Lego Party's demo was so nice, I played it twice

Digital Trends

4 hours ago

It was the first day of Summer Game Fest's Play Days event, and I'd just wrapped up a round of Lego Party, a new multiplayer game announced just the day before. I wandered off to another demo appointment and then walked back through the room where others were playing it. As I was passing the kiosk again, a heard someone say my name. Two friends were sitting down for their own Lego Party appointment, so I walked over and said hi. They asked if I wanted to hop in with them. I was about to decline, but I stopped to think for a moment. You know what? Sure! Why not?
That's not generally something I'd do during a crowded day of previews, but it speaks to how pleasant Lego Party is. While it largely just dresses Mario Party up in bricks, it's an endearing little multiplayer game that's both chaotic and casual enough to entertain friends looking to laugh over a few good minigames.
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You can infer a lot about Lego Party from its title alone. It's a digital board game where players circle spaces and collect studs that are used to buy Golden Bricks. The player with the most Bricks at the end wins, but there are minigames to win and board events to work around on the road to victory. Very little about it changes the Mario Party formula, save for the fact that minigames happen at the start of rounds rather than the end. The standings of each game determine the turn order for the next round, which makes winning and losing a little more important. Otherwise, the changes are minimal, with analogues to star stealing, battle spaces, hidden blocks, and more.
And that's totally fine. Mario Party works for a reason and it's surprising that so few have ever really nailed it quite as well. Lego Party really does approach the agony and the ecstasy of those games with its emphasis on standing-changing chaos. In my first go at the demo, I got my butt kicked by a CPU player who just so happened to rack up some late Bricks by stealing one from a player through a board event that involved an erupting volcano and a raw chicken. It was a hectic conclusion to a six round game that got everyone in my session invested in destroying the computer.
Aside from that, there are two things that Lego Party gets right about the format. The first is its map design. I played one of its four maps, which featured a strong pirate theme. I had to work around several themed obstacles, like a chomping whale that would eat me if I landed on the right space and that pesky volcano. More clever is the way that the maps incorporate Legos. In one game, I landed on a construction space. I was given the choice to build part of the board when I got there, choosing between two different pirate ships that added different events to the map. That malleable quality makes it feel like players can build the play area each game, adding a solid Lego twist to Mario Party.
And in case you're wondering, yes, every single piece of the game is built out of Legos. Even the smallest detail, like a treasure chest sitting off to the side of a space, is fully built from bricks. It's an incredibly impressive feat that makes Lego Party feel like a high-effort project for developer SMG Studio.
Some of the minigames I played were highlights too, though the best ones leaned into the Lego aesthetic. In one, bricks start swirling around in front of all four players. As they do, we have to guess what they are building from four options ahead of us. The fastest correct guess gets the most point, so it becomes a tense battle of observation as players look for defining bricks that give away which model is the right answer. In another, all players need to protect fragile vases in their corner of a square field from a ball. A hectic game of soccer unfolds that ends with shattered vases left in a pile of bricks. Games like that play with the brick-by-brick nature of the world to great effect.
Other minigames are a bit more basic, leading to some hits and misses. A simple game of air hockey or a jump rope contest over a spinning kraken feel like they could be in any Mario Party game. Original or not, they're still fun enough to get friends in the spirit of smack talking. One of my personal favorites dropped me and my opponents into a riff on Trials, where we had to keep our motorcycles balanced as we drove up and down hills.
When I got tempted into playing Lego Party again, I said yes for a simple reason: I knew I'd get a good laugh playing another round with friends. My theory held true, and I had an even better time with it my second time around. I'm a little skeptical that four boards will be enough to keep it all fun enough in the long run, but I can see the party potential here already. Who doesn't love cursing their friends out over a jump rope minigame gone awry?
Lego Party launches later this year for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.