In 2022, the construction puzzle game "LEGO Bricktales," developed by ClockStone and published by Thunderful Publishing, was launched across various gaming platforms. Our editorial team was among the first to experience this game. It offers a unique gaming experience by allowing players to build with LEGO bricks in a "realistic" world.
Additionally, with the assistance of our friends at LEGO, we had an exclusive conversation with the creators at ClockStone game studio. Some of the questions came directly from Chinese players and our magazine readers, as we were eager to learn more about the stories behind the game's creation.
Hi ClockStone studio team,
Hope all is being well. Here is a greeting from a Chinese Fan Media, Cool Toys Trends (kuwanchao), the only brick media publishing the hard paper journals in the Chinese community with millions of subscribers on multi-platforms.
Congratulations on the new game LEGO® Bricktales launching on the platforms. Our editor team got a chance to play around the very first version of this awesome brick game. Bricktales gave us a unique experience by building LEGO bricks in a “real” world. It's our pleasure to reach out for an interview with you. Here we are listing the interview questions, including a couple of questions directly from our subscribers, and Chinese Bricktales fans as well.
- As we heard the ClockStone studio was founded by Tri and Stephan in high school time, this sounds very attractive. Would you like to share your business start story? And what is the beginning motivation to start up a game studio? Would you also like to introduce your core team members to our subscribers?
Tri: The company wasn’t founded by just me and Stephan alone, it was 6 people: Me, Stephan, Michael, Matthias, Marcel and Marco, as well as a 7th person, Alex, who was heavily involved with our first project but wasn’t part of the actual founding. It all started as this particular group got together through shared interests and contacts and we created our first game Avencast: Rise of the Mage. The company at first was simply a way to sell the game, but we continued the momentum and through a variety of opportunities, a lot of work and a lot of luck we now have been a successful company for over 15 years.
As for the actual team that worked on LEGO Bricktales, you can find an introduction to us here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1898290/announcements/detail/3303976637117366037
- What game engine does the game "LEGO Bricktales" use? We would also like to hear your own thought of the game LEGO Bricktales.
Tri: In some ways I would describe LEGO Bricktales as our love letter to LEGO and all the things that we feel makes it special as a toy. It was very important to us to make a game that allows you to build as a player, but also highlights the beautiful environments that can be created when you build everything fully out of LEGO bricks. It is very much inspired by all the interesting creations that LEGO fans all over the world have made.
The game uses the Unity engine, in combination with various tools we created to import bricks and parts that were provided by the LEGO group. For LEGO constructions we used Bricklink’s Studio software.
- We heard that the development of this game started in 2019. So, did you spend the full 4 years to create and polish this game? What kind of work do you spend most of your time on?
Tri: It wasn’t the full team working on it over 4 years, but there was always some ongoing prototyping and design before we started in full in 2021. There were a lot of different aspects we had to figure out over the years. 2019 we started with prototyping building controls and physics. In 2020 we spent a lot of time prototyping a tile-based system to build dioramas. And from 2021 onward we needed to figure out how to put everything together into a cohesive game including puzzle design and exploration elements. The more the different elements started to combine, the more we saw just how complex it would be to balance everything out.
- How did you handle physics and gravity in the game, did you consider the LEGO bricks building features in the real world?
Tri: What’s unique about LEGO bricks is how they stick together to form stable structures, and we couldn’t simulate this with regular physics engines in real-time. So Michael, who has studied physics and math, wrote a custom physics engine for LEGO bricks. We did model the brick behavior after real life observations, but in some places we increased the weight of the bricks, or otherwise we couldn’t create interesting puzzles. Real LEGO bricks are incredibly stable we found out.
- As we heard that the development of "LEGO Bricktales" was inspired by CaptainToad from Nintendo company. What specific details and operating mechanism did you borrow from Captain Toad?
