Despite the grand sense of wanderlust dripping off its title, Lego Voyagers casts you and a pal not as minifig explorers (or even the tiny brickfolk of Lego Builder’s Journey), but as humble 1×1 blocks. You’ll get one eye each, and be thankful for it. Nonetheless, Voyagers still wants you to venture out and roll your way through its plastic wilderness, with some light puzzling, Split Fiction-style cooperative mischief, and building – usually with your own heads as the cornerstones – along the way. Last week, ahead of its Gamescom showing, Mark and I channeled our inner construction materials to try it out.
James: As a concept, Lego Voyagers is more intriguing to me than previous Lego games for two reasons. One, you play as an actual Lego piece, not Darth Vader or Batman or any other humanoid character that’s been digitally made to look like they rolled out of a Danish toy factory. There’s a humbleness there that I appreciate. Second, because you can only build new structures by clicking yourself onto other bricks and dragging them around, usually without any precision whatsoever, it reminds me much more of how I played with Lego as a young’un. Specifically, dumping a container of loose, assorted bricks onto the carpet and just smashing pieces together from the pile.
Mark: Yeah, I came in wondering whether Voyagers would have much to offer once that initial novelty of being a brick wore off, and without the universal draw that is Lego Yoda’s iconic death scream. It was a pleasant surprise in that regard. I did feel the building in the demo we played was a bit limited to smaller structures that help you climb or traverse a gap, so I’ll be interested to see how many bricks you’re mashing together by the latter stages of the full thing. However, as you say, the building we did was a lot more freeform than just holding one button so Han Solo assembles a forklift.
James: I’d be well up for a Lego Katamari, churning up and absorbing the environment’s bricks until we’ve formed history’s largest bare feet hazard. Realistically I doubt you’ll ever be able to snap together more than a handful at a time, but I still prefer Voyager’s building to that of Builders’ Journey. That was very neat and tidy, where your godlike cursor could pick up and place bricks from anywhere on the screen. There’s a shambolic, but much more characterful quality to how our little cubes would flop around with bulkier pieces attached, and I think that unpredictability of movement made most of the building challenges entertaining. If not especially… well, challenging. Don’t act like you didn’t smile when we Voltron’d into a big stick and pole vaulted up a cliff, Mark.
Mark: I’d definitely agree with that. That unpredictability plays into the potential to muck about, which is always an essential quality in these sorts of games, no matter whether kids or adult-shaped kids are at the controls. One of the best moments of the demo was when we found those panels which could be triggered to flip from horizontal to vertical when one of us attached to the right bit of them. Their ability to flick one of us up into the air proved a platforming tool, but I could see folks spending 20 minutes taking in the simple joy of pinging each other into the void whenever they run across them. Stuff like that gives slapping sackpeople in LittleBigPlanet a run for its money, and helps give the game some fun character.
James: You’re right, it was one of the best moments when you weren’t awarded a Steam ‘cheevo for flipping me into the sea but I was for doing it to you. Justice prevails.
What’s the shelf life of little interactions like that, though? Voyagers does go quite hard on the friendship angle, giving you tiny 1×1 chairs to relax together in, or a random seesaw so you can enjoy a few moments of palling around for its own sake. But it’s a puzzler at heart and a child-friendly one at that, so assuming we can’t expect any seriously taxing building conundrums, will those moments of purely convivial mucking-about be enough to sustain crusty old adults like us?
Mark: I’ll be interested to see how the general atmosphere holds up in that light too. While Voyagers’ simple Lego islands are draped in ruined tech, pipes, and trees, one of the drawbacks of being a Lego game is that environments do just end up looking like Lego. That’s not a big hangup by any stretch of the imagination, but it does mean Voyagers doesn’t look as visually unique or striking as other chill puzzlers, like Monument Valley. That might actually aid in its appeal to kids, though. I liked the understated and dreamy vibes of the soundtrack. There were a few moments in the demo, such as when we hopped on the swings or seesaw, when it piped up noticeably again after neatly blending into the background during the platforming. That’s the sign of a well-balanced ambiance.
James: Woah woah woah. You didn’t like how it looked like Lego? That’s exactly what I’d want from a Lego game – see the aforementioned floor mess nostalgia. Except it does highlight how you can’t actually use your player-controlled brick to wrench apart the scenery beyond very specific pieces, usually with a specific puzzle solution in mind. Why are some bits breakable and others aren’t, etcetera. Again, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s to narrow things down for youngster minds.
I also enjoyed the airy OST, as well as the fact that you have a dedicated chirping button that makes your brick emit cute doo-de-doo sounds on command. I noticed you didn’t always chirp back, though. Are we not friends? After all that swinging we did?
Mark: Look, I know being a bit nonplussed about the Lego game just looking like Lego is akin to pointing at a leopard and going ‘Eww, that’s quite spotty.’ Maybe I’m just taking out my frustration at never having got around to fully building the big brick crane I got for my sixth birthday. Also, sorry for not doo-de-dooing back at you on a regular enough basis. I’ll be honest, this being the first duo playing session I’ve done for a proper preview with a coworker I see each week, I was locked the fuck in on not being a total letdown when it came to helping us keep sticking one brick in front of the other.
Anyway, I’m glad we gave Voyagers a go. Doo-de-doo.
James: That’s better.