For LEGO Party! we developed over 250 prototypes and conducted over 150 external playtests to get to our final 60 minigames. There’s not one “type” of party game player so we needed to craft minigames that could be played by all ages and all skill levels. We also wanted to ensure there was enough mechanical depth for many of the minigames to allow more experienced players to compete at a higher level.

In this article we’ll give some insight into our design process by picking a few of our favorite minigames and show some of the process behind their development. But trying to pick our “favorite” minigames from the 60 was never going to be easy.

We hope this also gives some insight into what goes into making a LEGO game and what’s involved in working with external LEGO builders or AFOLS (Adult Fans Of LEGO) as they are affectionately referred to. SMG Studio collaborated with several AFOLS from the wider community in Australia and overseas. Some who had worked professionally building before but others this was just their side passion.

One unifying element across all minigames was simple controls. With all 60 minigames sharing just 3 simple control schemes: analogue stick only, analogue stick and one button, or just one to four buttons.

This allows players, even those with less familiarity using a controller, to pick up and play easily and compete.  A bonus of “one analogue stick only” means that many of our minigames can be played one handed, perfect for eating pizza and playing at the same time.

It also gave us as game designers strict rules to work with that help refine the design process — sometimes in game design more rules are better.

So, here’s a few of the 60 minigames you can expect in LEGO Party! when it’s released on September 30.

Bungee Boogie

We experimented early on with grapple as a core mechanic (because grappling is S tier) and ended up with three minigames using it. To be honest we could have made 60 grappling minigames but that might have been overkill. 

The objective is simple, dance on the platform to earn points, ‘king of the hill’ style. Other players must grapple and swing their way to knock the other players off.

Theming wise, the basic nature of the game itself left this wide open. Concepts for this ranged from a Jack and Beanstalk fantasy to a circus tent carnival vibe. But once we saw the sketch of a DJ in a floating booth, we knew that was the direction to go.

The theme allowed us to make a game with some phat beats (each minigame has a unique soundtrack and this one pumps) and get a ‘caveman loves clubbing’ joke in there. Never let SMG Studio get in the way of a good pun.

Museum Mayhem

This is a deceptively simple minigame in which you protect your giant vase from being broken by other players.

Even when a player is “eliminated” they are still able to continue in the game and be an active participant. It was an important design decision to try and design games that kept all players engaged even if they lose.  While we couldn’t do that for every minigame this is one of the best examples of how that design philosophy comes into play.

It’s also very satisfying running through the broken vase bricks and replicating that tactile experience is something we wanted to convey when we could.

It’s fun having a humorous diegetic “healthbar” for players to protect. There’s a lot of near misses that invoke that feeling of playing with a ball inside your house and almost breaking something valuable.

The overall museum theming of this minigame came together quickly and it was a joy to watch the LEGO builders build out the scene and hide a lot of arty easter eggs in the level.

The giant world globe that falls into the arena for players to push around originally started as a giant hockey puck with the players in hamster balls. You hear the term SNOT (Studs Not on Top) a lot when working with professional LEGO builders. This refers to when a build has studs that are not just on top but on the sides or the bottom. The globe featured in the game is a classic SNOT build with the added complexity of trying to have continents on it.

Here’s a quick overview (skipping the dozens of steps between these) going from prototype to sketch, and then final 3D blockout to LEGO build.

Rumble Rally

When we started brainstorming, we knew we wanted a classic ‘80s arcade style racer. Rumble Rally does just that with players racing around the track for 3 laps.

By ditching the accelerator and brake buttons and going just pure steering left and right, we’re able to distill the game down to its purest form. In playtesting most people kept the accelerator button down the whole time and that can be tiring.

One important factor when working with LEGO bricks is what scale you are working with. With LEGO Party!, we had complete freedom for every minigame to change the scale to fit the game best. Building to “minifigure scale” (which means all the builds are scales to match a standard minifigure) can sometimes result in build scales that are too big to fit on one screen (which we soon realised after designing a few vehicles for this minigame).

