The Fans, Devs, and Remake of Real-Time Strategy Classic LEGO Rock Raiders

July 14, 2021 0 By Brian Crecente

The LEGO Rock Raiders video game is as odd and fun to play with as the theme set upon which it is based.

Both present players with an exploratory spaceship adrift among the stars. Damaged and without power, the LMS Explorer is thrown through a wormhole and lost in space. Fortunately, though, the minifig crew discovers a planet replete with energy crystals and sets about mining them for their ship.

It’s an unusually dark back story for the often brightly colored, everything-is-awesome LEGO brick sets – and perhaps that’s why LEGO Rock Raiders so efficiently sunk its hooks into its fans.

“I think it’s because it affected us so much as children and because we collectively saw so much more potential,” said Simon Eriksson, a super fan of the theme set who is also working on a remake of the computer game. “That is one of the reasons I really love Rock Raiders. It had so much beyond just being a game and asset. They were trying to create an entire world. Rock Raiders is a huge love letter to LEGO fans.”

A video game developed by Data Design Interactive also empowered the love of the theme set. The real-time strategy game hit Windows PC in 1999 and an action strategy version of the game hit the PlayStation a year later.

Karl White, who was a programmer on the game, said the developer decided to make it a strategy title both because of the theme set’s storyline and also because the studio had recently wrapped up development on another strategy game.

LEGO Media International was very involved in the development of the game, with LEGO Media producer David Upchurch often visiting the development studio for a week at a time to play through LEGO Rock Raiders and give detailed feedback.

The studio faced a daunting task: Create a game both challenging and fun, but also one that overcame the natural difficulties of a strategy game to be accessible for children.

The team also had to make a game that wasn’t too creepy or violent.

“Many of the creatures went through multiple revisions,” White said. “We were very aware of the audience and of how violence is seen within the LEGO world. And, of course, we were very careful not to show any kind of serious injury or anything like that. All of the playable units have a health indicator, and when the health is too low, they’re safely teleported back up to the ship.

“It was interesting that you did still get an attachment, and there was a fear of loss without any actual injury or anything like that.”

About a decade after LEGO Rock Raiders’ November 1999 launch, White stumbled upon Rock Raiders United, a website dedicated to the game.

Rock Raiders United started out as a relatively small, very focused forum in 2008, but over the years has grown to become a place that not only dives deep into the world of Rock Raiders but also other LEGO themes and video games.

Initially, the fans at Rock Raiders United focused on getting the original PC game working on modern machines. Then it branched out to modifying the game and adding in new content.

Since then, the fans have expanded to working on other LEGO video game classics, ensuring that as many people as possible have a chance to play them. And some fans are even working on their own takes on the game.

All of that passion and hard work is fueled, in many ways, by a love of one game. Alan Sokol, who now runs Rock Raiders United, has a theory about the enduring passion for the game and theme set.

“I think it’s two things at first, probably due to the uniqueness of the game,” Sokol said. “Now Rock Raiders itself is mostly a real-time strategy game, and there are plenty of those. But there aren’t too many games in general where you would dig through the earth, find things, build things from what you find, that aren’t really combat-based. It’s a very chill laid-back experience.

“As for the other side of it: Out of all of the LEGO games, I think it’s the easiest to modify. If you want to do the basics, you can reskin the game, make your own biomes. So you can make a level that looks completely different. There’s a lot you can do just with the basics.”

Love of the game also led to a number of fans recreating it for modern machines. Among them is fan Simon Eriksson, whose Manic Miners is both playable and free. The game recreates the entire original experience in Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and runs easily on modern hardware.

“I think the original game has a ton of flaws that makes it hard to play on modern computers and hard to appreciate when you’re a gamer because there are so many features that you’re missing,” he said. “And I didn’t find a remake project that matched what I wanted from a remake. And that is basically when I started working on my own.”

Eriksson said he’s spent thousands of hours working on Manic Miners, and with the help of other fans, he’s managed to nearly complete his version.

“I want to create a good Rock Raiders remake that is an homage to the original game or the entire retro LEGO games franchise that happened back in the ‘90s,” he said. “And I also wanted to teach myself how to program games, or sort of how to create games as a whole, because I’m not just programming the game, I’m creating everything inside the game.”

With the game wrapping up, Eriksson said he hopes to expand his efforts to include potential work on a sequel to Rock Raiders or perhaps recreating another LEGO game classic for modern machines.

This article originally ran on LEGO.com as a summary of episode one of the weekly Bits N’ Bricks podcast, which you can listen to here.