LEGO games

[Rafael Skibicki]

LEGO video/computer games. Anyone ever played them?

Here's a comprehensive list.

I must admit I was never interested in them.

I imagined a LEGO game being something like The Incredible Machine (physics-based Rube Goldberg machine simulator) using Technics blocks... how about building a bridge? Or perhaps a SimCity, where you also (effectively) build structures from blocks (which cost you).

What I see seems different. Those late 1990s titles are not much games as LDraw spin-offs with interaction. Latest ones rely heavily on movie franchises. This makes little sense to me - if I want to play a game set in Star Wars universe - or starring Indiana Jones, why would I want it to be built out of LEGO blocks? I can't nail the reason for their popularity...

[Travis Cobbs]

I have a six year old son, and he absolutely loves the LEGO movie-based games. (He's played multiple LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones, and LEGO Harry Potter games on our WII.) The games have very little to do with LEGO in the traditional sense, since there's not really any player-coordinated building, but they are games that kids desire due to the LEGO theme (well, my kid anyway, and presumably lots of others), and they are designed for kids to enjoy. So, instead of actually killing bad guys in the games, you're instead just causing a LEGO mini-figures to fall apart into their component parts.

All of the games have very similar mechanics, but with story-lines catered to the individual franchise. It took a while to figure out how the first one worked, but once he had that down, he could jump into another one without any trouble. I enjoy playing them with him, so they aren't solely for kids, but kids are definitely the target audience.

[Rafael Skibicki]

The games have very little to do with LEGO in the traditional sense

Well said.

I knew these games are aimed for kids, yet I gave better examples of how the license could be used.

This issue is not LEGO-specific.

Take said Star Wars and one of the poor cross-license products: STAR WARS Monopoly.

You'd think it will focus on smugglers, gamblers and shady types, such as Han Solo, Lando or Jabba the Hutt? Something that actually makes sense? WRONG! You'll see Vader buying hotels on the Death Star! In all multimedia glory... With zoomed-in 3D view that actually impairs your awareness of board situation/setup and slows down the pace.

These are all bad design choices. But those companies are well known, can afford good marketing, so the product sells anyway.

[Jim DeVona]

It's not LEGO-related, but for a constructive and [in my opinion] very fun computer game, check out the popular Minecraft. The block-built worlds are essentially infinite. There is a "creative" mode where you have an unlimited palette of materials, and a "survival" mode (with optional monsters) where you must collect the materials needed to build the tools needed to collect different materials to build better tools and buildings… and so on.

I received a LEGO board game, Minotaur, as a gift. Although it is not particularly building-oriented, it has proved fun as a party game and is more amenable to modification than the video games, since the board is actually built with LEGO pieces. The goal is to move your pawns to the center of the board; certain rolls of the die instead allow you to move the minotaur or pieces of the "labyrinth" itself, blocking the way for your competitors.

[Jean-Philippe Ouellet]

Well actually, Lego Creator was quite like you'd expect. You would build towns out of bricks in creator mode, and they go into play mode and interact with what you'd just built. The last time I played it was probably around 10 years ago, so I dont remember it very well, but it was definitely the most like what you'd expect when you hear "lego computer game".

Lego rock raiders was probably my favorite lego game though, it was my first introduction to real-time-strategy game mechanics.

If you're looking for a good "lego style" game, I HIGHLY recommend you check out Blockland. It's a multi-player game where you create whatever you want, and it has a powerful engine for adding functionality to what you create. Back in the beta, the blocks were actually lego-themed, but when it was commercially released the lego-style was changed to generic blocks to avoid copyright issues. It's very hard to describe what playing it is like because of its very user-modifiable nature, anything is possible.

It's built upon a heavily modified version of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_(gam...ne)]Torque game engine[/url] which is both a blessing and a curse. It is awesome because of Torque's reasonably advanced scripting language, which allows players to modify almost any aspect of the game using TorqueScript, an interpreted, weakly-typed, pseudo-object-oriented programming language. You can write code for everything from basic player interaction and new in-game items, to irc clients and web servers, all in the game engine's scripting language! I even wrote a cryptanalysis toolkit in TorqueScript for a final project in a cryptography class (also as an excuse to create an example of where video games have a legitimate purpose in schools, and then brought that to the administration). The down side of the game engine, is that it is unable to support things like lego technic. The scripting engine does have its limits though, for example it's very difficult to write files with arbitrary non-text data, and it's handling of arrays is rather unconventional.

I also wrote a Blockland to POV-Ray converter, just to get some better-looking renders of some of the awesome stuff I've built in Blockland, if I can find the source on some old backup drive somewhere, I'll release it.

I've spent many thousand hours playing and scripting that game, and I've throughly enjoyed it from the day my best friend told me about it back in elementary school 'til today. I had done some programming (mostly in C) before blockland came out, but scripting blockland was what what made me really interested in programming because of its immediate feedback in a medium I've loved since birth, legos! (and now I'm a CS major). It was by far the best $20 I've ever spent in my entire life, not exaggerating at all.

It's fun for all ages, and I highly recommend everyone give it a try.
[/salespitch]


But seriously... it's awesome!

[Michael Horvath]

I'm still waiting for LEGO-themed X-COM.

[EdmundDro]

I have a six year old son, and he absolutely loves the LEGO movie-based games. (He's played multiple LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones, and LEGO Harry Potter games on our WII.) The games have very little to do with LEGO in the traditional sense, since there's not really any player-coordinated building, but they are games that kids desire due to the LEGO theme (well, my kid anyway, and presumably lots of others), and they are designed for kids to enjoy. So, instead of actually killing bad guys in the games, you're instead just causing a LEGO mini-figures to fall apart into their component parts.

All of the games have very similar mechanics that make use of solar panels, but with story-lines catered to the individual franchise. It took a while to figure out how the first one worked, but once he had that down, he could jump into another one without any trouble. I enjoy playing them with him, so they aren't solely for kids, but kids are definitely the target audience.

Well those games are really very simple and exciting. Still love playing them..