When I first saw LEGO Builder’s Journey, it looked very interesting. A narrative driven puzzle game mixing the Hitman/Lara Croft GO ideas with Lego bricks was a refreshing change after Traveller’s Tales spent the past fifteen years making the exactly same LEGO-themed game over and over again. And the fact that the PC version of the game (this was originally an Apple Arcade exclusive from 2019) uses the ray traced visuals made it me even more curious to play it for myself. What an annoying game it turned out to be.
First of, this is indeed a narrative driven puzzle game. It’s a simple story, but it works and has some cute moments here and there. It does look really good on PC with the visuals cranked up as well. And some of the moments in this game do feel like the best parts of playing with construction pieces like the Lego blocks. It is also mercifully short, as you’re guaranteed to finish it under 3 hours or less.
That’s where nice things end. As a puzzle game it ranges from boringly easy to “what is even the goal of this screen?” with many spots where it’s hard to understand what is it you’re trying to accomplish. Object placement is ridiculously imprecise and finicky. Despite a few spots in the game where your actions are timed. There are several spots where the game doesn’t even give you time to try and understand what is it wants you to do, forcing to go through cycles of the same actions. If you’re quick, you’ll get punished with less of those cycles. If you’re not, get ready to just be utterly confused as you do the same stuff over and over again. And possibly most disappointing is that despite being Lego-themed, barely anything feels like it needs to be Lego. You could switch most of the elements to a different theme, and nothing would change.
While pretty looking, LEGO Builder’s Journey is not a fun or a particularly interesting puzzle game. I didn’t enjoy playing it and I wouldn’t recommend it to others, unless you really like everything Lego.