Set Review ➟ LEGO® 60350 Lunar Base
- Pieces 786
- Minifigs: 6
- RRP: 99.99 EUR / 119.99 USD
Today’s review is all about another exciting addition to the City Space theme I say exciting because I have become a bit of a fan of this theme. Maybe it is my Classic Space childhood memories, or maybe it is my boyhood space exploration dreams. Maybe they are just great sets …
Rather than concentrate on the set, I will highlight a special feature I found when accessing the digital building instructions through the QR code on the instruction booklet: Build Together. We decided to try out the experience as a family. Scanning the QR code on the front of the paper instructions automatically takes you to either the app store or directly to the app (if you have already installed it). Our experience with the Build together instructions was very positive overall. Let me try to describe the overall process to give you a taste of how it works.
One user (in this case me) scans the scans the QR code on the front of the building instructions. You can do this with your QR scanner of choice or with the QR scanner in the LEGO Instructions app. This takes you to a screen that presents two options: Build with 3D instructions or Work as a team. The latter option assigns you a colour (important to identify who is who in the team build) and takes you to the next screen where you can add more players. Clicking on “Add more players” brings up a new QR code that the remaining players need to scan with the scanner in the LEGO Instructions app. Each player gets assigned a colour, and when at least one other player has signed in with that code you can press the Let’s go button to start building.
A word about the colour assignment: it just so happens that each member in our family has their favourite colour and (to make matters more interesting) the protective cases we use for our devices are colour coded. The LEGO Instructions app doesn’t let you choose or change your colour. This resulted in the player with the red case being assigned Green and the player with the green case being assigned Blue, etc. This became an issue when the app asked player Red to give something to player Green and we had some trouble identifying who was who. Fortunately. the partial builds that needed to be passed on were easily identified.
Of course, I am getting ahead of myself so let’s take a few steps back. Part of the initial instructions in the app is to empty each bag into a bowl or plate and identify that bowl or plate with the number of the bag. My advice would be to only open the bags as the app requests them. That way you can probably get away with half the number of bowls and you have more space to build.
Each participant can build at their own pace and gets a new set of instructions each time they complete a build. Those builds can be as simple as putting 2 pieces together or can consist of complex modules. Those smaller builds are then passed on to other builders when the app indicates it. For example, Green builds a table and Blue builds kitchen floor. After completing the floor, the app will inform both Blue and Green that the table Green built needs to go to Blue so they can place it on the kitchen floor.
The concept works really well. Unfortunately the “pass this on to X” message stopped displaying on one of the player’s devices after they needed to reload the session. Since the other player did get the “request this from X” message there was no foul. Just a slight inconvenience.
We did run into a few other (minor) issues though. For some reason the app does not display transparent pieces in the list of materials for each step. That means you may end up with just a few numbers indicating the number of elements you need, but no image of precisely what element it is. It doesn’t stop play outright as you can just press “next” and identify the elements from the image of the build itself. It id however create some anxiety on the part of the less experienced builders who didn’t know what t do at first. This is not a limitation of the “Build together” feature, but rather a pretty serious bug in the app itself.
A second issue we encountered was the fact that the app requires continuous internet access. This makes perfect sense as this is how the app tracks which builders have finished what element and manages to indicate who needs to pass on what partial build to who (I know, it sounds a little confusing, but trust me you get the hang of it very quickly). If, for whatever reason, one of the devices loses internet connectivity one of two things can happen. In the best case you will get a screen telling you “Hang in there… we are finding more LEGO bricks for you and will reconnect you to the session soon”. It took a lot of time, so I checked the Wi-Fi settings on my device and in doing so the app was sent to the background. Since not all our devices are state of the art, high performance devices, the LEGO Instructions app restarted when I managed to get the connection back up. Fortunately, there was a prominent window on the app front page asking if we wanted to go back to our building session. Unfortunately, it took quite a while for the session to fully load – as it did the first time we started up.
After building for about an hour we decided we needed to take a break and do something different. We closed all the sessions, but on the master device (the one that initiated the collective build) there is a progress bar indicating how far we got, with the possibility to pick things where we left them at some later time.
I was also asked to fill in a survey on the experience. All the questions that were asked deserved a very positive answer. Unfortunately, there is no room for comments on the form so I could not relay our issues with transparent pieces not showing up or the notifications stopping on one of the devices. I will use the customer service email option for that as I believe it is important to pass on not only positive but also constructive negative feedback.
A few days later we picked up building again and YES, progress was saved, so we could pick up where we left off. Colours were assigned again randomly, that took a little getting used to, but overall. The experience was really positive. So now I am face with a dilemma: I’d like to do this more often. But how do I find another set with this “build together” feature? There is no clear indication on the box, there is absolutely no mention of the possibility on the LEGO website, and that’s for a set I know has this feature and I’m trying to identify. Hit and miss? I don’t think so. LEGO needs a better way to communicate this feature, because it would certainly influence my choice when buying another set.
We thank LEGO for providing this set. Our opinions are just that… our opinions
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