Play the LEGO® Bricktales Demo As Part Of Steam Next Fest October!
Hey there builders!
Once again, it's about time for the fabulous Steam Next Fest! Until October 10th hundreds of demos are live here on Steam, connected to hundreds of streams, developer specials, and much more. Exciting times for sure and you definitely don't want to miss this!
And you guessed it already: LEGO® Bricktales is aboard for Steam Next Fest in October as well! Just scroll down the product page and click the "Download" button to get your hands on the demo! It includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first diorama worlds in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different and creative ways.
I hope you enjoy playing our demo! If you're having a good time, do us a favor and click on "Follow" as well as on "Add To Your Wishlist" and leave your feedback in the Steam Community Hub. That would really help us a lot. ❤️
And as you are trying some demos already, check out the additional three titles from Thunderful that are also part of Steam Next Fest: Paper Cut Mansion, Wavetale and Togges. Enjoy!
Happy Steam Next Fest to all of you! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team
BRICK BY BRICK #03: The Sound And Music Of LEGO® Bricktales
Happy Friday, friends of the brick!
I wonder, when LEGO® bricks were first designed, did the LEGO group ever think about the distinct sonic qualities that they would possess? I can't imagine there was conscious sound design happening, but physical LEGO bricks certainly has gone on to create a soundscape that fuels everything from childlike joy, to meditative building to creativity and multiple generations worth of nostalgia.
Anybody who has played with LEGO bricks knows the distinct rustle of digging through a pile of bricks, or the unmistakable one-two punch of two bricks connecting. First the bright click of the pieces colliding, then the punctuation with a light creak as they lock together. And yet, creating the sound effects to accompany LEGO Bricktales wasn't just a matter of going to the proverbial plastic well. We had to toy with what the bricks represented, pardon the pun.
It's an interesting conundrum of the fantasy that LEGO bricks draws you into. Yes, if we were all unimaginative and heartless it's just ABS plastic in the end, injection molded at a precision that would make NASA engineers blush. But do you think the kid that drags a LEGO car across the carpet and goes "brrrr" thinks the engine block is anything less than a roaring high octane V8?
Zap!
The result was a two-pronged approach when it came to giving the game audio life. We consider two situations – the diorama and the building puzzle.
When in a diorama, whether you run around with your minifigure, watch a cutscene or zoom out to observe the entire level from all angles, we try to immerse you as much as we can in the idea that what you see is LEGO bricks, but what you experience is the environment and story of a world that is vibrant and alive.
In this context at best we lightly hint at the underlying plastic origin of things and rather lean wholly into what they represent. Portals warble and buzz with electric hum, motors burn gasoline in rapidly firing cylinders, trees shake and leaves rustle with a light crisp, water is, well, wet. It certainly sounds wet. The trademark plastic click is only a small punctuation here and there, like a little wink and nod.
Place bricks and chill.
In turn, whenever you enter a so-called construction spot, we flip the coin and almost do the reverse. We clear the stage, we pare down the environment to give your building prowess and the separate bricks the spotlight, and accordingly, we pull you back into the focused soundscape of small plastic clicks and clacks that you might be very familiar with. Relax, build, solve the challenge, do it your way.
That was one area of work for me and our long-time audio master of choice, Maximilian Stroka. On the other side of the aural fence, conversations with him to nail down the music were ongoing. I have to be honest, it felt like me placing the most annoyingly complicated Starbucks secret menu order under the sun. It kind of went like this:
"The camera perspective is a bit like a 3D platformer, but it's not a platformer where you run and jump, so we don't want something that's really energetic and hyper. It's more of an adventure game, we still want something that propels the player through the story, like a beat. But no, wait, it's also a puzzle game, so multiple times throughout the game you sit down and devote a long time to building, so it should be laid back as well. Can you do something like that? Relaxed, but not too relaxed? And yes, we have outdoor and indoor dioramas. In one moment you are underneath a sunny sky, the next you are in a damp cavern. And yes, we have 5 different biomes, all completely distinct in locale and visuals. So can you do all of that, but in 5 completely different musical styles, some modern, some old? And did I mention? We are still working on putting everything together, so rather than give you screenshots to spur your creativity you just have to imagine everything from the scattered descriptions I'm giving you. Thaaanks."
