient piece for your robot sidekick's encounter with their previous alien ties, a small shout-out to The LEGO Movie's "Everything Is Awesome!!", or an entire track devoted to a diorama filled with cats that Max banged out in a delirious late night session. You gotta hear it to believe it. Thats it for now, a little insight into the sonic side of LEGO Bricktales. Next time around Ill dive into the challenge of one of our central game mechanics, building with bricks. But until then, stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-09-30 14:30:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heya fellow builders! "What is LEGO Bricktales?" - At face value the question seems straightforward to answer, no? LEGO Bricktales is a puzzle-adventure game based on LEGO bricks. The player has to help their grandfather restore his theme park, and imbued with the power of building and a trusty robot sidekick at their side they travel into different worlds and get what they need by helping people along the way. But that doesn't quite paint the whole picture! It doesn't describe how the question felt when we tried to answer it at the beginning of this project. The weeks and months of deliberating and prototyping, the attempt to figure out the strengths of both ClockStone and LEGO and where the meeting point between those two would be. After all we needed to figure out the right pieces to lay the foundation of what this game would become. So let's try this again. I'd say it's a heartfelt attempt by us to capture some of the LEGO magic that we felt in a physical realm and to give it life in a digital world. In a nutshell, I'd describe our vision of it like this:

• Puzzles that involve brick by brick building with LEGO elements
• Embedded in dioramas, fully built out of LEGO bricks
• Wrapped in exploration and story

This has been our guiding light. Three X's scrawled into the parchment of a treasure map in bright red, but the road to not only unearth all three aspects but to bring them into balance has certainly been winding. I will talk at length about how we got there in the future, but let's look at how we decided on them in the first place. Building Brick By Brick LEGO bricks and building is an association like peanut butter and jelly, it just goes together. If not more so, I dare say the very foundation of the LEGO universe is the act of building. And would you look at that? With a series of Bridge Constructor titles under our wing, gameplay revolving around building is something we are certainly familiar with. But going from 2D to 3D, from uniform wooden and metal struts to the incredible variety of LEGO bricks wouldn't be easy. What is it about building with LEGO elements that would make us dare that transition?
Early mockup. Our Bridge Constructor past clearly evident. It is intuitive. People of all ages do it and can learn it within seconds. Easy to learn, hard to master. From small sets you built as a little kid, to the sprawling and intricate builds made by enthusiasts and professionals, the potential for refinement is seemingly endless. And especially for us puzzle designers, LEGO dances in this wonderful space between restriction and creativity. I best describe it like this: I hand a hundred people a small bag of bricks each and tell them to build me a car, I'm feeling good about betting that I will get a hundred different cars back. They are cars all the same, but they are your specific version of a car. And at the same time that restricted selection of bricks was enough to nudge your creativity into a specific direction, to give you something tangible and solid rather than having you stare at the proverbial blank canvas. We wanted to leverage that energy. Well, as obvious as the focus on building seemed, the execution wouldn't be quite as simple and certainly is part of why this space has been fairly unexplored in LEGO games. Going from physical LEGO shapes that can be observed in all its three-dimensionality and can be manipulated with 10 fingers, to the interface of a 2D screen and controller or mouse is a tricky transition. But in the end, the appeal was clear as day, and we wanted to take the challenge. LEGO Dioramas We knew into which direction we wanted to take the building puzzles, but then we also needed to present them in the right way. Rather than a string of disconnected challenges they needed a proverbial three-dimensional LEGO bed to lie in. Or at least that was an early thought. It was a brief statement in early design docs, somewhere between innocence and confidence, that of course it would make sense to embed the puzzles in a full LEGO environment. We were inspired by the breathtaking real LEGO dioramas that enthusiasts have built, and we wanted to follow suit in a digital space.
