BrickLab Open World

About BrickLab Open World

BrickLab Open World drops you into a finite frontier you can claim pieces of. Explore it, gather and refine what you find, trade, build, and grow a settlement — in third person, on foot, rather than from a builder's eye view.

A guided campaign teaches movement, gathering, crafting, building, residents and expansion in about ten minutes, which is the fastest way to understand what the world wants from you. After that it is free play: save worlds, copy builds into empty plots, or switch across to the city builder with what you have made.

Like Frontier this is an alpha and says so on its own pause menu. It is substantial and playable; it is not finished.

How to play BrickLab Open World

Start the guided game if it is your first time — ten minutes and you will know the systems. WASD or arrows to move, mouse to look, left-click to build and right-click to gather.

Claim a plot and it is yours to build on. Worlds can be saved, and a build can be copied into an empty plot or carried across to the city builder.

How to play BrickLab Open World

1. Open the game on a desktop or laptop. On a first visit, pick the guided game. In roughly ten minutes it covers movement, gathering, crafting, building, residents and expansion.
2. Move in third person with WASD or the arrow keys and turn the view with the mouse. You explore on foot, so the scale of the world is something you walk rather than look down on.
3. Right-click on resources to gather them, then refine what you have collected into something you can build with.
4. Claim a plot. Once it is yours, stand near it and press P to reach its controls.
5. Left-click to place pieces and grow the plot into a settlement with residents. Trade when you have goods to spare and expand into more of the frontier.
6. Save the world regularly. When a build is worth keeping, copy it into an empty plot or take it across to the city builder.

BrickLab Open World tips and strategy

• Scout before you claim. The frontier is finite and you claim it piece by piece, so walk around first and pick ground that suits the build you have in mind.
• Refine as you go. Raw materials and refined ones are not the same thing. Turning a haul into usable stock before heading out again stops a building job stalling halfway.
• Learn the plot controls early. Pressing P near a plot you own is how you manage it. Getting used to that menu during the guided game saves fumbling later.
• Build for residents, not just for looks. The campaign teaches residents and expansion together for a reason: a settlement grows when people have somewhere to be.
• Keep a copy of anything good. Copying a build into an empty plot gives you a backup to come back to if an extension goes wrong.
• Trade with purpose. Trade works best when you know which material is holding you back. Swap your surplus for that, rather than trading for the sake of it.

How Open World fits with the other BrickLab modes

Open World sits in the middle of the BrickLab family. It has more going on than Infinite Plots, since you have to gather, refine and trade for what you build, but it is gentler than Frontier, which adds story quests and nights to survive. You experience it from the ground in third person, which makes even a modest settlement feel like a place rather than a model.

It also connects to the others. Builds can be pasted into Infinite Plots to be finished in peace, or carried across to the city builder to become part of something larger. Many players use Open World as the place where ideas first take shape under a bit of pressure, then polish them elsewhere. It is still an alpha, so expect changes, but the world is already large enough to lose an evening in.