Have you heard about LEGO Tower? The mobile game, due for release in July, from LEGO Games, and Nimblebit, the developers of Tiny Tower? This weekend, visitors to the LEGO House have the opportunity to build their own floors for a LEGO Tower, and contribute to a world record attempt for the World’s Largest Diorama made from LEGO® Bricks.

The event runs during Saturday and Sunday, having started on Friday, 21st June. The final measurement will occur on Sunday Afternoon (CEST).

The Rambling Brick has received some exclusive images from the LEGO House from the event, hours after building commenced on Friday.

Edgaras Racinskas, Associate Marketing Manager with LEGO Games said that LEGO Games was super-duper excited to turn the large constructions from the upcoming LEGO® Tower game into a humongous physical brick display.

“The floors are modular, and this feels like the right approach to try build something this big together, with hopefully everything able to slot together to form these huge structures. We were counting individual bricks used, but have moved now to measuring in kilograms. We’re now at 350kg of LEGO® bricks and we’re still ordering stuff…”

Several thousand floor frames has been pre-assembled in pre-planning for the event, and boxes-upon-boxes of LEGO® bricks will be available in the LEGO® House Square walk-in event. The official measurement will take place late-afternoon on 23 June.

Visitors to LEGO® House should expect a lot of brick-sorting noise, and a lot of inspirational designs being built by other visitors. There will be a dedicated area to take your own photos of your floors as they are contributed to the construction, and sticker sheets to take home.

LEGO Games at the Fan Media Days

At the Fan Media days, we had a presentation from the LEGO Games team, providing some details of the forthcoming LEGO Tower Game.

Don Meadows, Senior Product Lead for LEGO Games, introduced some of the games currently in development, including LEGO Legacy: Heroes Unboxed. He also outlined some of the key characteristics of LEGO as a toy. These include: having unlimited play possibilities; being for girls and boys, eliciting enthusiasm at all ages, appropriate for play all year round, providing endless hours of play, having scope to develop imagination and creativity, and being of a sustained quality. Don also pointed out the importance of a LEGO game being able to also possess these characteristics.

Lego Tower: Ideas Winners

Abhinav Saranghi presented some of the key information about LEGO Tower.†, introducing the nature of the environments used, as well as a brief outline of the game play.

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LEGO Tower is being developed by NimbleBit – the developer of the original Tiny Tower game back in 2011. The goal was to take that initial product, and ‘add the LEGO magic’ – to be family friendly, Showcase LEGO, and be something for people to experience pride and joy in creating.

The game involves building a Tower: adding residential levels, services, retailers and recreational facilities, while aiming maximise the productivity of your population. Along the way you can also collect and trade minifigures, as well as individual elements such as heads, hair, torsos and legs. you can exchange these with your friends, by learning your friend’s identity code, and sending them parts that are helpful for their tower.

As part of the initial AFOL Engagement process for LEGO Tower, a contest was held through the LEGO Ideas platform, encouraging people to digitally design new floors, matching the template.

Abinhav Saranghi of the LEGO Games Team announced the winners at the fan Media session. Their submissions can be seen here. The 6 winners will have their designs included in the final release of the game.

The build format is simple enough: 32 studs (including side walls and 12 sets back to the door and 9 bricks tall.

Digital building allows the new floors to be readily incorporated into the final modelling of the game.

However the simplicity of the format is far more versatile. As a building exercise, those of us attending the Fan Media Days were presented with a challenge: to fill a floor. Jet Lag might have somewhat sapped my creative spirit, but I managed to produce a mysterious eco garden with an overflowing pond. Builder’s Block can be a terrible thing!

Beta Testing:

I have had the opportunity to take part in the Beta test for LEGO Tower, and have found the game to be quite enjoyable. Exploring the game, and actively swapping figures and parts with friends and acquaintances has been quite fun.

The availability of free club membership (checkout Nimblebit’s Instagram for details) to beta testers has been a two edge sword: automatic elevator function rapidly eliminates one of the more mundane aspects of the game, as does the availability of all lobbies, roofs and elevators at no cost. As does the discount on upgrade costs. The costs can be achieved free of charge, through the accumulation of in game Bux. But more expensive items take a long time to gain adequate Bux, and as such, you might be tempted to purchase Bux from the shop. There is also the opportunity to purchase ‘Lost and Found’ money and pieces, which offers good value – although this is not available in the iOS version of the beta. The in-app purchases seem to offer reasonable value for money, compared with a cup of coffee, as far as content and entertainment within the game are concerned. It is a change compared to the typical model used for LEGO themed casual games designed primarily for mobile platforms.

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Another interesting aspect for the game is noting where levels/lobbies and rooftops have been based on actual sets, following these links reveals the use of affiliate links to the LEGO online store. Nothing wrong with that at all, and it reminds us that this game is primarily being developed by a small independent game company, with input from the LEGO Group. For those interested in the Digital Archeology of LEGO Games, you might be pleased to know that some of the music from LEGO Universe has been given a new lease of life in this game.

The game has been a great way to pass some time, and swapping workers and elements gives you a feeling of helping out mysterious strangers in your community while building your own collections. My player code is 1G1S for those who wish to come and visit.

You can preregister for the game now through the Google play and iTunes, and gain access to an exclusive element when the final release becomes available.

Details for the build event:

Event Key Information
Largest LEGO® Brick Diorama World Record Attempt
LEGO House – The Home of the Brick
Ole Kirks Vej 1, Billund

21 – 23 June  Build your own LEGO® Tower floor with our LEGO® bricks
23 June  Official measurement

Are you excited for LEGO Tower? Are you playing the Beta? How are you finding it? Were you a Tiny Tower Player too? Or would you just rather work in real bricks? Why not leave your comments below and until next time,

Play Well!