Sick Bricks

Sick Bricks iOS Review

Sick Bricks is a new iOS game from Spin Master that takes more than a leaf out of the Lego and Skylanders video-game playbook. In many ways Sick Bricks does what I had expected Lego to do a long time ago — integrate their brick toys closely with a video-game in the “toys to life” genre as Activision call it.

While Lego Dimensions remains a rumour Sick Bricks was released this month and offers a range of twenty or so collectable irreverent characters made of bricks. You buy these in the toy shop but they unlock the related individuals in the iOS game by simply placing them in front of the camera.

As a basic premise this ticks the right boxes, both in terms of the toy-game hybrid genre but also keep things firmly at the pocket money end of the value spectrum. However, Spin Master haven’t stopped there.

Because each character is made up of a head brick and a body brick you can mix and match the physical toys with each other to create new mash-ups. Place these in front of the app and it recognises the combination. This results in a Skylanders Swap Force style customisable cohort of heroes.

Furthermore you can also purchase larger bricks that scan in as vehicles for your characters to get in a drive around. This changes up game-play but also expands how much fun the toys are in the real world too.This certainly hooked my kids who invented their own Sick Bricks Flick game, as you can see in the video, that is (as far as I can tell) a turn based Subbuteo combat game. Who knew!

Back in the video-game things proceed much along Lego video-game lines. You progress through a series of hide-outs and over world stages in pursuit of the evil genuine looking to wipe out Sick Bricks individuality. Again this is very much on trend with the recent Lego Movie.

Taking things further than TT Games Lego experiences you can fully upgrade and customise each Sick Brick character by spending in game currency. This adds a role play element to proceedings and offers more reason for all that grinding through levels, than simply more levels to grind through.

While the Sick Brick app is free there are in-app purchases. Here parents will want to make sure their password settings are up to scratch to ensure no unexpected purchases. In our playing, with a healthy stock of the physical toys we’ve not yet been tempted in in-app purchases so it feels like the balance is good here.

The characters themselves are also worth noting. Each is an irreverent take on classic gaming and movie genres. These range from the inane to the slightly rude. Our favourite so far is Testy Monkey which has my kids in stitches — although I must admit I’m not quite sure why.

As with all these games, it won’t be until we come back to it in a few months time that we’ll be able to tell if it has genuine longevity and just how much we are likely to spend. On first impressions though Sick Bricks does a lot of things right.

If Lego Dimensions is a real thing, and we’ve no 100% confirmation it is, then the house of Brick better get on with it otherwise Sick Bricks will have established itself as the go to brick based toys to life experience.

8 out of 10