LEGO is venturing outside of large-scale iconic movie franchises and tackling a video game of a different kind with LEGO Horizon Adventures. Taking the bold, open-world narrative of iconic hero Aloy trying to figure out who she is and where she came from, the game offers a family-friendly take on what has previously been a mature, mechanically deep and visually stunning IP, that has become synonymous with the modern PlayStation brand.

It’s no small task to take a dense adventure like Horizon Zero Dawn and make it cute and accessible to a younger crowd, and LEGO Horizon Adventures mostly does a decent job. It comes complete with a lot of the LEGO fixens we’ve become accustomed to over the last two decades of Star Wars, Marvel, Batman and Indiana Jones video games that feature the iconic bricks. That said, it feels short-lived, and while it’s packed with charm, even that sense of silliness wears out its welcome eventually.

The narrative of Horizon Zero Dawn is certainly serious, and LEGO Horizon Adventures offers a cute and irreverent take on Aloy’s journey of self-discovery. Significant weighty moments are treated with levity and comedy, moving at a fast pace that prevents you from dwelling on them for too long. Aloy and the gang are out to stop nature from being destroyed by the machines and the big bad lurking in the shadows, but it’s waved off in a very two-dimensional Saturday morning cartoon kind of way.

Initially, I found the tone and sense of silliness to be quite charming. It’s neat to spend time with Aloy and the crew again, and the voice actors from the original Horizon are back to reprise their roles, albeit in an over-the-top way. During the early levels, I found myself snickering at the modern references and subtle meta jabs, and Aloy (voiced by the awesome Ashly Burch) is as likeable as ever, her childlike wonderment about the world dialled up to 11.

There’s a level of detail in the visuals that also makes the entire LEGO Horizon Adventures experience pop off the screen. Unlike past LEGO games, the entirety of this in-game world can really be built with real LEGO. It’s neat to see the LEGO water, all of the detailed environments, enemy machines and more that could, feasibly, be created with real bricks. The lighting excellently highlights the levels you’ll explore, from the snowy Frozen Wilds to the metallic sheen inside of the many Cauldrons you’ll traverse, and it brings Horizon Zero Dawn to life in a unique way that is intricate and colourfully appealing.

The campaign in LEGO Horizon Adventures takes place across four different regions, each with five levels, most not taking more than 10 to 15 minutes to complete. These bite-sized stages have you moving through the environment with some light platforming, collecting treasure chests or building things out of LEGO along the way to collect studs as currency, and fighting machine monsters or cultists. It’s a simple loop that is designed to be pick-up-and-play friendly, and sure enough, I played through it entirely with my non-gamer husband, and we had a great time doing so.

We would have liked a bit more variety in the structure, though. A few jumps, a bit of mild exploration, a couple of battle arenas, a merchant giving out new abilities to muck around with and sometimes an end-of-stage boss; lather, rinse and repeat. Puzzles, if you can call them that, amount to finding the occasional hidden chest, or perhaps throwing a battery at a door switch to open it. Again, this is a LEGO game, so I wasn’t expecting anything too groundbreaking, but given its source material and the fact that Horizon series developer Guerilla Games took the lead on this one, I was hopeful for a little more complexity as we progressed.

Combat is enjoyable, though also simple. Much like the Horizon games, you can use your Focus to quickly highlight weak spots on machines, and if you target those, you’ll do more damage. Each of the four main playable characters has their own basic attack, which can be modified through pick-ups and abilities. Aloy has her bow-and-arrow, Varl uses a throwable spear, Teersa throws a variety of explosives in front of her, while Erend is the melee dude with his big hammer. You can modify these with pick-ups dropped by enemies or scattered about the map, to make your weapon do frozen damage, electric damage, and so on, and each character has specific things tailored to them; for example, Teersa has a Duck Bomb, which drops bouncing and quacking rubber-ducky’s that explode on impact. There’s enough variety between them, though we did find a sweet spot with an Aloy/Erend combo that worked well in terms of wailing on baddies as a team.

Other abilities usable by everybody add some more twists to combat to keep it feeling fresh. Elemental Drones follow you around, making a beeline for enemies that come into range. There’s also a Brick Separator, yes like the ones you use in real life, that is effective as a strong melee whack to the skull. Another comical addition is a Hot Dog Cart, which has a worker throwing explosive hot dogs as a sort of turret in the vicinity. I like that LEGO Horizon Adventures isn’t afraid to be stupid, and the whacky additions are just casually accepted by the characters in the story, which is amusing.

What remains fun and frivolous throughout LEGO Horizon Adventures is Mother’s Heart, your base of operations that can be customised in some really cute ways. Whether it’s a giant dance floor with a DJ, full-on amusement park rides or random Japanese additions from the world of LEGO Ninjago, we spent a lot of time changing the look and throwing villagers towards buildings to see what would happen and how they would interact with the space. In place of lots of characters to shift between like in, say, LEGO Star Wars, you can also change outfits into a lot of silly things, including some PlayStation and LEGO favourites. It’s dumb, and I love it.

Not to be that guy who brings up the value versus game length debate again, but LEGO Horizon Adventures feels surprisingly lean for a full-price title, especially given its subject matter. We finished the story within around four hours or so, and while there are some additional missions and Cauldrons to complete after that, it doesn’t exactly provide a lot of bang for your buck. When the LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga provides all nine(!) Star Wars films reimagined, and Horizon Zero Dawn itself is a bulky 30-hour-ish open-world epic, it’s hard not to be a little disappointed that the story ends and you’re just left with an adorable – but limiting – Mother’s Heart to keep messing around with and upgrading purely for aesthetics.