BRICK - One Block at a Time is a first-person urban survival sandbox game set in a living, Newark-inspired open world. Players begin with almost nothing and must search the streets for opportunity while transforming scavenged materials into weapons, vehicles, territory, and a fortified home. The experience blends resource management, base building, and survival elements across a day-and-night cycle that includes rain, snow, storms, and blackouts.
Gameplay
The core loop centers on scavenging, harvesting, and crafting in an active city environment. Players explore neighborhoods, businesses, homes, forests, rocky hills, and points of interest such as the Warehouse, Bunker, markets, gym, lighthouse, Police HQ, and Tony's vehicle shop. Resource nodes include trees, stone, metal, sulfur, and bushes, while salvage crates and supply caches provide components and food. Additional activities involve fishing, farming, hunting, mining, and recycling.
Survivors manage health, hunger, stamina, body weight, equipment, and weapon durability. Skills improve through repeated use in areas like driving, harvesting, mining, fishing, shooting, scavenging, exercise, and trade. Body weight affects carrying capacity and movement speed, with the city gym available for exercise to adjust weight and mobility. Blueprints are unlocked at workbenches using BITS and resources, allowing access to higher-tier clothing, armor, weapons, ammunition, placeables, and building components. Structures are built and upgraded with a Build Kit and Hammer, supported by resource cabinets for territory claims and upkeep.
AI rivals operate with distinct personalities and behaviors, harvesting, building bases, raiding, and forming clans. Recruits can be commanded to perform tasks such as following, harvesting, mining, farming, or defending. Vehicles are found, hotwired, customized, and used for transport, with weather affecting handling. Contracts offer randomized objectives including theft, rescue, assassination, delivery, defense, and territory control, often with complications like police activity or rival interference. Crime draws police attention that escalates with wanted level, potentially leading to base assaults.
Game Modes
BRICK supports solo play or online co-op with one additional player. All players start as potential enemies, but invitations allow clan sharing of access, recruiting, building, and coordinated actions. Players outside the clan cannot interact with storage, doors, or building pieces. Co-op includes proximity and clan voice communication.
Difficulty settings include Casual, Standard, UndaWirrld, and Custom options that adjust loot, AI aggression, raids, hunger, and death penalties. New-game modifiers add variety through options such as Scarce Resources, Permanent Death, Hostile City, Endless Winter, and All-Out Clan Warfare. The UndaWirrld Arcade provides a safe zone with six playable machines featuring other games from the publisher.
Exploration and Progression
The open world features enterable locations, forests for natural resources and wildlife, and landmarks that serve as hubs for trade, exercise, or vehicle work. A full day-and-night cycle alters visibility and danger levels, with the city safer by day and forests requiring preparation at night. Territory claims expand influence through wards and contracts, while rival histories develop based on interactions like raids or alliances.
Progression occurs through workbench upgrades, skill improvement, and base development from temporary shelters to fortified compounds with defenses, traps, and automated systems. Loot recovery after death adds risk, as other survivors or AI may claim dropped items.
Is It Worth Playing?
BRICK suits players who enjoy first-person survival sandboxes with deep crafting, base building, and AI-driven rival systems. The combination of solo or co-op options, adjustable difficulties, and modifiers supports varied playstyles focused on scavenging, territory control, or clan management. The free-to-play model on PC removes upfront cost barriers, allowing direct access to the full described systems without additional purchases required for core gameplay.