In all honesty, I think he knocked it out of the park.
"Give me a desert bazaar track. With a slight hint of mummy curse."
Some of the specifics of the music were pretty interesting to figure out. LEGO Bricktales isn't meant to show real world locations, but still we'd end up drawing inspirations from different musical styles across the globe, trying to be respectful towards our influences but also wondering what exactly it could be that reinforces the vibe of a particular biome. In some cases it seemed more straight forward, worlds like the Medieval biome had clearer source materials to draw from.
Others were quite the puzzle to find a good fit. I remember discussing the City biome and trying to thread the needle between something that feels like a city musically, but at the same time shouldn't sound like a sprawling metropolis, we weren't going for sheer size nor busy streets after all. Our musings took us into the directions of a subdued J Dilla style MPC beat, but with the story detail of an otherworldly attack by alien robots and filtered through Max' musical sensibilities it became wholly its own thing over time.
The final Caribbean biome was a fun surprise for me as well. In one track Max manages to evoke the old-timey feel of a pirate hideout, and right next to it the beach features modern arrangements of organ and steel drum without feeling out of place. Not to mention the mysteries that lie in the caverns down below.
And here and there we got to have fun and fall out of line a bit, like a synth-heavy minimalist ambient piece for your robot sidekick's encounter with their previous alien ties, a small shout-out to The LEGO® Movie's "Everything Is Awesome!!", or an entire track devoted to a diorama filled with cats that Max banged out in a delirious late night session. You gotta hear it to believe it.
That’s it for now, a little insight into the sonic side of LEGO Bricktales. Next time around I’ll dive into the challenge of one of our central game mechanics, building with bricks.
But until then, stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team
BRICK BY BRICK #02: What Actually Is LEGO® Bricktales?
Heya fellow builders!
"What is LEGO® Bricktales?" - At face value the question seems straightforward to answer, no? LEGO Bricktales is a puzzle-adventure game based on LEGO bricks. The player has to help their grandfather restore his theme park, and imbued with the power of building and a trusty robot sidekick at their side they travel into different worlds and get what they need by helping people along the way.
But that doesn't quite paint the whole picture! It doesn't describe how the question felt when we tried to answer it at the beginning of this project. The weeks and months of deliberating and prototyping, the attempt to figure out the strengths of both ClockStone and LEGO and where the meeting point between those two would be. After all we needed to figure out the right pieces to lay the foundation of what this game would become. So let's try this again.
I'd say it's a heartfelt attempt by us to capture some of the LEGO magic that we felt in a physical realm and to give it life in a digital world.
In a nutshell, I'd describe our vision of it like this:
Puzzles that involve brick by brick building with LEGO elements
Embedded in dioramas, fully built out of LEGO bricks
Wrapped in exploration and story
This has been our guiding light. Three X's scrawled into the parchment of a treasure map in bright red, but the road to not only unearth all three aspects but to bring them into balance has certainly been winding. I will talk at length about how we got there in the future, but let's look at how we decided on them in the first place.
Building Brick By Brick
LEGO bricks and building is an association like peanut butter and jelly, it just goes together. If not more so, I dare say the very foundation of the LEGO universe is the act of building. And would you look at that? With a series of Bridge Constructor titles under our wing, gameplay revolving around building is something we are certainly familiar with. But going from 2D to 3D, from uniform wooden and metal struts to the incredible variety of LEGO bricks wouldn't be easy. What is it about building with LEGO elements that would make us dare that transition?
Early mockup. Our Bridge Constructor past clearly evident.
It is intuitive. People of all ages do it and can learn it within seconds. Easy to learn, hard to master. From small sets you built as a little kid, to the sprawling and intricate builds made by enthusiasts and professionals, the potential for refinement is seemingly endless.
