building

There are so many great co-op experiences to be had right now that my biggest issue isn’t finding something to play with my wife or kids, it’s finding enough time to play them all. But I’m glad I made the time for Lego Voyagers, because it’s the sort of game that is immediately, obviously special, and culminates in a beautiful final few minutes that made my kids and me care deeply for a simple pair of Lego bricks.

Lego Voyagers is a two-player co-op game, so there’s no solo mode, nor can you pair up with a bot partner. Played online or–even better–with two players sharing a couch, the game takes only about four hours to go through. But that’s time very well spent, I can tell you, after having played it with my daughter and son at different times.

Lego Voyagers stars two minuscule Lego bricks. Both nameless, they’re each personified only by their single googly-eye sticker, as well as their different colors; one is blue, the other is red. The simple, wordless story is nonetheless affecting. As the pair live out their lives as neighbors and buddies atop a small island built of Lego bricks, a rocket in the distance can be seen taking off, awakening in them a passion for science and space travel. Heading off from home, the pair go on an adventure to explore this passion together.

Voyagers’ art direction recalls developer Light Brick Studio’s previous Lego game, Lego Builder’s Journey, with brick-based dioramas propped up like islands. Early sections are set in something like a nature trail, so autumnal Lego bricks decorate the world, as water rushes below and around the landmasses. Later in the story, the pair of brick buddies end up in more industrial spaces, giving the game an aesthetic overhaul but consistently looking gorgeous throughout, thanks to some fantastic lighting and the basic foundational art design that turns everything you can see and interact with into Lego bricks.

Voyagers is a puzzle-platformer at its heart, but it’s designed for players of most experience levels. Because it’s a co-op game, the puzzles usually require both players work together, but It feels built in such a way that virtually any two players could complete it, be it parent and child, siblings, best friends, or partners. Naturally, the puzzles tend to ask you to build together, too. Simple solutions early on, like building a Lego bridge to cross a gap, introduce the physics-based nature of the characters and world. Its basic controls consist of moving, jumping, and locking into any open Lego stud you can find.

Working together to build solutions to problems naturally fits the Lego aesthetic.

Sometimes this means picking up loose pieces, moving, spinning, and stacking them to make something that will help you progress, like plugging in a Lego battery to open a gate. Other times, you may scoot into a little Lego chair and operate contraptions like an industrial magnet, with one player carrying the other across an opening where they can then return the favor. The blue and red characters wobble around, traversing rocky trails and stumbling through forests as each player may or may not mash on the “sing” button, which allows them to call out to each other with noises that sound sort of like baby babble.

As you progress, the game reveals its keen eye for instructional play. For example, you may come to a landing with a rock wall too high to simply jump over, but several loose Lego bricks lie about. You and your partner know by then that you can easily build with any loose pieces you find all across the game, and when you do so in this case, you’ll see you’ve built something like a long stilt, which you can then move end over end up the rocky path, sort of like a stiff reverse Slinky, provided both players push their characters in the same direction.

Later in the game, you’ll need to learn how to do things like operate vehicles together, with one person steering while the other controls moving forward or backward. Lego Voyagers consistently builds on its playful mechanics, always asking players to collaborate, and always expressing Lego’s inherent best parts: creativity, spontaneity, and a sense of child-like silliness.

While the puzzles do expect a basic level of video game know-how–how to use a controller, for example–for the most part, the game’s language is one of relentless forgiveness and approachability, which I greatly appreciated. Few puzzles demand solutions built around strictly timing your actions, giving younger or less experienced players plenty of runway to perform their duties as half of the puzzle-solving duo. The game’s ever-present platforming elements–in which you may frequently fall off the world into the waters below–are so forgiving that you instantly respawn from where you fell off, even holding any loose, puzzle-solving bricks you may have lost in your fall. It’s a game that often challenges you but never punishes you, and playing it with my six-year-old especially made that design choice both impossible to miss and easy to adore.

Each puzzle we encountered did well in presenting the dilemma wordlessly. They reliably had the feeling of emptying a bag of Lego bricks onto a table, then building something you can already see in your mind. While most puzzles do have specific solutions you’re meant to use to progress, the finer details are often up to you. Maybe you need a makeshift staircase to climb a wall, but the precise shape of that staircase can vary, as players connect different bricks in different ways. It was especially joyous to watch my kids take the lead in moments like these. There are dozens of Lego games, but few quite capture that special feeling of building with your kids like Lego Voyagers does.

The only issue I had with Voyagers was how, on a small handful of occasions, it felt like we’d actually cheated the game somehow. This was usually because of how respawning after a fall works. If I’d made it to a platform and my co-op partner hadn’t yet, it was sometimes the case that they could fall off the world and respawn beside me instead of still needing to face the rest of the puzzle. It was a rare but odd case when this occurred, and though it could be seen as yet more forgiveness from the game’s world design, in these instances, it felt more like we’d lightly, though inadvertently, broken our way past a solution that would’ve been more satisfying to rightly solve.

The often peaceful vibes of Lego Voyagers are a wonderful change of pace compared to typical kid-friendly fare.

The tranquility of the world is something else I love about Voyagers, because it feels so unlike many family games and other experiences aimed at kids. As a parent, I’ve found I’m not always so enthusiastic for media that feels overly chaotic and loud. Lego Voyagers eschews that candy-coated energy and instead offers a game that is very laid-back, made complete with a soundtrack of slow, synthy rhythms that match the world’s dedication to simply hanging out with your friend or loved one. The game as a whole is less like a day at a theme park and more like a nature hike.

All of this dedication to meaningful time spent together and creative play spaces that let imaginations take over is made more powerful thanks to its unexpectedly moving story. There are no words, no narrator, no text-based exposition. Lego Voyagers tells you everything you need to know using its lovely music, the sneakily nuanced sing button that changes contextually as the story goes on in a few clever ways, and the simple premise at the start.

The two Lego pals seek adventure, and going on that adventure with them culminates in an ending that is as sweet as it is smart, repurposing some of the game’s core pieces in new ways that pack an emotional punch fit for players of any age. Much like building with Lego, it dismantles what was there to create something different, and those final few minutes, if they were sold in stores as a Lego set, would be flying off the shelves. It’s a beautiful game in so many ways, but most of all that beauty shines through in the would-be simple story of two friends on an adventure together, which easily became just as special for me and my loved ones.

Source link