Tri: The key inspiration from Captain Toad was the cube-like levels that you could turn around and observe from all angles. We felt like this level format would be very interesting to replicate in dioramas that are fully built out of LEGO bricks. We wanted to communicate a sense of a world that could exist on your table and is filled with details rather than having sprawling open areas. We also looked at it as a platformer game where you don’t run very fast and jump very high, but instead you have to walk around and think about your steps, which makes for a slower, more cerebral pace. But in the end we also found out that a lot of these inspirations became their own thing once we would translate them into LEGO.
- Some hand-on players are not very satisfied with the character operation and control feel in the game. What do you think of this problem?
Tri: We value people’s opinions and do know that controls, especially building with LEGO bricks digitally, are a big challenge to get right. We tried our best to design controls that work for all the different situations of the game, but if people have valid criticisms we are willing to listen and eager to think about possible improvements. Because we do think that it is powerful to have a digital LEGO game where you can actually build.
- We think the gameplay of this game is very similar to the Lego Group's LDD software or BRICKLINK's Studio2.0 software. Have you referred to these building software?
Tri: We have used Bricklink’s Studio extensively to build our LEGO constructions, but we didn’t try to replicate its controls and user interface, because we felt like we wanted to create a building experience that feels playful and not like a technical piece of software. Some similarities exist with how you drag bricks around and place them, but a lot of details of the controls are different and had a different origin.
- We feel that there are relatively few types of LEGO building blocks available for building in the game. Do you have any ideas for adding more types of parts in the future?
Tri: We are thinking about it, but we don’t have concrete plans yet. We definitely noticed that people like to build creatively, possibly even more so than we expected, so it would be good to support that so people really can express themselves through building.
- Will you continue to make LEGO-related games in the future, or will you provide DLC for this game?
Tri: Time will tell. Just two months after the release of LEGO Bricktales it is still very early and we don’t have exact plans what to do next, but we would love to create DLC for the game, work on a sequel or just generally collaborate with the LEGO group on further ideas.
- Describe your next game, Black Border, what type of game is it?
Tri: Greed: Black Border was our second game we made after Avencast: Rise of the Mage. It was created in 2009 and is a Sci-Fi Action RPG. So that’s way in the past. What’s interesting about it is that was our first collaboration with our publisher Headup Games (who now belong to Thunderful Games). Ever since then we have worked together on the Bridge Constructor series, which ultimately led us to LEGO Bricktales now.
- How did the LEGO Group reach out to you, and how did you cooperate with each other?
Tri: If you listen to the Bits and Bricks podcast episode about LEGO Bricktales, Anders Tankred Holm from the LEGO group actually retells the story about how he contacted us. He initially pitched a game idea internally and used material from the Bridge Constructor series as inspiration, without actually having talked to us. Only after a while he decided to get in touch with Dieter Schoeller from Headup Games and then we started talking about a collaboration between the LEGO group and ClockStone. From that point on in the beginning of 2019 we slowly developed the game idea and went through prototyping phases to come up with LEGO Bricktales. Up until now we would regularly stay in touch with the LEGO group so we could talk about the status of the project, but at the same time they gave us a lot of trust and let us do our own thing to execute the vision of the game how we imagined it.
- Do you usually play with LEGO blocks? If yes, what theme series do you all play?
Tri: Most of us played with LEGO bricks in our childhood but haven’t touched them much in our adult life. So to collaborate with the LEGO group was also a wonderful opportunity to relive some childhood memories that go back 30 years or more. Me personally, I loved the first LEGO pirate ship “Pirates of the Barracuda Bay”. Last Christmas I got to build the LEGO Ideas Fender Stratocaster and was actually very fascinated by the advanced building techniques used to replicate the guitar.
- Do you have anything to say to Chinese LEGO Bricktales players?
Tri: Greetings from across the globe to all fans of LEGO and LEGO Bricktales in China! Thank you for your enthusiasm for LEGO, and we do hope you enjoy the game and create wonderful things with LEGO, whether it is with real physical bricks or digital ones.
Thank you.