The very first diorama prototype, with real bricks at a smaller scale. But first prototypes made us realize we'd have to manipulate tens of thousands of bricks for any given diorama. Doubt creeped in. It's one thing to build it as a display piece, but to have something that is going to be filled with gameplay, and as developers know, will change drastically with each iteration of the gameplay, it seemed like too daunting of a task. But the buzz never went away. Whenever we would even hint at the idea of having full LEGO dioramas, whenever we would show pictures around of our crude first attempts, the reaction was wholly positive. So, after a long while we decided to take the plunge. Let's go full LEGO. Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Exploration And Story And lastly, launching off the idea of dioramas, since they would take so much effort to produce, we wanted to make it worthwhile to spend your time there, rather than having them just be a visual backdrop as you rush through from puzzle to puzzle. We wanted to wrap them in story, so everywhere you go there's interesting characters to meet, funny bits to see that showcase the trademark irreverent, yet wholesome LEGO humor, narrative motivations to find why you would go and build the things that you build.
Early story progression mockup. We wanted to add mechanics on top that encourage you to zoom out and look at every nook and cranny of the diorama, and while you take in its beauty you might find a secret or two that you won't get to just yet, but with a little patience and progress you will get to soon. Dive in, stay there, look around, enjoy. So there it is, like bricks clicking into place, a vision that coalesced by looking at LEGO elements with open eyes and being honest about what appealed to us about it, reservations be damned. Well, not wholly damned as we would find out, but we'll learn about this another day, and in the meantime I'll leave you with the very first mockup we produced for the game. We've come a long way:
See you all in the next update! Until then, friends - stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-09-27 14:29:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there friends! The release of LEGO Bricktales is right around the corner: there are only 20 days left until October 12th. Exciting times ahead! You can already try out how LEGO Bricktales works with a demo here on Steam, but we'd like to tell you a bit more about the game and behind the scenes with our little making-of update series "Brick by Brick" until release. I would say that the first update pretty much speaks for itself. We - that is the Austrian dev team ClockStone Software - would like to introduce ourselves briefly with profiles so that you know who created LEGO Bricktales:
Name: Tri (pronounced Chi) Position: Game Director My first LEGO experience: A big yellow canvas bag with orange-brownish flower prints that was filled with an absolute hodgepodge mix of LEGO bricks and essentially called out to me to be creative at the tender age of 5 or so. I got a headstart with DUPLO bricks though. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Just about anything from design, to animation to audio, but mostly wrangling the project as a whole. Having experience in all production disciplines really helped because Bricktales required an incredible amount of interdisciplinary work, probably the most of all the projects we've ever done. My favorite diorama: Probably the dragon vale. It's really pretty, but maybe it's just my inner D&D nerd shining through. Collected bananas: I'm fructose intolerant, so none Name: Stephan Position: Art Director My first LEGO experience: A carefully handed down cardboard box filled with bits and pieces of bricks from various sets from the 80s, with bite marks and all you need for a good story. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Searching for various answers to the question: "How to make a world of digital LEGO bricks look exciting". Well, first we had to make them appear at all - and then very many of them. I focused primarily on the diorama environments and how to create them ... while also taking care of how all the other elements fit together visually. My favorite diorama: Being the first diorama we made, I have a love-hate relationship with the first Jungle diorama Collected bananas: Yes Name: Matthias Position: Designer My first LEGO experience: A set with two cowboys in my school cone! Those were actually brick-built with huge heads, not the typical minifigures yet that everybody knows today. After this, it was houses, vehicles and people from the Town theme, still love this stuff today. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Designing "construction spots" together with a talented team. These spots are the places where players build stuff with LEGO bricks. Also organizing everything around the little stories and dialogues in the worlds and having all of this localized to ten other languages. And finally organizing internal and external playtesting and QA. The backlog is empty. (Don't look into the backlog... it is empty I said.) My favorite diorama: The Desert town bazaar. It totally smiles at you all over the place with its shiny, sandy cheerfulness and the bustling market scenery. Collected bananas: Up to now only 60 or 70. There are still so many chests waiting to be found and opened in the Jungle world! Name: Dominic Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: Good question. Dunno. Maybe stepped on one or two bricks when my older brother started playing with them. I bet I have stolen some from time to time. :) What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Everything from adapting our existing systems to designing, prototyping, iterating, redesigning and - oh we have to get back to the drawing board - and re-iterating new project specific systems and ideas, for example the build controls or the whole storytelling and game progress stuff. My favorite diorama: I think it's the Desert Skill-Cave. It was a pain to come up with the logic and rough layout for the diorama but now there is this nice little brain teaser as a refresher between all the building. After the designers laid their hands on it, it became even better. ;) Collected bananas: There is no bananas! Name: Helmut Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: I remember green gardens with flowers, houses, spaceships, tracked vehicles, steam locomotives, helicopters and people everywhere, tiny brave Minifigure people... Oh, and that LEGO brick up my nose! Probably should've started with DUPLO bricks. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Lots of coding, more coding and coding. And also a bit of designing. And more coding and a bit more designing. And then more coding and testing afterwards, and then more coding. Did I mention annoying the designers? My favorite diorama: Is that a trick question? Probably the one with the kraken. Octopi are such intelligent animals. And the way they move! And it has pirate stuff. If it is not a trick question that is. Collected bananas: Right between not-sweet-enough and too-sweet. Name: Nathalie/Nate Position: General Artist My first LEGO experience: I got the Black Knight's Castle set as a kid. The glow-in-the-dark ghost was my favorite Minifigure to play with. They featured in a lot of adventures, as well as in some mixed-media ones! What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Minifigure assets and character animations, as well as building props for the various environments. My favorite diorama: Desert pyramid. No wait, wherever the Pirate ship happens to be at. No wait, the Medieval castle exterior. No wait... Collected bananas: Ask me about donuts instead. Name: Christoffer Position: Artist My first LEGO experience: I built Scandinavian looking houses using all kinds of colored bricks. It also had the dragon in the garden. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: In the Clockstone office I have seen tables with nothing but tea mugs and computers become replaced. Now, what I once thought were impossible LEGO constructions have come to take their place. So take a seat and hear my tale, for I have seen how LEGO Bricktales became molded into the virtual plane. I have seen a transmutation of the office's reality-grounded LEGO bricks, for within the virtuality-grounded world of Bricktales they have reappeared with the same dimension, color and weight. And yes, I have seen wide into the depths of Bricktales, of which you can only see a small part as you stare into your rectangular screens. I have seen the entirety of its world, all the ends of its dimensions, and all that exists in between. I've seen how it has shifted and morphed its geometry, forming its beautiful rivers and caves beneath. Within its borders I've seen construction spots come to be and be replaced, changed and finally set into place. This was the doing of my hands. But I wash my hands of responsibilities regarding the cat problem. My favorite diorama: The cave that is in the Medieval world. It is so cool. Collected bananas: No but I've collected many of the apes in Ape Escape which DO collect bananas! Name: Kevin Position: Level Designer / Programmer My first LEGO experience: Probably the LEGO train set I got from my parents. Every room was cramped with train tracks making it hardly possible to walk in them ;P. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Setting up all the worlds, ranging from quests, secrets and puzzles. There is definitely no part in this game I don't know like the back of my hand. In addition I was involved with coding some tools and bug-fixing. My favorite diorama: I don't know if a specific diorama pops into my mind that stands out, since they are all beautiful. But I definitely like the catnip storage room. Who doesn't like a big room with dozens of cats in it?! Collected bananas: Too many to count! Name: Michael Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: I can't actually remember my very first encounter with LEGO bricks (and I built a lot!). But what comes first to my mind is the incredibly versatile way of using them. I loved to combine them with other toys to make complex machines even with hydraulic and electric components. It definitely got my career as a physicist started. