Watch This Time-Lapse Build Of The LEGO Far: Changing Tides Ship

We’ve been enthusiastic about the beauty and unique gameplay found in the Far games from Okomotive. Far: Lone Sails was the first game to introduce the concept of building a craft of questionable quality that travels across mysterious terrain. Far: Changing Tides continues those principles, but adds some new fun twists.

The story of Changing Tides is about a ship built from seawater and that gains more features and components as it encounters obstacles. In an especially fitting way to highlight the game’s distinctiveness, the game makers partnered with Aaron Newman, a professional LEGO-building artist, to create a custom LEGO set of the ship seen in the game. Newman was a LEGO Masters USA Season 1 contestant and has since moved on to be a product designer at The LEGO group, though it’s important to note that this particular build was completed before he started that new gig.

I had the good fortune to receive the unbuilt pieces for the ship, along with Newman’s smartly presented instructions, and over the course of several days, I got to put the ship together. As a LEGO enthusiast myself, I felt that the build itself was a ton of fun, offering a variety of interesting mechanical elements, like a light-up furnace for burning fuel, as well as a mast and sails that could raise and lower. The build featured clever and asymmetrical design elements that reflected the somewhat primitive ship in the video game.

The final ship is finished. One side shows a detailed exterior. On the opposite side, the viewer can look inside the ship to view the corridors and stairs. You can display the item in many different ways with the help of a removable display stand. There’s even a scale model of the little character from the game. This build used over 1200 bricks.

“While all the design work took place by hand over the course of a few weeks – in terms of hours, I couldn’t say for sure – I used a digital build software called Stud.io by Bricklink to reproduce the model digitally, and used that digital model to fabricate the step-by-step build instructions,” Newman told me about the process he used to create the ship.

The beautiful LEGO custom set was celebrated by me recording the whole process. I used a timelapse effect to record the duration of the construction. Alex Van Aken (my video editor) helped to merge the various videos and added music to pay homage to the original LEGO game. You can see the finished video below. If you prefer to see the entire build, jump to the very end.

Aaron Newman is a big thanks for hours of enjoyment. If the unique nature of this LEGO version of the ship piques your interest, don’t hesitate to pick up a copy of Far: Changing Tides. Even without LEGO, it’s an enjoyable time. You can now get the game on PS5 Xbox Series X/S and PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC (both Epic Games Store or Steam).