If there’s an award I can outright claim LEGO Voyagers would win, it’s darn cutest game of the year. From its adorable little lead characters to the charming music accompanying you on your adventure to the very LEGO-y look and feel of everything in the world, it’s impossible not to fall for the game at every turn. Beyond its impressive visual style, though, lies the giant heart of a light-hearted but highly satisfying puzzler, one that my son and I have had a magical time working through together.
You play as one of two small LEGO pieces (the other controlled by another player, either locally or online), working together to rebuild a failed space launch. What this will involve is exploring a series of LEGO environments whilst overcoming obstacles, often involving some light platforming or puzzle solving.
While you’ll definitely be rolling your cute sentient LEGO pieces along narrow ledges or hopping over pits, you’ll also be doing a fair amount of building, too (this is a LEGO game after all). While nothing as extreme as constructing a working car or mammoth building, players will make use of odds and ends to create the likes of bridges or steps to navigate areas where the limited little jumps and rolls of your LEGO companions simply won’t cut it. Alongside this building aspect will also be puzzles that involve teamwork and coordination.
For example, one puzzle had one of our bricks flipping switches while the other rolled along newly revealed platforms. Another truly hilarious instance had us piloting a watercraft, steering a true test of communication, as both of you are required to do it. While the actual movement and building aspect is relatively straightforward, the puzzles themselves always surprised us when playing, keeping the five-ish hour adventure engaging throughout.
So, I played the game with two different people – my six-year-old son and wife, both rather big LEGO fans. Playing with the latter, we had a chilled and entertaining time, laughing as we watched her brick constantly fall into the water, accented with the occasional yelling as we argued who needed to do what. Like other co-op games, like the recently released Split Fiction, a lot of the fun of playing LEGO Voyagers stems from simply experimenting and trying to work as a team. Playing with my son proved to be a totally different experience, one still filled with laughs and smiles aplenty, but also a sense of amazement watching him get to work on a bridge or trying to communicate his plan for the next puzzle.
With the relatively smooth learning curve, LEGO Voyagers clearly has younger players in mind, and whilst we’ve tried to play other co-op games together like Overcooked, oftentimes they can prove too complex and hectic for him to keep up. LEGO Voyagers, on the other hand, was a perfect fit for us. We could go at our own pace, experiment as much as we like and simply enjoy the adventure together, he adding just as much to the team as I. It was a special moment watching as he took the lead and surprised me with his ability to go about solving the game’s puzzles.
The gamer in me did find the controls to be a little cumbersome at times, be that trying to accurately move your character or trying to piece together bricks, but it’s a minor complaint and nothing more. Another disappointment was… well, that the game had to end, a silly complaint, but one that had me thinking about the potential the game has going forward, especially if more robust building elements were added. Still, what we have here is a truly charming and pleasant time.
Despite there being many LEGO video games before it, LEGO Voyagers, in my opinion, sets itself apart visually with some truly awe-inspiring environments (all made entirely from LEGO, of course), their realism sold even further thanks to some fantastic lighting effects. As you slowly roll your way through each new section and marvel at the ways in which LEGO pieces are used to create typical video game-like obstacles, you feel as though you could literally reach in and pull out the pieces for yourself. Accompanying these visuals is a soundtrack that’s at times bouncy and light and others sombre and thought-provoking. Combined, it creates easily one of the most beautiful and, at times, emotional LEGO games I’ve ever played.
LEGO Voyagers is not a particularly tough game, but much like the toys it is based on, difficulty isn’t the reason you enjoy what it has to offer. It’s the satisfaction of building something out of nothing, the sense of wonder and creativity, and simply sharing the experience with someone else.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review copy provided by Annapurna Interactive
