At GDC 2025, lead artist James Charlick and principal artist Rich Court offered a behind-the-scenes look at the artistic process of creating Lego Horizon Adventures.
When Studio Gobo transformed Guerrilla’s Horizon universe into a fully Lego-built world, they were not just adapting a game; they were also attempting to create a new visual language.
“We set ourselves the challenge of making a world entirely out of Lego bricks,” says Charlick. “This included all of the environment, so every single asset, from every piece of grass, to rocks, and to huge buildings. They all needed to be made from bricks. Even surfaces such as water, and even on VFX. So every explosion and impact, these were all created out of bricks.”
Everything is Lego
Studio Gobo’s approach differed from the methods traditionally used by studios such as Traveller’s Tales in games like Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Lego DC Super-Villains, where Lego elements are integrated into more conventionally rendered video game environments. In Lego Horizon Adventures, every component had to fit together in a playful and authentic way, all in a brick-built format. To achieve this vision, the studio collaborated with a team of real-world Lego experts known as Master Builders.
“Rather than magically making bricks appear and creating builds out of thin air, they make incredible Lego models, both digitally and physically,” Charlick says. “One of the unique aspects of our game was that we had this awesome team of builders working with us and our art team. This was crucial for us. This enabled us to build a world entirely out of Lego bricks. And this really helped us to set a visual benchmark. We wanted to ensure our assets were detailed, but truly authentic and, for the most part, buildable in real life.”
And if this wasn’t enough of a challenge, Studio Gobo also aimed for movie-quality visuals running in real-time on everything from high-end PCs to the humble Nintendo Switch.
The art team initially experimented with Lego modeling tools but without a deep knowledge of the brick library, progress was slow. They returned to using traditional blockouts that focused on scale, silhouette, and style. This shift of approach allowed the Master Builders to quickly transform the blockouts into authentic Lego models. Court says that the workflow became a true collaboration between the teams of traditional video game artists and seasoned brick builders.
Scaling Back
One early but significant discovery by the development team was that real-world Lego proportions do not always translate cleanly into gameplay.
“We started to build everything at a real-life scale in relation to the minifigure,” Charlick says. “This wasn’t working at all. Our buildings disappeared out of camera and screen space. Everything just didn’t really feel like a toy. It felt too big.”
The solution was to adopt a minifigure-first approach. Charlick explains that instead of attempting to convert the world of Horizon into Lego elements, they approached the challenge by asking, “What if the events of Horizon Zero Dawn had occurred in a Lego world?”
Another breakthrough occurred when the team started treating the in-game camera as a fixed viewpoint into a miniature world.
“It’s a subtle tweak to the logic of the world, but it made much more sense in our heads. This immediately made everything feel more toy-like, more playful and charming,” he says. “Rethinking the scale of the world’s assets was one of our many pivotal moments during production.”
“A useful device for us was when we started to think about the world as a stage,” Charlick adds. “When we first started building levels for this game, we were making the camera do all of the hard work.”
By establishing clear rules, such as maintaining visibility for both players, avoiding occlusion, and adhering to a 180-degree rule, they simplified level design and could stylise environments more effectively, creating a distinct separation between playable space and background.
Miniature Worlds
This technique extended to the Cauldrons, Horizon’s mysterious underground machine facilities, which the studio decided to treat like dioramas.
“We wanted to create this feeling that the player was looking into a Lego set. That someone had lifted the roof off and you’re looking into this miniature machine world,” Charlick explains.
The effect was achieved by incorporating a cutout void around the level geometry, which added visual contrast and allowed for dynamic control of the space, enhancing the dramatic, cinematic moments.
“Obviously there was a lot of visual noise to balance with all the machine parts. We were very careful with our brick and element choices here not to introduce too much complexity,” Charlick says.
Visual effects were also fully integrated into the Lego aesthetic, from fire and water to dust and foliage, every element was brick-built. Using Houdini and vertex-animated textures, the team recreated dynamic simulations, again using real life Lego sets as guidance.
“We took inspiration from LED light kits for Lego sets, replicating how the light permeates and propagates through the plastic,” Court says. “We wanted to avoid voxelised effects. We had tried these early in development but they can become noisy and very expensive from particles. So we went for simple effects like from the 16-bit era, almost like comic book style.
Lego Charm
As production on Lego Horizon Adventures continued, the Studio Gobo team became Master Builders of their own creation. They realised they could be more playful and inject additional personality into the game.
“The levels looked nice but everything felt a little bit generic,” says Charlick. “It was true to Horizon, but I guess it was missing that Lego charm.”
So they leaned into it. They embraced the idea of Horizon’s world unfolding in a Lego universe by reimagining old-world relics as classic Lego sets. This playful touch made the game more accessible and engaging for families.
“We built roller coasters in the desert, we added jazz clubs, police stations and fun shops and we found opportunity to bring Lego Ninjago sets into the game,” he explains.
“Of course it was a balancing act and we made sure to keep a selection of our levels authentically Horizon themed with landmarks like stadiums, and ruined city streets which were also a perfect match for some of the Lego modular buildings. We could also have a lot more fun with set dressing and storytelling”
For Charlick and Court, Lego Horizon Adventures was more than just a crossover project or a simple mashup of intellectual properties; it represented an opportunity to thoughtfully reimagine two iconic worlds through a shared visual language, one brick at a time.
The outcome is surely one of the most faithful and tangible digital representation of Lego to date.
Read more from GDC 2025.