Even at minifigure scale there’s still decisions made about how wide the car should be. The scale is based on how many “studs” wide it should be built. Is it 11, 13, 14 or 16 studs wide? Even a seemingly small decision like that affects the entire build of the track as we can’t simply “scale” a car to fit what we’ve built later or scale the track itself. We learned a lot making LEGO Party! on how to properly plan and work with LEGO builders.

So, for this minigame we decided earlier on to work at microscale to allow us to get everything on one screen and make the track feel “bigger” by basically shrinking down the players. The challenge then becomes giving each car a distinct look at that scale. I think the builder team nailed this.

Surprisingly the theming and even level design for this minigame changed very little from the initial concept seen below. We wanted it to be a LEGO City Stuntz meets Apocalypseburg! There’s a few versions of the track with blades and traps but we realised the fun was in drifting around the track and finding the racing line.

One big reason why this is a favourite of ours is, if given enough time, this minigame could turn into a fully self-contained game unto itself with multiple tracks, different vehicles, ‘upgrades’ and more. 

Bricknado

For a change of pace for players we also created minigames like Bricknado. This minigame focuses on the LEGO brick itself. We also wanted minigames that people could participate in even if they didn’t have a controller in hand. We’ve seen in playtesting with 4 kids where the parents watching from the sidelines will also be competing along with the kids even without a controller in hand.

Bricknado is a guessing game. A swirling array of bricks slowly appears and players must guess which object it creates. Scoring is based on if you guess correctly and the speed so there’s a risk vs reward of guessing too early to maximise your points.

This was also a fun brief for the LEGO builders to come up with a series of builds that are all the same theming but different under a very strict brick count limit and size restrictions. Most coming in ~25 bricks. Which is where the beauty of the LEGO brick comes into its own: you can create these amazing creatures with so few bricks.  One personal regret now is that we didn’t use this as an excuse to get LEGO Mixels into the game!

The individual bricks in the Bricknado are categorised into tiers based on how unique they are to the build. So as time goes on the higher tier bricks are introduced to make the guessing easier.

Here’s a few of the builds you see in Bricknado. We designed over 110 little builds to give a lot of replayability in this minigame.

We have a handful of guessing/thinking minigames in LEGO Party! and it’s been important for us to understand that the variety of styles of play is what makes party games interesting for all players.

That’s just a small sample of the 60 minigames on offer in LEGO Party! We’re curious what you’ll find as your favorites, and can’t wait for everyone to enjoy all the hard work that went into crafting this game. For more info check out the official website.

LEGO® Party! Pre-Order Bundle

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Pre-order LEGO® Party! now and score 5 awesome minifigures. Let the party begin!

Compete against your friends in wacky Challenge Zones and 60 hilarious minigames from across your favorite LEGO sets like LEGO Pirates, LEGO Space, LEGO NINJAGO® and more.

Join your friends online no matter their platform, or get together for a LEGO Party game night. With multiple game modes and tons of minifigures to unlock, you’ll have all the bricks to build the ultimate party!

Challenge players near or far, customize your character and compete in a variety of awesome minigames to get as many Golden Bricks as you can, by any means necessary! But beware, watch out for monsters, traps and flying roast turkeys on your way to become the next star of LEGO Party!

Play your way:
Bring your friends and enjoy the mayhem in couch multiplayer or with cross-platform online multiplayer for up to 4 players. Whether it’s competing for the perfect score in Rocketball, practicing against that pesky kraken in Kraken Up or boogieing down in Dance Off, you can enjoy LEGO Party! together or solo!

Go for the gold:
In LEGO Party! you have one goal: to become the player with the most Golden Bricks! Use power-ups to gain the advantage and set up traps to sabotage your opponents across a range of customizable LEGO themed Challenge Zones.

Everything is awesome:
Put your speed, wits, and LEGO expertise to the test across a variety of crazy minigames. Race to make dinner for aliens, run through collapsing tombs and skid round the track in rally races and so much more across 60 different wildly fun minigames.

You do you:
With over 1 billion minifigure combinations from iconic LEGO sets, you can go with a classic look or design your own unique and outlandish minifigure. Show off your creation at the next party!