A Super Mario game inspired LEGO Bricktales

LEGO Bricktales’ inspiration comes from some interesting places, including one of the Super Mario series’ spin-off games. 

During the latest episodes of the Bits N’ Bricks podcast, hosts Brian Crecente and Ethan Vincent spoke to the founders of Clockstone, the developers of LEGO Bricktales, Minh Tri Do Dinh and Stephan Sossau. 

Throughout the discussion, inspirations for the title are revealed including one of the lesser-known Super Mario games – Captain Toad. Captain Toad is an action puzzle game released in 2014 with the titular character exploring and completing levels on floating dioramas, but without the ability to jump. 

That should sound familiar, as many of these elements have served as inspiration for the LEGO Bricktales development team.  

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“Captain Toad does so many things with changing the environment like interactions that really change the basic structure and opens up new pathways,” shared Stephan. “This is something that could be huge for LEGO dioramas as well. We are limited to a more static version of a diorama now, but in the future, I think it would be super exciting to have more dynamic elements, because those bricks that make up these parts in the minds of the player, they still exist. And it would be super exciting to tap into that and change more of the environment.” 

One aspect of the gameplay even ended up being the answer to a huge problem that the team faced during development. 

“We kind of have a limited amount of space we want to work in,” Continued Stephan. “So we don’t want to have an open world. So we kind of have to think about borders of the space you’re able to walk around. And the other thing is the technical background. There were a lot of challenges when you create a large world out of LEGO bricks, they take a lot of polygons if you’re placing thousands of bricks, so we had to think about how to reduce that complexity.” 

By limiting LEGO Bricktales to smaller dioramas within a level, the game runs smoother than if it were a full brick-built world, like in LEGO Worlds, better suiting the puzzle genre. 

LEGO Bricktales is available now on console and PC and we’ve got an in-depth review ready to read by clicking here

Featured image: Nintendo

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