Lego Voyagers Review – Brick-Built Simplicity

Conceptually, Lego Voyagers is easy to love and appreciate. A couch co-op, cozy Lego game centered on platforming and puzzles at a low price point? Yes, please. It even uses a Friend Pass system like Split Fiction did earlier this year, continuing the trend of accessible co-op experiences. The simple charm of inhabiting the life of a single brick amuses me to no end—not to mention the possibilities it opens up for cooperative play. But the reality is somewhat mundane. The puzzle design didn’t quite live up to its potential and there’s some tedium involved in some of the fetch-and-haul design. Lego Voyagers doesn’t do anything particularly fresh, yet its premise is still worthy of praise.

Lego brick-building is about as free-form and creative as you can get with a physical object, yet Lego Voyagers is surprisingly linear and restrictive. For one, you can’t interact with every Lego piece. Okay, that’s fine. But it would be nice to know exactly which pieces are interactable and which aren’t. For one, you can’t interact with every piece—which is fine—but it would be nice to know exactly which pieces are usable and which aren’t. There are also invisible walls and out-of-bounds areas. They aren’t frequent, but they do exist. This limitation isn’t a deal-breaker, yet it’s worth noting that this isn’t a free-for-all Lego building game—not even close.

“To its credit, the autosave is frequent, updating progress almost constantly rather than by chapter.”

Now on to the  game flow. You and your co-op partner progress through linear, brick-built environments filled with simple obstacles requiring teamwork: extend a bridge here, build a ladder there. The game has little in the way of side content. Like Split Fiction, there are small secrets scattered about—a stud-built swing, a couple of lounge chairs—but nothing substantial. There are no secret levels, side minigames, or quests. Choosing between the red brick or blue brick has no bearing on gameplay beyond a minor transformation for one character midway through. The lack of side content and character variety makes the game low on replayability.

Even though the structure feels seamless, opening the menu reveals a series of chapters. To its credit, the autosave is frequent, updating progress almost constantly rather than by chapter. There are no game overs or lives either: if you plummet off a platform, you respawn immediately. It’s an ideal pick-up-and-play experience that doesn’t demand much setup or preparation.

As for co-op, the game is strictly two-player with no single-player option. You can play locally or online via the handy Friend Pass, which only requires one copy of the game. Unlike Traveller’s Tales’ Lego titles, this one lacks adaptive split-screen, and there’s no compensation when a partner runs off-screen—the camera simply tries to center between players.

The absence of adaptive split-screen isn’t necessarily bad; I enjoyed the wide single-screen view because it complements the seamless adventure the developers were aiming for. However, the off-screen confusion is just part of the game’s perception issues. For a platformer, its depth perception is poor. While it’s not a precision platformer, there’s plenty of climbing and hopping across tiny platforms. The snap-on function helps—pressing Circle locks onto a nearby stud, letting you align and snap onto surfaces—but even this couldn’t save us from missing what should have been simple jumps due to inconsistent depth perception.

“There’s no adaptive split-screen option and the camera angle is static.”

One particular perception issue is the inconsistent shadows rendering under your brick during jumps, making it hard to judge your trajectory. The static camera doesn’t help either. There’s no way to adjust the view, and most of the game uses a high, three-quarters perspective. While this angle captures the scale of the environment well, there are times when a side-scrolling or pure isometric view would have made navigation easier.

And I don’t want to give the impression this is a broken and messy game; it’s certainly not. But some minor glitches popped up during our playthrough. Instances of falling through platforms or getting stuck in-between bricks occurred more than we’d have liked. One time, I got softlocked due to being in some awkward out-of-bounds area with no way to respawn or checkpoint … not without exiting the game and loading it back, that is. All told, the game is largely free of glaring glitches and bugs, but the odd hitch here and there can impede progress.

The same can be said about the graphics. It mostly works, but has the occasional trip-up. The resolution and color grading on all the individual bricks is quite high and pleasant to look at. Though, there can be distracting glare in the lighting at times. Which, by the way, it is cool how there’s a soft day/night cycle in certain small moments of the game. One flaw that can be patched out is consistent screen tearing on the very top of the screen. It’s such a small line of screen tear that it’s easy to block out but worth noting nonetheless.

Speaking of blocking out, the vast majority of puzzles involve piecing together bricks to build the way forward. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that a good amount of puzzles felt repetitive and rather dull. These repetitive tasks often involved gathering the few functional Lego pieces scattered around an environment and hauling them to your partner. Which inevitably means that backtracking and fetching stuff is a core design of the game. This backtracking design wouldn’t be so laborious if the fixed camera and poor depth perception didn’t frustrate the platforming as it does. As a result, a lot of the tasks and puzzles feel like frustrating busywork instead of fun little challenges.

“Puzzles and progress often involve coordination with your partner in an organic way.”

One thing I do appreciate is how emergent the teamwork is in the game. Puzzles and progress often involve coordination with your partner in an organic way. The way forward isn’t spelled out to you, which compels further discussion to progress forward. One memorable area features conveyors that crush large bricks into single studs: one player halts the crusher while the other uses a magnetic crane to save pieces for building bridges or ladders. These moments of collaboration reward creativity and make you proud of your problem-solving. Unfortunately, they’re the exception; many puzzles are simple or monotonous, with slow backtracking undermining the fun.

In the end, Lego Voyagers feels like a half-game, half-toy you play to pass the time. At best, it works as a team-building exercise; at worst, it’s a dull time sink. After finishing its six-hour campaign, I felt there were far better ways to spend an afternoon with someone. That said, I can see the appeal for younger players or first-time gamers. Still, the poor depth perception and tedious backtracking keep it from being an ideal gateway title. I don’t enjoy criticizing it—I’m both a Lego fan and someone eager for more co-op-focused experiences. Platformers are my second-favorite genre after RPGs, so this should have been a perfect fit. But if I’m itching for a brick-building experience packed with creativity and fun, there are many other games I’d recommend over Lego Voyagers.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.