builder's journey level 33

Lego Builder's Journey review

Captures the spirit of those little plastic bricks., our verdict.

A lifelike and heartfelt celebration of a beloved toy that overreaches in later levels.

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Expect to pay $20/£16 Developer Light Brick Studio Publisher Lego Games Reviewed on Intel Core i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 8GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce 950, Windows 10 Multiplayer No Link Official site

When I was little, I had a huge crate of assorted Lego pieces. New sets were all well and good, but once they'd been built and enjoyed, each in turn was dismantled, its constituent parts destined to become more fuel for the crate. It was a seemingly bottomless well of colourful, constructive opportunity from which entire worlds could spill forth, a single piece uncovered at just the right time bringing life to a brand new idea. Lego has been incorporated into dozens of games over the past two and a half decades, but none of them bring the magic of my crate to life like Lego Builder's Journey.

Each of the dioramas that make up Lego Builder's Journey is shaped by a single goal. On one side of each level is a stack of pieces denoting a child, who must cross the minute world in front of them to reunite with their parent on the other side. There is, however, no prescribed solution to any puzzle. In true Lego style, you're free to use the handful of blocks provided in any way you see fit, as long as you can complete your goal. Establishing a route from A to B is often an iterative process, but it's one with no fail states or wrong answers. As long as it does what you want it to do, your solution doesn't need to be elegant or efficient. If the pieces fit together, there'll be some kind of way forward.

As those pieces come together, they handle in a manner almost as satisfying as the real thing. Simplistic controls let you snap blocks into place. Piles of bricks rattle as you comb through them looking for exactly the right one, and flit seamlessly through different positions as you rotate them into place. It's an amazingly tactile experience, especially when you consider the level of detail on offer in each diorama, all of which are created entirely from pieces you might find in a set you've picked off the toy store shelf. Characters move by hopping from block to block, as they might at the hands of a real person, with the attention paid to every brick, shadow, and ray of light only building that realism further.

Even the story, a simple but enjoyable narrative of parental responsibility and childish imagination, speaks to what Lego has always attempted to invoke. For the greying parent figure, play gets pushed aside for the monotony of work, while for the child, the wonders of the natural world make way for the wonders of their imagination. A robot cobbled together from basement parts comes to life, turning the browns and greens of dioramas inspired by hiking trails and remote campsites into the vibrant primary colours of children's television. Even those themes, however, are threatened, twisted into a vignette of a classroom that draws uncomfortable parallels to the grind of the parent's factory job. A healthy dose of slapstick and childish naivety ensure Lego Builder's Journey never deviates too far from its toybox origins, but the dark, industrial nature of later levels ensures that its more serious ideas land.

While other Lego games have leaned with increasing regularity on the humour and bombast offered by enormous, child-friendly licenses, Light Brick Studios focuses on what it's actually like to play with those little coloured blocks. It's a subtle approach, but one that obfuscates the game's limited scope, and manages to capture everything from the imaginative freedom that Lego offers to the feeling of handling each individual brick.

Light Brick Studios focuses on what it's actually like to play with those little coloured blocks

Across the 35 levels that made up the original mobile version of Lego Builder's Journey, both narrative and puzzles gently twist and turn, picking up new ideas and dropping them again, all within the format of the brick-based dioramas. Throughout the earlier stages, the game's sandbox style persists, with the few levels in which there's a more defined solution often trying to highlight a specific theme. The guiding hand through the game's different ideas is subtle, which when coupled with camera controls that limit your ability to take in a diorama from all sides can lead to the occasional issue with transparency. The difficulty curve remains steady throughout, often relying on the complexity of the bricks you use rather than the puzzles themselves when it ramps up. When the original finale does arrive, it's an excellent capstone to story, theme, and design.

Unfortunately, the levels that come after maintain very little sense of that gentle progression. In a series of levels added for the PC version, a significant new approach is introduced. Rather than use complete bricks, these puzzles allow you to stitch together fragments or duplicate the blocks you've already made, adding an unwelcoming extra element of experimentation. Newly-implemented fail states are punishing and monotonous—in one instance a three-strikes approach wipes your progress and only takes you back to the diorama once you've completed a repetitive task. The increased complexity aligns with a far less transparent approach and a far less defined building system. The charm remains—the levels inspired by the imaginative, colourful dioramas from earlier on—and the dioramas themselves are as pretty and detailed as any of their predecessors, but it's hard to think of these less enjoyable levels as anything but unnecessary padding in an otherwise expertly-crafted game.