And especially for us puzzle designers, LEGO dances in this wonderful space between restriction and creativity. I best describe it like this: I hand a hundred people a small bag of bricks each and tell them to build me a car, I'm feeling good about betting that I will get a hundred different cars back. They are cars all the same, but they are your specific version of a car. And at the same time that restricted selection of bricks was enough to nudge your creativity into a specific direction, to give you something tangible and solid rather than having you stare at the proverbial blank canvas. We wanted to leverage that energy.
Well, as obvious as the focus on building seemed, the execution wouldn't be quite as simple and certainly is part of why this space has been fairly unexplored in LEGO games. Going from physical LEGO shapes that can be observed in all its three-dimensionality and can be manipulated with 10 fingers, to the interface of a 2D screen and controller or mouse is a tricky transition. But in the end, the appeal was clear as day, and we wanted to take the challenge.
LEGO Dioramas
We knew into which direction we wanted to take the building puzzles, but then we also needed to present them in the right way. Rather than a string of disconnected challenges they needed a proverbial three-dimensional LEGO bed to lie in. Or at least that was an early thought. It was a brief statement in early design docs, somewhere between innocence and confidence, that of course it would make sense to embed the puzzles in a full LEGO environment. We were inspired by the breathtaking real LEGO dioramas that enthusiasts have built, and we wanted to follow suit in a digital space.
The very first diorama prototype, with real bricks at a smaller scale.
But first prototypes made us realize – we'd have to manipulate tens of thousands of bricks for any given diorama. Doubt creeped in. It's one thing to build it as a display piece, but to have something that is going to be filled with gameplay, and as developers know, will change drastically with each iteration of the gameplay, it seemed like too daunting of a task. But the buzz never went away. Whenever we would even hint at the idea of having full LEGO dioramas, whenever we would show pictures around of our crude first attempts, the reaction was wholly positive. So, after a long while we decided to take the plunge. Let's go full LEGO. Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Exploration And Story
And lastly, launching off the idea of dioramas, since they would take so much effort to produce, we wanted to make it worthwhile to spend your time there, rather than having them just be a visual backdrop as you rush through from puzzle to puzzle. We wanted to wrap them in story, so everywhere you go there's interesting characters to meet, funny bits to see that showcase the trademark irreverent, yet wholesome LEGO humor, narrative motivations to find why you would go and build the things that you build.
Early story progression mockup.
We wanted to add mechanics on top that encourage you to zoom out and look at every nook and cranny of the diorama, and while you take in its beauty you might find a secret or two that you won't get to just yet, but with a little patience and progress you will get to soon. Dive in, stay there, look around, enjoy.
So there it is, like bricks clicking into place, a vision that coalesced by looking at LEGO elements with open eyes and being honest about what appealed to us about it, reservations be damned. Well, not wholly damned as we would find out, but we'll learn about this another day, and in the meantime I'll leave you with the very first mockup we produced for the game. We've come a long way:
See you all in the next update! Until then, friends - stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team
BRICK BY BRICK #01: Meet The Team Behind LEGO® Bricktales!
Hey there friends!
The release of LEGO® Bricktales is right around the corner: there are only 20 days left until October 12th. Exciting times ahead! You can already try out how LEGO Bricktales works with a demo here on Steam, but we'd like to tell you a bit more about the game and behind the scenes with our little making-of update series "Brick by Brick" until release.
