LEGO Voyagers is a indirect-sequel to the lovely LEGO Builder’s Journey, now expanded from its brief, single player puzzler origins to a decently lengthy co-operative LEGO adventure. Friendship, teamwork and building things awaits – but is this a voyage worth taking?
Pure Imagination
LEGO Voyagers begins with a small red and blue brick (Let’s call them Red and Blue from now on) who live together on a small island. Pure primary colour and an expressive eyeball are all we get for this adorably blocky pair, but you’ll be amazed at just how expressive they can be. These two are dreamers.
In the distance, across the sea, we can see a launchpad for a rocket. As the countdown begins, the rocket fires, preparing to be launched into space. The two watch helplessly as the launch goes disastrously wrong, and the rocket veers of course, crash landing nearby.
So begins an adventure full of pure imagination that will see you and a friend head out to find that crashed ship, and help rebuild it. There is a lovely narrative here, but it’s told wordlessly, using art, sound and game design to tell a tale of friendship that even the coldest of hearts will likely be warmed by.
A Tale of Two Blocks
LEGO Voyagers is a cooperative title, and can be played in either local or online co-op. Wonderfully, it ships with a ‘Friend’s Pass’ meaning if only you own the game, your best pal can join you to play for free. Over the course of around 5-6 hours, you’ll tumble, jumble and build through a series of beautiful, photo-realistic LEGO worlds.
Developed by Light Brick Studio, LEGO Voyagers is a confident and expansive follow-up to LEGO Builder’s Journey. Keeping the same hyper-realistic visuals and atmospheric, relaxing soundtrack, the team here have upped their game massively. Voyagers allows players far more freedom and provides a far deeper and more engaging world this time around.
As Red and Blue, you’ll roll around through the world, solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles. I say roll, but perhaps tumble is more accurate. LEGO Voyagers is very physics-based game, and our blocky pals animate fantastically as you explore, spinning awkwardly as only blocks can. The controls are relatively simple, with both characters being able to jump and attach themselves to other LEGO bricks, or even each other should the need arise. The fact you’re a block and not a ball can lead to some mild control accuracy issues, but I think it adds to the overall charm.
When on a grid of LEGO studs, our duo can hover to move around and when attached to a LEGO block, can rotate the bricks as needed. You can even attach yourself to multiple blocks all at once, and move them around like some lego monstrosity. While there’s no text (aside from the occasional button prompt hint) and no spoken words, our little blocks make little ‘doh, ray, me, so’ noises if we feel the need to communicate.
Puzzles and challenge in LEGO Voyagers start of lightly. Build a small bridge to cross from one cliff to another, activate gadgets and create pathways by pulling switches, that sort of thing. Play and friendship is a central theme throughout the game, and there are plenty of physics-based distractions for you to goof around on, be it a swing or something to bounce on. As you progress, things will become more complex, tasking you with building physics-based contraptions like catapults and more. Before long the developers really let loose and throw all sorts of cooperative challenge at you.
In The Driver’s Seat
Not too far in to LEGO Voyagers, you’ll get your first vehicle to control. There’s a couple of these throughout the game, be it a boat or a dump truck, and as co-operative play and teamwork is the focus, you’ll need to work together to accelerate and steer.
This isn’t always easy, but it is laugh out loud fun when one of you inevitably screws up. I personally found that on occasion – depending on which way the camera was angled – that steering left and right would seem to switch, and it felt a little confusing. I suspect that some younger players may find some of the puzzles and challenge here tricky, but most grown-up LEGO fans should have fun, with nothing being too difficult.
Puzzle design and general signposting on what players need to do occasionally needs some work though, and there were a few unfortunate bugs. On one occasion, the solution was perfectly simple to a puzzle, but we wasted around 30 minutes trying to brute force a solution. We were tasked with placing a block to power open a gate, but the block we needed to activate said switch hadn’t spawned where it should have, meaning we were literally wasting our time looking for something that wasn’t there.
Another time, we had to rebuild a train track, but one of the pieces of the track was missing and wasn’t to be found. Thankfully, checkpointing throughout LEGO Voyagers is pretty generous, and one quick chapter reload later saw us sailing through the problem on both occasions, with the blocks appearing where they should have.
To The Stars
Despite playing as two small LEGO bricks, and without a single spoken word, the journey you’ll undertake in LEGO Voyagers was surprisingly emotional, and dare I say it – poignant. The fact that a story about two pieces of emotive plastic made me feel anything is a resounding triumph for developers Light Brick, and I look forward to the next game from this talented team.
LEGO Voyagers is a gorgeous, surprisingly emotional adventure about friendship, the joy of pure play and supporting one another. Even the smallest of us can achieve great things.
Reviewed on Xbox Series X, Code provided by the Publisher
LEGO Voyagers
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Utterly gorgeous
- Puzzles and Physics make for a fun combo!
- Chilled out Experience
- Local/Online Co-op and a Friend's Pass!
CONS
- Some frustrating bugs
- Younger players may struggle
