Lego Builder's Journey is a charming puzzle game out this month

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Look at the Lego person's little backpack!

Well here's a very different sort of Lego game. There are no Star Wars characters or wisecracks in Lego Builder's Journey, which was showcased in Saturday's Wholesome Games Direct. Check out the trailer above to see what I mean.

That looks... really nice, right? Maybe I'm just a sucker for soft glow lighting, but I dig the aesthetic here of ordinary Lego bricks being so lovingly rendered. Guess what: it has ray tracing. No wonder it looks so freakin' gorgeous.

According to the Steam page, Lego Builder's Journey is "an atmospheric, geometric puzzle game that asks us to sometimes follow the instructions… and sometimes to break the rules." Basically, every stage is a teensy Lego diorama, and you're tasked with putting down a few brick pieces in the right place to make it from one side to the other.

Lego Builder's Journey was actually released for mobile in 2020, but it's hitting the PC and Nintendo Switch on June 22. It was quite well-received last year, actually, winning Mobile Game of the Year at the Golden Joysticks. It seems like the kind of puzzle game that soothes the brain rather than breaking it, which is just fine with me.

Another plus: You can't step on these Lego pieces and imprint their hellish little brick shapes into your foot.

• What's up next? Here's the full E3 2021 schedule
• Check out our list of every game at E3 so far

Wes Fenlon
Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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