I would say that the first update pretty much speaks for itself. We - that is the Austrian dev team ClockStone Software - would like to introduce ourselves briefly with profiles so that you know who created LEGO Bricktales:
Name: Tri (pronounced Chi) Position: Game Director My first LEGO experience: A big yellow canvas bag with orange-brownish flower prints that was filled with an absolute hodgepodge mix of LEGO bricks and essentially called out to me to be creative at the tender age of 5 or so. I got a headstart with DUPLO® bricks though. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Just about anything from design, to animation to audio, but mostly wrangling the project as a whole. Having experience in all production disciplines really helped because Bricktales required an incredible amount of interdisciplinary work, probably the most of all the projects we've ever done. My favorite diorama: Probably the dragon vale. It's really pretty, but maybe it's just my inner D&D nerd shining through. Collected bananas: I'm fructose intolerant, so none 😄
Name: Stephan Position: Art Director My first LEGO experience: A carefully handed down cardboard box filled with bits and pieces of bricks from various sets from the 80s, with bite marks and all you need for a good story. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Searching for various answers to the question: "How to make a world of digital LEGO bricks look exciting". Well, first we had to make them appear at all - and then very many of them. I focused primarily on the diorama environments and how to create them ... while also taking care of how all the other elements fit together visually. My favorite diorama: Being the first diorama we made, I have a love-hate relationship with the first Jungle diorama Collected bananas: Yes
Name: Matthias Position: Designer My first LEGO experience: A set with two cowboys in my school cone! Those were actually brick-built with huge heads, not the typical minifigures yet that everybody knows today. After this, it was houses, vehicles and people from the Town theme, still love this stuff today. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Designing "construction spots" together with a talented team. These spots are the places where players build stuff with LEGO bricks. Also organizing everything around the little stories and dialogues in the worlds and having all of this localized to ten other languages. And finally organizing internal and external playtesting and QA. The backlog is empty. (Don't look into the backlog... it is empty I said.) My favorite diorama: The Desert town bazaar. It totally smiles at you all over the place with its shiny, sandy cheerfulness and the bustling market scenery. Collected bananas: Up to now only 60 or 70. There are still so many chests waiting to be found and opened in the Jungle world!
Name: Dominic Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: Good question. Dunno. Maybe stepped on one or two bricks when my older brother started playing with them. I bet I have stolen some from time to time. :) What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Everything from adapting our existing systems to designing, prototyping, iterating, redesigning and - oh we have to get back to the drawing board - and re-iterating new project specific systems and ideas, for example the build controls or the whole storytelling and game progress stuff. My favorite diorama: I think it's the Desert Skill-Cave. It was a pain to come up with the logic and rough layout for the diorama but now there is this nice little brain teaser as a refresher between all the building. After the designers laid their hands on it, it became even better. ;) Collected bananas: There is no bananas!
Name: Helmut Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: I remember green gardens with flowers, houses, spaceships, tracked vehicles, steam locomotives, helicopters and people everywhere, tiny brave Minifigure people... Oh, and that LEGO brick up my nose! Probably should've started with DUPLO bricks. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Lots of coding, more coding and coding. And also a bit of designing. And more coding and a bit more designing. And then more coding and testing afterwards, and then more coding. Did I mention annoying the designers? My favorite diorama: Is that a trick question? Probably the one with the kraken. Octopi are such intelligent animals. And the way they move! And it has pirate stuff. If it is not a trick question that is. Collected bananas: Right between not-sweet-enough and too-sweet.
Name: Nathalie/Nate Position: General Artist My first LEGO experience: I got the Black Knight's Castle set as a kid. The glow-in-the-dark ghost was my favorite Minifigure to play with. They featured in a lot of adventures, as well as in some mixed-media ones! What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Minifigure assets and character animations, as well as building props for the various environments. My favorite diorama: Desert pyramid. No wait, wherever the Pirate ship happens to be at. No wait, the Medieval castle exterior. No wait... Collected bananas: Ask me about donuts instead.
