As part of Summer Game Fest’s Play Days event, I was able to sit down with LEGO Party and play a short game with developers from SMG Studio.
To say I walked away impressed with what I played would be an understatement.
Now, if you’ve played Mario Party, you’ll get the idea behind LEGO Party. It’s a four-player board game that sees you play minigames in between each round while you try to finish with the most Golden Bricks at the end of the game.
Simple enough. But how does it differ from other party board games aside from it being LEGO? Let’s take a look in this hands-on preview.
What Is LEGO Party?
Before getting into what LEGO Party is all about, it’s worth mentioning that it will feature full cross-platform support at launch. What it won’t have, however, is online matchmaking. All games will either be local co-op or invite only.
You play as a LEGO miniature, of which there will be 300 different options when the game launches. Each miniature will be fully customizable—SMG said that there are over 1 billion combinations—allowing you to have creations like a unicorn head on a Ninjago body if that’s what suits you. There won’t be any third-party licensing for characters nor will characters from The Lego Movie be available, but there’s still plenty to make your LEGO mini stand out.
The game is presented to you like a game show with the hosts giving updates on the state of things and providing banter that will make you laugh no matter the age. While I only was able to play one Pirate-themed board, there will be four available to play at launch. The games themselve can be set up to take anywhere from six to “somewhere from 15 or 20” turns, giving you the flexibility to adjust the length based on your available time.
The Pirate board featured a pirate ship, a Kraken that flings you around the board, a crab you can set as a trap to steal from your opponents, and even a volcano. As you played, the board would change to give it a dynamic feel that doesn’t let you get too comfortable.
On The Board
Starting the game has everyone take part in a minigame to determine player order. That’s one area of LEGO Party I really enjoyed. Rather than the turn order be set at the beginning of the game, each turn order is determined by where you placed in the previous minigame. Keep winning the games and you’ll get to keep going first. That said, always going first can provide disadvantages depending on how the board changes and where you are when it does.
Speaking of the minigames, there will be 60 available when the game launches. Some of the minigames that stood out during my time were the Excitebike/Trials-like racer, a two-vs-two air hockey game, and a memory match two where you can steal from your opponent. There seems to be a variety of the types of games, but there are a few similar games, mainly with racing. I’m interested to see how much variety there is among all 60 games to avoid it becoming too repetitive, too quickly.
Moving towards the end of the game will see the board adjust with more opportunities to get Golden Bricks, steal from your opponent, and just make things a bit more difficult. The changes start to really happen around halfway through the game, but, depending on where you land, can take shape even sooner.
At the end of the game, it’s whoever has the most Golden Bricks wins. Unlike Mario Party, there are no bonus bricks being given out to players. While that may disappoint some people who like that system, I personally enjoy that it’s all about what you do during the turns. Maybe down the line they decide to add it as a toggleable option, but, right now, it’s not there.
Overall, LEGO Party has the makings of being the next great party game. I only played one half-hour game, but the competitive nature that comes out with each minigame, no matter who’s playing, bodes well for how people will feel when the full game launches. Throughout the entire Play Days event, the LEGO Party booth was the loudest and most active among all of the games being shown. That’s a good sign when the goal is to bring people together.
LEGO Party is currently scheduled to release sometime in 2025 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Insider Gaming will have a full review later this year.
Are you looking forward to LEGO Party this year? Let us know down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums.
For more Insider Gaming, check out our review of the tabletop card game Console Wars: The Card Game. And don’t forget to subscribe to the Insider Gaming newsletter.
Mike has been covering the gaming industry since 2012, and has reported on some of the largest events in the industry while also working as an investigative reporter. Outside of…
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