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: I programmed the physics that compute the forces and torques acting on the LEGO bricks when you run the simulation on your own constructions. So I'm the one to blame if you build something and it breaks ;) Also I helped out on tricky shader programming issues including rewriting the render pipeline to improve performance. My favorite diorama: I love the desert with it's Egyptian style tombs. Collected bananas: No time to collect bananas, needed to hunt (coding) bugs instead. Name: Rainer Position: Senior Technical Artist My first LEGO experience: Building giant Spaceships that could reach galaxies far far away. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Making things look pretty that needed sparkly effects. My favorite diorama: Ohhh... that's a tough one. Can't decide. They all look REAL nice Collected bananas: Mostly bacon. Bananas are for monkeys. Name: Andreas Position: Programmer / QA My first LEGO experience: I don't really remember my first experience with LEGO bricks, but I do remember playing with the metroliner and freight rail runner a lot (which my siblings had already built). What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Testing the game, trying to break stuff, reporting bugs and other issues and making sure those things were actually fixed once they got fixed. My favorite diorama: If I had to choose a single one... probably random ("dragon vale", "Desert bazaar", "wizard lab"); Collected bananas: Well, first I collected 10, then 50, then 9999999, then -1 and then kjdlfjaksdhf. Name: Nicolas Position: Intern/Designer First LEGO experience: Back when i was 3 years old, my family and I already had a huge collection of LEGO bricks and when I saw the pile of bricks I just grabbed some of them and built something that just came to my mind at the moment. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: I got involved midway into the project and worked on designing and prototyping Bricktales' building puzzles, the so called construction spots. My favorite diorama: I dont know why, but the Medieval castle diorama always spoke to me. Collected bananas: When I was working on the project, they werent implemented yet. And suddenly you know us as well as we do. In the coming updates, we'll talk about how the idea for LEGO Bricktales came about, which different LEGO worlds are included in the game and how the brick by brick building at the construction spots works. See you all in the next update! Until then, friends - stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-09-23 16:25:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

High five, friends of the brick! Without many words, let's get straight to the point: We are super happy to announce that LEGO Bricktales will be available from October 12 on PC and consoles! Woohoo! steamhappy And to celebrate the day there's a new release date announcement trailer for all of you: [previewyoutube=7ynGpykqCo8;full][/previewyoutube] It's less than a month until the release and there will be a lot going on here on Steam in the upcoming weeks! So, follow LEGO Bricktales to be the first to know about all of our updates and stuff. And of course, if youre excited about LEGO Bricktales, dont forget to add the game to your wishlist! Happy LEGO Bricktales Release Date Announcement Day! Your LEGO Bricktales Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-09-15 12:00:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

gamescom is back! steamhappy After two years without gamescom taking place in Cologne, the world's largest computer and video games event is finally back in 2022, and that has to be celebrated! So, join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth in Hall 8.1 B-021 if you want to get your hands on the freshly updated demo of LEGO Bricktales. The demo includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways. And for all of you who can't come to gamescom in Cologne, we'll bring gamescom to you: The demo is not only playable at gamescom, but also here on Steam. If you like the demo, please follow LEGO Bricktales to be the first to know about all our upcoming announcements. And of course, if youre excited about LEGO Bricktales, don't forget to add the game to your wishlist! Happy gamescom to all of you! The LEGO Bricktales Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-08-23 17:06:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

High five, friends of the brick! Summer is full of festivals and music. But did you know that a virtual music festival is also possible?! Let us introduce you to the Save & Sound event a celebration of music in games! Join us July 14 - 18 right here on Steam for one of the largest digital expos about audio and music in games. Featuring concerts, deep-dives, and mashups from 70+ developers from around the world. You can find the full schedule of livestreams on the event page. As a part of Save & Sound there is a chat with game director Tri Do Dinh and Maximilian Stroka, the composer of LEGO Bricktales! Join them taking a deeper look at the creation process of the music for the game. Tune in on Friday (July 15) at 11am PDT / 8pom CEST to learn more! See you their! Your LEGO Bricktales Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-07-14 17:39:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

