The LEGO Fusion Town Master: Build and Manage Your Very Own LEGO Town
LEGO building game play takes a whole new dimension in the new LEGO Fusion Town Master. A combination between old fashion LEGO construction and a well-designed mobile app, the build a city game allows kids to create great looking, unique buildings and load them into a virtual environment to act as real life structures they can use within a virtual city management game.
How Does the LEGO Building Game Work?
LEGO Fusion Town Master requires downloading the LEGO building app in order to work properly. Essentially, it’s a build a city game that kids can use to build an entire city. They can build structures and buildings on top of a plate called the “Fusion Base Plate” and then capture the building on camera to load it into the game.
Aligning the camera precisely can be a little tricky, but once your child gets used to it, it’ll only take a few seconds to capture the picture, load it into the town building app and have in-game workers build it into the chosen location. This way, an entire virtually managed city can be created, with restaurants, police stations, fire stations, houses, shops and much more.
There are 256 LEGO pieces included into the LEGO Town Master package, and structures can be built in any sizes or shapes measuring at most 16 x 16 rows and columns. It’s important to have an uncluttered background, as well as proper lighting when capturing the picture, as the app will analyze the image, using the visual of the base plate and LEGO pieces included into the building to create an accurate virtual depiction you can use within this LEGO building game.
The LEGO building app itself features highly engaging graphics and animations, making use of various challenges and missions, such as catching robbers or constructing various buildings, to help your children build up the fun factor and progress through the game, while also learning to manage and organize all aspects of a real life city.
The LEGO Fusion Town Master is one of the toys for kids on the Toys R Us Hot Toy List for Christmas 2014.
The Main Assets of the LEGO Town Master Game
The LEGO Town game definitely has a lot going for it, and you’ll find your kids getting really excited at the prospect of building unique cities all the time and making progress managing their towns and keeping their inhabitants safe and happy. But there’s also a lot more to gain from playing this game:
- The LEGO 21204 will keep your kids constantly engaged with missions requesting the construction of various buildings such as restaurants or fire stations, so they will be challenged to create new structures using the actual LEGO bricks provided, while minimizing screen time.
- The building process is quite fast paced, since only the front of each building needs to be created, and you’ll find the LEGO workers within the app constructing it from the pictures taken in seconds.
- The problems and challenges within the game are not too difficult, so children between 7 and 12 years of age can easily master it.
- Cities can be expanded in any direction, and you can use an in-game vehicle to move around town, accept missions and solve your citizens’ problems. An actual LEGO mayor figurine is included with the LEGO toys themselves.
- Studs and rewards are available all over the place, and your little city builders can collect them by building new structures, completing exciting missions and playing mini-games within the app.
- The town building app features beautiful animations, and is capable of running smoothly on a variety of smartphones and tablets, so you won’t have to worry about it not being compatible with your device.
Disadvantages to Consider
There are still a few drawbacks to this hi-tech toy and app combo. Some parental assistance may be required, and younger children could have certain difficulty in figuring out all the aspects of this LEGO fusion game. Here are some of the main complaints that buyers have expressed so far:
- While it can be very addictive – which is usually a great thing – this LEGO building game is also a little fast paced. Your young city builders will have to figure out how to solve puzzles and complete missions at a short notice, and once their city grows, things can get a little confusing at some point.
- Also, the process of taking pictures and identifying all the LEGO pieces in a structure can be tricky at best. You have to capture the fusion platform accurately, take any leftover LEGO pieces out of the background, and make sure you only use the pieces included into the set (or any additional pieces you may have that are completely the same).
A Great Present
A good friend of mine wanted to get a new LEGO building kit for her 10 year old son, since he always kept getting bored of his regular LEGOs. After helping her pick out the LEGO Fusion Town Master, I offered to help with the setup of the app and teach the kid how to operate the build a town game.
It was quite an experience, and I don’t even think I ever saw him that excited. Installing the LEGO building app on my friend’s new tablet took shorter than expected, and although the actual building process was easy, it took a while to figure out exactly how to take the pictures and load them properly into the mobile game.
The great thing about this LEGO Town Master is you can retake any pictures that the game fails to recognize properly, and once it’s loaded, it takes very little time to have the new building placed and built within the app. The boy caught on pretty quickly, and he already managed to create 3 unique buildings successfully while I was there, saying that this is the most exciting LEGO game he’s ever played.
Hi-Tech LEGO Gaming at Its Best
There’s no real surprise that LEGO Fusion games have caught on, becoming so popular in a short amount of time. Among the 4 different Fusion games available the LEGO Fusion Town Master is probably one of the most engaging ones you’ll find, and it is perfectly suitable for kids interested in building, strategy and time management games.
Although there is a learning curve to the LEGO Town Master, kids love it, and for good reason. It offers endless hours of onscreen and off screen building, being a challenging, fun and overall intriguing game that kids can share with their friends and parents or enjoy by themselves at any hour of the day.
