Executive producer Lawrence Poe guides us through Funcom's newest game

LEGO’s been enjoying a bit of a geek resurgence recently. Many of us remember playing with the small plastic bricks when we were kids, and retro sets like the Back to the Future DeLorean are like a siren call pulling us back. By building a new MMO around LEGO Minifigures, developer Funcom is hoping to bring that adventure to a new generation.

During Gamescom, executive producer Lawrence Poe showed me the bright, colorful world that his team had created. With a strong dungeon-crawler feel and easy-to-grasp gameplay, it’s clearly aimed at children from age 7 upwards. But, by incorporating depth and humor, Poe is also encouraging parents and relatives to play alongside them.

The Minifigures world will contain zones built around popular themes, such as Pirates and Galaxy Squad, along with a completely new Mythology zone developed specifically for the game. Starting out on a secluded beach, Poe led us up along a mountain path filled with harpies and ogres. With a disco DJ as his avatar of choice, he’d throw records, the plastic discs bouncing off the steep mountainside or destroying barricades the ogres had built.

Swapping out to a green Cyclops, Poe then proceeded to club his foes into pieces. He went on to explain how each figure has its own animations and attacks to really bring it to life. “The minifigures are the star of the show, and they all have their own unique identities and personalities. And that’s a responsibility – bringing these guys to life, carrying their personalities on the screen.”

Part-way up the mountain laid a pile of parts, waiting to be built into a glider. After approaching the pile and hitting a button, the slow Cyclops started to put them together. Poe explained that, although he’s tough, the Cyclops isn’t that creative, while the DJ does a much faster job. Swapping minifigures, the finished glider then became the entrance to a dungeon called The Olympian Forge.

Although Minifigures uses building as a mechanic, it doesn’t support free building in the way other LEGO games have in the past. In this case, the focus is clearly on action, adventure and exploration, with some impressive monsters thrown in for good measure. “The act of building things in our game isn’t the hook, it’s ‘what does building do for me, what does it get me? It helps me defeat bosses, it helps me unlock hidden bonus areas. And in PvP, it’ll help me win.’”

A big part of any kid-focused online game is child safety. Poe agreed, saying it’s the first responsibility they have as developers, and the first and last thing on the checklist when developing new features. “We’re working  very closely with LEGO and their child safety group to make sure that we’re creating an environment that’s going to be safe. Specifically, we’re focusing on areas like Chat to make sure it’s a clean, safe environment.

“For things like PvP, players want to compete against each other, but that doesn’t mean I’m hacking you with a sword and killing you. There are no swords in Basketball, but it’s still a competition.  So we’re trying to create an environment where you’re joining a team. And yes, they will be fighting each other. But there’s also room for players who want to be part of the team and want to contribute, but don’t want to be part of the direct competition with other players. Maybe they want to fight monsters to protect the team’s base during the PvP match, and all those things contribute to the score.”

While the open-world will hold numerous players, each dungeon is built for up to four players, with difficulty scaling automatically depending on the size of the group. When entering, each player can pick three minifigures from their collection that they’d like to use, depending on the dangers they’re about to face and their own personal favorites.

Each of your plastic heroes has a basic attack which can be spammed by clicking on monsters, and a secondary attack that can be fired from the right mouse button. Easy enough you might think, and for younger gamers it’s probably ideal. The complexity and depth comes in from being able to swap between three of your minifigures on-the-fly, opening up a much larger range of tactics.

The forge itself was perched at the top of a mountain and, as we made our way towards the summit, the scenery changed. We moved seamlessly from indoor to outdoor locations and from rocky path to dark cave. “One thing we know about youngsters is they want to see different things, and they want to see them often.” Once we’d passed the snow line, we encountered LEGO clouds, with Poe hinting that there might even be a cloud level.

What I saw had a very strong LEGO feel to it, and I asked Poe how his team had managed it. “Our Art director has a line he likes to say: our guys spent the first ten years of their lives training to make this game. Playing with LEGO and building their own little place.” The team also used the LEGO designer tools in order to prototype everything man-made in the game, ensuring that bridges, weapon racks, and wagons could all be built from bricks if someone wanted to.

At the top of the Forge was a giant ogre, hurling down balls of lightning. As the party approached his lair, the camera perspective shifted from isometric to face-on, providing more of a visual cue that a boss fight was about to start. Once they crossed the green barrier of commitment, the action was on. In this example, the team had to build lightning rods in order to survive the ogre’s attacks, while wearing him down with their own.

Although it was a short run lasting about fifteen minutes, it’s also rewarding. Players earn Minify Stars for completing the dungeon quest, which can then be used to improve the stats of any figure in their collection, and there’s also a chance they could find a new minifigure. It’s also possible to increase your collection through completing quests, exploring the world and completing achievements, with almost 100 available at launch in the second half of 2014.

That launch date will also coincide with a new series of physical LEGO Minifigures, only this time there’ll be something extra in those foil wrapped packets. As well as getting a plastic figure, players will get a code which unlocks that figure in the game so they can play with it straight away.

This won’t just be a PC game either. In order to help families play together, LEGO Minifigures will also run in a browser, and on iOS and Android tablets. Poe cited that it’s the experience of Funcom’s staff and the maturity of their Dreamworld technology that’s allowed them to work rapidly since starting in September last year. “We had a playfield up and running on a server in New Jersey that we could connect to in three weeks. We have all the tools – we don’t have to develop all this stuff. We just sit down and start creating content.”

What I saw during Gamescom was already beginning to look solid, varied, and definitely LEGO, and I’m looking forward to seeing Funcom welcome an entire new generation of MMO gamers. With the LEGO Minifigures launching as a fun, action-focused free-to-play title, there’s certainly no reason why that can’t happen.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Senior Contributing Editor

Follow me on Twitter @Gazimoff