Before you start building your own worlds in Lego’s answer to Minecraft, you’ve got to learn the roles and earn some gold bricks. Let’s take a look at the opening moments of Lego Worlds.
When it launched in early access for PC back in 2015, Lego Worlds was a much more Minecraftian (it’s a word) experience. It was loose and free-form, with players generating random worlds and exploring to their heart’s content.
Now that Lego Worlds has officially launched for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, the starting experience is much more guided. A lengthy tutorial sees players hopping between pre-made worlds, introducing them to each tool in their arsenal in the form of fun little quests.
Here’s a run-down of the games’ opening moments, along with time stamps to jump to in the video atop this post.
00:50 — Character Creation
Players start off with only a couple of basic options for creating a character, male and female astronaut types. As you play the game you’ll unlock new options, so don’t worry too much over this bit.
02:33 — The Discovery Tool
On Pirate World we earn the first weapon in our Lego building arsenal, the Discovery Tool. This tool is used to scan and collect small Lego builds, animals, minifigures and such. Once scanned, players can spend bits to unlock them, after which they can be placed or removed at will.
10:20 — Rank Up
As we collect gold bricks, either by discovery or completing quests, our builder rank goes up. A certain amount of gold bricks are required before players can make their own worlds, so hunt them down like blocky gold dogs.
14:00 — The Landscape Tool
This is the tool for digging massive holes or building bridges, found in a prehistoric world. The Landscape Tool can change shape and size, so your holes can be just the right shape. Thank goodness the player character can climb.
24:29 — The Copy Tool
Found on a candy-style planet, the Copy Tool is used to scan and store massive structures, like houses or towers. It’s a bit tricky, and I’m still getting the hang of it.
26:20 — The Paint Tool
The Paint Tool works as advertised. Coat large swaths of landscape and scenery with different hues, or paint meticulously, brick-by-brick.
35:50 — The Build Tool
You just want to build with Lego as you do in real life? This is your tool. The build tool is about placing bricks of various shapes and sizes to suit your needs. NPC need a wall built? You got this.
40:35 — Free Build
Once you’re done in the candy world, it’s time to start generating your own places to hang. Now you can create your own random worlds, filled with items to scan and gold bricks to uncover. As a tutorial parting gift, the player unlocks the Free Build ability.
From what I’ve seen so far, there’s a ton to see and do in Lego Worlds. There are building kits to unlock, allowing you to place entire playsets as you please. New vehicles, mounts, creatures and characters lurk around every corner. It’s almost impossible to load up the game and not set off exploring.
I’ll be playing more with Lego Worlds in the coming weeks.