Name: Christoffer Position: Artist My first LEGO experience: I built Scandinavian looking houses using all kinds of colored bricks. It also had the dragon in the garden. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: In the Clockstone office I have seen tables with nothing but tea mugs and computers become replaced. Now, what I once thought were impossible LEGO constructions have come to take their place. So take a seat and hear my tale, for I have seen how LEGO Bricktales became molded into the virtual plane. I have seen a transmutation of the office's reality-grounded LEGO bricks, for within the virtuality-grounded world of Bricktales they have reappeared with the same dimension, color and weight. And yes, I have seen wide into the depths of Bricktales, of which you can only see a small part as you stare into your rectangular screens. I have seen the entirety of its world, all the ends of its dimensions, and all that exists in between. I've seen how it has shifted and morphed its geometry, forming its beautiful rivers and caves beneath. Within its borders I've seen construction spots come to be and be replaced, changed and finally set into place. This was the doing of my hands. But I wash my hands of responsibilities regarding the cat problem. My favorite diorama: The cave that is in the Medieval world. It is so cool. Collected bananas: No but I've collected many of the apes in Ape Escape which DO collect bananas!
Name: Kevin Position: Level Designer / Programmer My first LEGO experience: Probably the LEGO train set I got from my parents. Every room was cramped with train tracks making it hardly possible to walk in them ;P. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Setting up all the worlds, ranging from quests, secrets and puzzles. There is definitely no part in this game I don't know like the back of my hand. In addition I was involved with coding some tools and bug-fixing. My favorite diorama: I don't know if a specific diorama pops into my mind that stands out, since they are all beautiful. But I definitely like the catnip storage room. Who doesn't like a big room with dozens of cats in it?! Collected bananas: Too many to count!
Name: Michael Position: Programmer My first LEGO experience: I can't actually remember my very first encounter with LEGO bricks (and I built a lot!). But what comes first to my mind is the incredibly versatile way of using them. I loved to combine them with other toys to make complex machines even with hydraulic and electric components. It definitely got my career as a physicist started. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: I programmed the physics that compute the forces and torques acting on the LEGO bricks when you run the simulation on your own constructions. So I'm the one to blame if you build something and it breaks ;) Also I helped out on tricky shader programming issues including rewriting the render pipeline to improve performance. My favorite diorama: I love the desert with it's Egyptian style tombs. Collected bananas: No time to collect bananas, needed to hunt (coding) bugs instead.
Name: Rainer Position: Senior Technical Artist My first LEGO experience: Building giant Spaceships that could reach galaxies far far away. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Making things look pretty that needed sparkly effects. My favorite diorama: Ohhh... that's a tough one. Can't decide. They all look REAL nice Collected bananas: Mostly bacon. Bananas are for monkeys.
Name: Andreas Position: Programmer / QA My first LEGO experience: I don't really remember my first experience with LEGO bricks, but I do remember playing with the metroliner and freight rail runner a lot (which my siblings had already built). What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: Testing the game, trying to break stuff, reporting bugs and other issues and making sure those things were actually fixed once they got fixed. My favorite diorama: If I had to choose a single one... probably random ("dragon vale", "Desert bazaar", "wizard lab"); Collected bananas: Well, first I collected 10, then 50, then 9999999, then -1 and then kjdlfjaksdhf.
Name: Nicolas Position: Intern/Designer First LEGO experience: Back when i was 3 years old, my family and I already had a huge collection of LEGO bricks and when I saw the pile of bricks I just grabbed some of them and built something that just came to my mind at the moment. What I worked on for LEGO Bricktales: I got involved midway into the project and worked on designing and prototyping Bricktales' building puzzles, the so called construction spots. My favorite diorama: I don’t know why, but the Medieval castle diorama always spoke to me. Collected bananas: When I was working on the project, they weren’t implemented yet. ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ
And suddenly you know us as well as we do. 😄 In the coming updates, we'll talk about how the idea for LEGO Bricktales came about, which different LEGO worlds are included in the game and how the brick by brick building at the construction spots works.
See you all in the next update! Until then, friends - stay safe and keep building! Tri Do Dinh & the ClockStone Team
The Building Begins: LEGO® Bricktales will Release on October 12!
High five, friends of the brick!
