Apple Arcade: Lego Builder's Journey was the perfect holiday treat

The secret to Lego's brilliance - I once heard this on a podcast so it must be true - is clutch power. Those magical bricks don't just fit together, they stick together, creating a kind of bond that almost feels like it has a bit of suction to it. Clutch power! This is why Lego bricks are so much fun to fiddle around with - and it's something that Lego video games have struggled to really make much of.

Until now, right? Lego Builder's Journey appeared on Apple Arcade just before Christmas, and lo, it became my Christmas game, completed in moments stolen away from family, away from the kitchen where there were pies to make and away from the living room where there was a twinkling tree to lose myself in and zone out a bit. I zoned out playing Builder's Journey, if I'm honest, but it was that perfect kind of zoning out that only certain games can manage. A sort of meditative, contemplative tapping and twisting and reworking and rethinking.

The objective is pretty simple. Builder's Journey offers you a range of little dioramas, jagged little layers of Lego strata, and you generally have to move your little Lego guy from one side to the other. There are twists along the way, but that's the basics of it. A to B. And you get there by placing Lego bricks for them to move between.

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