Last October, LEGO and Unity partnered up to release LEGO Microgame, a free game development program that requires no coding experience. Now, the two are back with a contest for budding game makers. Post your game creation by March 15th to LEGO Ideas, and you could win four LEGO sets and three Unity access bundles. And everyone who enters gets a free custom LEGO minifig.

Naturally, since LEGO is involved, the games it will accept must follow its usual LEGO Ideas submission rules. That means you can't include any of the following:

  • Politics and political symbols, campaigns, or movements
  • Religious references including symbols, buildings, or people
  • Sex, nudity, drugs, or smoking
  • Alcohol in any present-day situation
  • Swearing or profanity
  • Death, killing, blood, terrorism, horror, or torture
  • First-person shooter video games
  • Warfare or war vehicles in any modern or present-day situation, or national war memorials
  • Large or human-scale weapons or weapon replicas of any kind, including swords, knives, guns, sci-fi or fantasy blasters, etc.
  • Racism, bullying, or cruelty to real life animals
A custom LEGO minifig wearing a Unity-branded shirt.
LEGO

But that still leaves plenty of options open. If you haven't played with a Unity Microgame program before, it's a relatively simple program designed to help people with no coding experience create games. LEGO and Unity even made a tutorial video for first-time creators.

Submit your entry to LEGO ideas with trailers, posters, and screenshots, and judges will take a look at it. The judges will choose based on the following criteria:

  • Overall coolness and originality: 25% 
  • Most creative game idea: 25% 
  • Most unique art direction: 25% (games that clearly don't resemble the tutorial levels) 
  • Most interesting / complex / unexpected use of LEGO Behavior Bricks (or scripts): 25% 
A picture of the grand prizes, including four LEGO sets, and two unity assets.

If you're one of the lucky winners, you'll get four LEGO sets and three Unity access bundles to help with further game development. The prizes consist of:

  • 51515 LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Robot Inventor 
  • 71374 Nintendo Entertainment System™ 
  • 71360 Adventures with Mario Starter Course 
  • 71369 Bowser's Castle Boss Battle Expansion Set 
  • 1-year Unity Pro subscription 
  • Unity Microgames Premium Asset Bundle 
  • Unity Asset Store voucher -- 200$  

But even if you don't win, you're not totally out of luck. Every person who submits a game will get a free custom Unity-themed Minifig. You'll have to fill out a form and provide a single-use code (sorry, no multiples), but it's a pretty straightforward process. You need to be at least 13 to enter (with a parent's help), and unlike a lot of contests, this one is open to residents outside the U.S.

You can download the LEGO Microgame software on the Unity website. All entries must be submitted by March 15th.

Source: LEGO Ideas