We spent the last few months building something a little unusual for a brick company: a video game. It is live now, it is free, and you can play it in a browser or on your phone right now.
It is called nuvoblox - build it for real, and it runs on Roblox. The idea behind it is simple enough to explain in one sentence: every brick in the game is a brick that exists in real life.
That sounds like a small detail. It is actually the whole point, and it is the reason the game took as long as it did.
Why “every piece is real” is harder than it sounds
Most building games let you place whatever you want, wherever you want. Blocks float. Pieces clip through each other. Shapes get invented because they look good on screen. That is fine for a game, but it means what you build could never be assembled on a table.
We went the other way. The catalogue in the game is a real parts list: bricks, plates and tiles from 1×1 up to 4×8, in sixteen classic colours. Behind the scenes each one carries its actual part number and colour code, the same reference system used by people who catalogue bricks for a living.
Then we added the rules that physical bricks obey anyway:
- Pieces snap to the stud grid - no half-stud cheating
- Nothing overlaps another piece
- Nothing floats in mid-air with no support beneath it
- Nothing stacks on top of a smooth tile, because in real life it would not stay there
- You cannot delete a piece that is currently holding other pieces up
That last rule annoyed us during testing more than any other. It is also the one that matters most. Together these constraints mean that anything the game lets you finish is something you could actually build with real bricks on a real table. The game will not let you make something impossible.
What you actually do in it
You get your own baseplate - 32×32 studs, the classic size - and you build. Eight players share a world, each with their own plate, so you can wander over and look at what everyone else is making.
The parts that took the most work are the boring ones that you only notice when they are missing:
- Undo and redo, two hundred steps deep, including undoing a full plate clear
- An orbit camera you can swing around your build, plus a straight-down top view for lining things up
- Automatic saving, with four save slots, so you can keep several projects going
- A build code for every creation - a short tag like RS3-CFJ that identifies it
- A parts list showing every single brick your creation uses, by colour and size
There are two modes we are particularly fond of. Instructions mode breaks your own creation into layer-by-layer steps, exactly like the booklet that comes with a set, and tells you the real-world size of the finished thing in centimetres and inches. Smash test does what the name suggests, and is the reason very little work got done on the day we added it.
There is also a small town to walk around, built entirely from the same real pieces - a cottage, a lighthouse, a rocket, a castle and a few others. Nothing in it uses a part the game would not let you place yourself.
It runs on a phone
We wanted this to work on whatever device someone already has, so it runs on PC, phone and tablet. Getting a stud-grid builder to feel right on a touchscreen took several rewrites, and the camera controls still get the most attention from us.
Build on the bus, essentially. That was the goal.
The part that is coming next
Here is the thing we are building toward, and we want to be straight about where it stands.
Because every piece in the game is real, your creation can be turned into a genuine parts list - and that parts list can be packed into a box and posted to you. Build it on a screen, then build it again on your kitchen table with the actual bricks.
That is not live yet. The ordering side is still in review, and when it does open it will start in a single country before we widen it. We would rather say that plainly than have you discover it after getting attached to a build. The game itself says “coming soon” on that button for exactly the same reason.
What we would genuinely like in the meantime is for people to play it and tell us where it is annoying. It is a new game with a small number of players and a long list of things we already want to change. Early feedback shapes it far more than feedback six months from now.
Play it
nuvoblox - build it for real is free on Roblox, on PC, phone and tablet. Open the game on Roblox.
Why a brick shop made a video game
A fair question. The honest answer is that we kept running into the same problem from two directions.
People who buy our sets often want to modify them, and have no way to plan that without buying the pieces first. People who like designing builds have plenty of software options, but most of it is built for engineers rather than for a twelve-year-old with a tablet.
A free, simple builder where the pieces are real sits in the middle of those two problems. If it eventually means you can design something yourself and receive it in a box, so much the better - but even before that, it is a decent way to spend an afternoon.
It is free, it is live, and we would like to know what you think of it.