Without many words, let's get straight to the point: We are super happy to announce that LEGO® Bricktales will be available from October 12 on PC and consoles! Woohoo! ːsteamhappyː
And to celebrate the day there's a new release date announcement trailer for all of you:
It's less than a month until the release and there will be a lot going on here on Steam in the upcoming weeks! So, follow LEGO Bricktales to be the first to know about all of our updates and stuff. And of course, if you’re excited about LEGO Bricktales, don’t forget to add the game to your wishlist! ❤️
Happy LEGO Bricktales Release Date Announcement Day! Your LEGO Bricktales Team
gamescom is back: Play LEGO® Bricktales in Cologne and here on Steam!
gamescom is back! ːsteamhappyː
After two years without gamescom taking place in Cologne, the world's largest computer and video games event is finally back in 2022, and that has to be celebrated! So, join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth in Hall 8.1 B-021 if you want to get your hands on the freshly updated demo of LEGO Bricktales.
The demo includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways.
And for all of you who can't come to gamescom in Cologne, we'll bring gamescom to you: The demo is not only playable at gamescom, but also here on Steam.
If you like the demo, please follow LEGO Bricktales to be the first to know about all our upcoming announcements. And of course, if you’re excited about LEGO Bricktales, don't forget to add the game to your wishlist! ❤️
Happy gamescom to all of you! The LEGO Bricktales Team
The Save & Sound festival is live - and LEGO Bricktales is part of it! 🎶
High five, friends of the brick!
Summer is full of festivals and music. But did you know that a virtual music festival is also possible?! Let us introduce you to the Save & Sound event – a celebration of music in games!
Join us July 14 - 18 right here on Steam for one of the largest digital expos about audio and music in games. Featuring concerts, deep-dives, and mashups from 70+ developers from around the world. You can find the full schedule of livestreams on the event page.
As a part of Save & Sound there is a chat with game director Tri Do Dinh and Maximilian Stroka, the composer of LEGO Bricktales! Join them taking a deeper look at the creation process of the music for the game. Tune in on Friday (July 15) at 11am PDT / 8pom CEST to learn more!
LEGO® CON 2022: LEGO Bricktales Demo, Live Stream on Saturday and more! 🔥
High five, friends of the brick!
This year's LEGO CON Live Stream is right around the corner. That means official and exclusive news, exciting announcements and peeks-behind-the-curtain into the LEGO® Group. The virtual show will be streaming LIVE from LEGO House, Billund on Saturday 18th June! Tune in at 5pm in London, 12pm New York and 9am Los Angeles!
And as LEGO Bricktales is part of the show we are celebrating LEGO CON together with you, the LEGO teams and the involved partners with a special LEGO CON Event Page! This focuses on recent and upcoming games and offers you the whole range of LEGO branded games to special LEGO CON prices!
As part of LEGO CON, you can try out a demo of LEGO Bricktales for the first time here on Steam! The demo includes the beginning of the game as well as some of the first diorama worlds in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different and creative ways.
Follow LEGO Bricktales here on Steam to be the first to know about all our announcements. And of course, if you’re excited about LEGO Bricktales, don’t forget to add the game to your wishlist! ❤️
Happy LEGO CON to all of you! Your LEGO Bricktales Team
P.S. All Bridge Constructor titles by LEGO Bricktales developer ClockStone are currently on sale! Check them out HERE!
Play LEGO® Bricktales at PAX East in Boston till April 24th!
Greetings again builders,
We have some good news for you again: PAX East has just opened its doors in Boston, and LEGO® Bricktales is there! For the second time, the game is playable in public. So come to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center from April 21-24 and join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth!
The demo includes the beginning of LEGO Bricktales as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways!
Play LEGO® Bricktales for the very first time at WASD in London!
Greetings builders,
We have good news for you: Today WASD opens its doors in London, and LEGO® Bricktales will be there! For the first time, the game is playable in public. ːsteamhappyː So if you don't have anything better to do from April 7-9 (and what would that?) come to the Tobacco Dock and join us at the Thunderful Publishing booth!
The demo includes the beginning of LEGO Bricktales as well as some of the first dioramas in the jungle biome. Explore the surroundings and try out our brick-by-brick building mode, where you can solve puzzles in different ways!