High five, friends of the brick! This year's LEGO CON Live Stream is right around the corner. That means official and exclusive news, exciting announcements and peeks-behind-the-curtain into the LEGO Group. The virtual show will be streaming LIVE from LEGO House, Billund on Saturday 18th June! Tune in at 5pm in London, 12pm New York and 9am Los Angeles! And as LEGO Bricktales is part of the show we are celebrating LEGO CON together with you, the LEGO teams and the involved partners with a special LEGO CON Event Page! This focuses on recent and upcoming games and offers you the whole range of LEGO branded games to special LEGO CON prices! As part of LEGO CON, you can try out a demo of LEGO Bricktales for the first time here on Steam! The demo includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first diorama worlds in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different and creative ways. Follow LEGO Bricktales here on Steam to be the first to know about all our announcements. And of course, if youre excited about LEGO Bricktales, dont forget to add the game to your wishlist! Happy LEGO CON to all of you! Your LEGO Bricktales Team P.S. All Bridge Constructor titles by LEGO Bricktales developer ClockStone are currently on sale! Check them out HERE! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-06-16 17:02:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings again builders, We have some good news for you again: PAX East has just opened its doors in Boston, and LEGO Bricktales is there! For the second time, the game is playable in public. So come to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center from April 21-24 and join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth! The demo includes the beginning of LEGO Bricktales as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways! At the Thunderful Publishing booth, you can also get your hands on five other playable games: Cursed to Golf, Tinkertown, Togges, Paper Cut Mansion and Hell Pie! See you all at PAX East in Boston! ClockStone & Thunderful https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-04-21 14:00:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings builders, We have good news for you: Today WASD opens its doors in London, and LEGO Bricktales will be there! For the first time, the game is playable in public. steamhappy So if you don't have anything better to do from April 7-9 (and what would that?) come to the Tobacco Dock and join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth! The demo includes the beginning of LEGO Bricktales as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways! At the Thunderful Publishing booth, you can also take a look at four other games that can also be played: Cursed to Golf, Tinkertown, Swordship and Hell Pie! See you all the the WASD in London! ClockStone & Thunderful https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-04-07 09:00:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings builders, Finally the bricks are out of the box now and we can unveil our brand new project: LEGO Bricktales! After building bridges with our beloved Bridge Constructor franchise for more than 10 years, it felt like a logical step to bring our builder approach to the next level. And believe me, we couldnt be happier to do this in collaboration with the LEGO Group! But don't get me wrong, LEGO Bricktales is not a game about building bridges with LEGO bricks. No, it's much more! It is a digital adventure, where players follow a charming story across 5 different colorful diorama biomes (a dense and lush jungle, a sun-drenched desert, a bustling city corner, a towering medieval castle and tropical Caribbean islands) all fully built from LEGO bricks. As you explore these diverse worlds, we want you to unlock your creativity by building your own solutions to the many puzzles you will face. [previewyoutube=YJQjQ-nfJRY;full][/previewyoutube] In each diorama, there are LEGO minifigures who need your help. While exploring the environments, you will discover a variety of construction spots with their own sets of bricks and its up to you to figure out a build that will work. Use the intuitive brick-by-brick building mechanic to solve puzzles and bring your solutions to life. The scope of these puzzles range from purely aesthetic creations such as market stands and music boxes, up to functional physics-based puzzles like building cranes, gyrocopters and - of course - bridges. There must always be a bridge. We are really looking forward to showing you more LEGO Bricktales in the near future. Follow LEGO Bricktales here on Steam and sign up to the newsletter on bricktal.es to be the first to know about all our announcements. And of course, if youre excited about LEGO Bricktales, dont forget to add the game to your wishlist! Until then, friends - stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/

[ 2022-03-24 23:05:24 CET ] [ Original post ]