LEGO Minifigures Online For Kids of All Ages

Funcom–known for action adventure MMOs like Age of Conan and Anarchy Online–has a new addition to the world of PC gaming: LEGO Minifigures Online. Aimed at children aged 7 to 11, LEGO Minifigures has enough appeal to easily entice gamers of all ages.

Bright, simple–without being mind-numbingly dull–and with a refreshing take on the traditional MMO party system, that is easy to grasp but has hidden layers of complexity for the older player, Funcom has created a fun, engaging, and very LEGO world for adults and kids to play in.

Funcom was at GDC last week with gameplay of the brand-new Pirate level, and we had a chance to play through the Pirate World dungeons with the lead developers of the game. Designed with children in mind, the game does away with some of the more traditional MMO/RPG elements–there’s no skill tree, or quest givers, or set roles of tank, healer, damage. Rather, players have access to a variety of minifigures–most familiar to any self-respecting LEGO fan–with various stats and two (that’s right, two) attacks, activated with the mouse. Each player gets three minifigures at a time to explore the world with, and can switch between the three with a click of a key (with no cooldown).

Each minifigure has its own health bar, and players can choose which minifigures to make up their group of three (players start with a base set of minifigures, and can collect more through in-game play). The minifigures themselves exemplify the sense of fun and humor that the game seems to have copious amounts of. Some examples: Chicken Suit Guy (he throws eggs that slow enemies and runs around in circles, flapping his wings, making his party immune to projectiles), Bumblebee Girl (aoe damage with bees, and a honey pot that, when thrown, slows enemies down), and the DJ (throws records which bounce of walls, and can do a ‘bass drop’ that plops a giant speaker down, slowing enemies). You can scroll through some of the minifigures–complete with bios–here.

Funcom made a deliberate decision to do away with quest givers and the typical quest-and-reward system in most RPGs (mostly because they discovered children under the age of 10 just ran right by NPC’s with exclamation points), so what you have are open worlds, where players can run from one area to the next, smashing things, fighting bad guys, and collecting gold stars, hearts and other bright baubles that spill out of chests, barrels and even bad guys.

The most recently announced world (previewed at GDC last week) is the Pirate World (you can watch our GDC exclusive video here); other worlds include: Candyland, the Underworld, Space, Medieval and more. In addition to the expected dungeons and in-world enemies, there will also be ‘trials’ and, of course, PvP.

Also gone are servers–all players play on one server–and game play is set to easily switch between PC and tablet.

The game is currently in closed Beta (children, parents and kids-of-all-ages can sign up for Beta access here), and is expected to release in Summer 2014, coinciding with the Series 12 toy line release–buying the toy minifigures will give players in-game unlock codes for virtual ones.

What do you guys think? Are you heading over right now to sign up for the Beta? Or are you over LEGO already? Let us know in the comments!