Within the beautiful environments and open-ended approach to puzzle solving, Lego Builder's Journey is perhaps the most authentic, earnest Lego game there's ever been, capturing every joyful aspect of its source material. From the sense of freedom that a pile of bricks offers right down to the individual bricks between your fingers, Lego Builder's Journey manages to recreate not just what Lego is, but what it can be. The attempt to build on its finely sculpted first half is unfortunately clumsy, sacrificing much of the gentle, open-ended approach that makes it so successful, but the way in which it captures with such care and attention something so beloved through its physicality and tactility, even in this virtual format, makes this a very special game.

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Buy LEGO® Builder's Journey

“LEGO Builder's Journey is perhaps the most authentic, earnest Lego game there's ever been, capturing every joyful aspect of its source material.” PC Gamer “It's pretty much the perfect LEGO video game” Kotaku “The bricks here look better than in the real-world” Rock Paper Shotgun

About This Game

Creative Mode

System requirements.

• OS: Windows 10 x64
• Processor: Intel Core i5-3470 / AMD FX-8350 or equivalent
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / Radeon R7 260X
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 5 GB available space
• Additional Notes: PCs with lower than minimum specs can run the game on "Classic" mode via launch options.
• Processor: Intel Core i7-6950X / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X or equivalent
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD RX 6700 XT
• DirectX: Version 12

LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Brick and the Knob configurations are trademarks of the LEGO Group. © 2021 The LEGO Group.

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Walkthrough Playlist All Parts for LEGO Builder's Journey (Xbox One)

Watch this step-by-step walkthrough for "LEGO Builder's Journey (XONE)", which may help and guide you through each and every level part of this game. For further assistance or to contribute your own video, please refer to the information provided below.

Game Details

• Developer: Light Brick
• Publisher: Light Brick
• Genre: Puzzle
• Release: Nov 25, 2021
• Platform: Xbox One
• ESRB: Everyone

For LEGO Builder's Journey we have:

• No Codes, Submit One!
• No Passwords, Submit One!
• Total 1 Unlockable
• No Hints or Secrets, Submit One!
• No Glitches, Submit One!
• No Easter Eggs, Submit One!

Please Submit a Problem for any incomplete, non-working or fake code listed above. If you know other secrets, hints, glitches or level guides, then please Submit your Stuff and share your insights with other players.

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LEGO Builder's Journey - Gameplay Video

• Added on: Nov 25, 2021

LEGO Builder's Journey - Gameplay Video 2

• LEGO Builder's Journey Achievements
• Inventor achievement

LEGO Builder's Journey

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Inventor achievement in LEGO Builder's Journey

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LEGO Builder’s Journey receives big update alongside PC and Switch release

LEGO and Light Brick Studio has launched its iOS-exclusive puzzle game LEGO Builder’s Journey on PC and Nintendo Switch today after a two-year stint on Apple Arcade.

To celebrate this new release on other platforms, LEGO Builder’s Journey is receiving an update that adds new levels, story content, and mechanics to the game. Don’t expect it to be too substantial, as the game is still a pretty short experience, but overall it’s a welcome addition to an already lovely puzzle title.

The game is also receiving some graphical updates on PC, which features ray-traced ambient occlusion, global illumination, reflections, shadows and a performance-boosting DLSS feature. In simple terms, it will look extremely nice on PC so it might be worth double-dipping if you originally played it on iOS.

Check out the trailer for LEGO Builder’s Journey’s RTX update below to see some of these improvements in action.

If you’re unaware of what exactly LEGO Builder’s Journey is, it’s a slow-paced meditative puzzler that uses LEGO to build small diorama-sized worlds. You must build or alter different structures to create a path for your character to reach the end of the level.

This means you may need to use bricks from other parts of the level to solve the problem. For example, this could mean pulling bricks from elsewhere to create a bridge to get the LEGO person across a large river.

The controls in LEGO Builder’s Journey are also really simple, where you tap to pick up a brick, drag to move and rotate them, and tap again to place. This control system should carry over to the PC and Switch versions too.

LEGO Builder’s Journey is available now on the iOS App Store via Apple Arcade , as well as on Steam for PC and on Nintendo Switch .

Builder's Journey

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