Name | LEGO Bricktales | ||
Developer | ClockStone | ||
Publisher | Thunderful Publishing | ||
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Release | 2022-10-12 | ||
Steam | |||
News | |||
Controls | Keyboard Mouse Full Controller Support | ||
Players online | n/a | ||
Steam Rating | n/a | ||
Steam store | |||
| Public Linux depots | [861.68 M] |
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 This is what awaits you in the new Christmas diorama:
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/ |
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. |
Hey builders, |
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 This is what awaits you in the new Halloween diorama:
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/ |
Hello there brick builders! |
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And this is what awaits you in the new summer diorama:
 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/ |
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[previewyoutube=2PzC8NlPpzA;full][/previewyoutube] Btw. this is what the free Easter update adds to LEGO Bricktales besides the new diorama:
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/ |
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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/ |
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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/ |
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Happy brick-by-brick building to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team https://store.steampowered.com/app/1898290/LEGO_Bricktales/ |
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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/ |
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/ |
Known Issues:
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/ |
 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/ |
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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/ |
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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/ |
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So launching off these initial considerations, we arrive at the next few stepping stones:
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/ |
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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/ |
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