Whether it’s assembling pieces together to make various buildings, ships, or the Batcave, shopping at their many retail stores, visiting their theme parks, playing their many games, or screaming in agony after stepping on a piece, the Lego brand has continued to build much enjoyment since they were introduced in 1949. Their history in video games has seen its fair share of many highs and lows, and their latest game, published by Fictions and developed by homegrown studio, SMG Studio, LEGO Party! looks to build upon the Mario Party formula on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4|5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Welcome to LEGO Party! with your hosts, Paige Turner and Ted Talker! 4 players compete to collect the most number of Golden Bricks on 1 of 4 different boards and a series of minigames.

Much like the Mario Party games, the goal is to collect the most Golden Lego Bricks by the end of the game, called Challenge Zone. Golden Lego Bricks are placed in random locations on the board, and once found, players can purchase them with the required amount of Lego Studs. When a Golden Lego Brick is acquired, another will be placed in a different location. Players can also gain Golden LEGO Bricks by luck of the draw, but unlike Mario Party, none are given out as bonuses after the game’s conclusion, so LEGO Party! rewards players ’hard work.

Four boards are available to choose from and are based on familiar Lego properties, including Pirate Zone, NINJAGO Zone, Space Zone, and Theme Park Zone, with the last one featuring more than one theme in a single board. There is so much to see and do on each board, with familiar characters appearing during certain events. Players can also purchase or gain items to switch places with other places, slow down the random number generator, or move back spaces in case they missed something. The real fun, however, comes in the wide variety of minigames that occur after each rotation and after landing on certain spots.

There are 60 different minigames to compete in, with 51 of them being Free-for-All games and the remaining 9 being 2v2. In Mario Party games, which are exclusive to Nintendo consoles, many of them were designed to work with their unique controllers, such as the Wii Remote, DS, Joy-Cons, and more.

LEGO Party! only uses a regular controller on all relevant consoles and a keyboard on PC, but the minigames included come in a wide variety and are filled with tons of creative ideas, and all are simple to play, but can be hard to succeed in, depending on who you’re playing against.

Players will have to grapple hook their way through a cave and get the longest distance, solve puzzles, race each other, follow a trail, balance on a unicycle, play air hockey, and so much more. In the 2v2 games, the four players are split into teams of two and must communicate and coordinate to achieve their goal. Even the most challenging games can create hours of fun and laughter; even losing doesn’t feel that bad. None of the minigames involve any button mashing, either, which a lot of Mario Party minigames do. Instead, the minigames featured reward precision and concentration while also being entertaining, rather than whoever can press buttons the fastest or just get lucky.

If players want to go straight to the minigames, they can choose to play Minigame Rush to play a series of just minigames with various categories to choose from, or they can select which minigames are included. At the end, the total points are added to decide the winner. Players can also choose to play any specific minigame as much as they want, so they can practice and perfect their skills when they encounter them in the main game. Score Chaser has five different minigames where players will compete solo to achieve the fastest time or highest score, which can be addicting, but unfortunately, you can’t enter your score into an online leaderboard to compare yourself with other players.

Being a Lego game, players can choose from a variety of different pre-made characters, customise their own with what’s available, and more can be unlocked through game progression. Their custom characters could be wearing tiger print pants, a halter top, and a space helmet or jungle skirt, dragon armour, and a unicorn head, so players can get wild and creative with their ideas.

LEGO Party! is brimming with personality, too, with its style and presentation. Just about everything is made with familiar Lego pieces or characters from the respective themes each board is based on to create a family-friendly, bright, and colourful game.

The hosts, Paige Turner and Ted Talker, not only introduce the show, but also commentate throughout the entire game by constantly cracking jokes, making bad puns, and commenting on players ’performances.

They never come across as annoying or outright insulting, and they never seem like they repeat themselves, so there’s a good variety of voice lines to enjoy, especially when they make fun of each other and themselves, whether they’re self-aware or not. There is also a nice variety of music with upbeat game show-like tracks and tunes representative of each board’s theme, and all the minigames, too.

Online play is available to either play with your friends or random players online. In my personal experience, the online play was smooth and responsive, even during the minigames where precision matters most. Crossplay is also available on all relevant consoles, so there’ll be an endless amount of opponents to match up with, and this is what could give the game an edge over Mario Party, which is only available on Nintendo consoles.

No DLC has been announced as of yet, but we hope to see new boards added soon because, as fun as the four available boards are, it won’t be long before we’re asking for more. Lego has collaborated with many other franchises, including Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Marvel, DC, and many more, so maybe we’ll see new boards and even characters from those franchises included in the future, but only time will tell. Ironically, Lego has even collaborated with the Super Mario franchise, but it’s highly likely we’ll see the faces of Nintendo joining this party.

Can LEGO Party! Dethrone Mario Party? That remains to be seen, but most likely not, and it doesn’t need to. It could easily stand out as its own franchise with its own unique ideas. Even though it has crossplay to allow non-Nintendo players to join in on the fun, Mario Party is simply a long-established franchise with a dedicated fanbase, but LEGO Party! is a worthy alternative. Mario Party may have gotten the party started, but the party keeps going in LEGO Party!

Written by: Sammy Hanson