• An F1 online game is now live through LEGO South Africa.
• Playing unlocks discounts and potential prizes.
• The system reminds us of older Flash games.

Those of a certain age will remember that many online advertising and marketing campaigns made use of small games you could play in your browser, usually powered by the now defunct Flash. While Flash has long since fallen out of use, LEGO in South Africa is again using the concept of a free, browser-based game to bring in support for its F1 toys.

This game can be played on Great Yellow Brick right here, which is the online store platform for the physical LEGO Certified Stores in South Africa.

After accessing the game, you get to choose your F1 car, and then you are let out onto a track. Using the left and right buttons on your keyboard, you take corners and eventually finish a lap, resulting in a score that goes onto the scoreboard.

Speed, as well as the ability to stay dead centre on the track, contributes to this score.

Playing this game isn’t just a way to have some fun for a few minutes, but it can also unlock cheaper LEGO or, if you’re fast enough, entirely free LEGO.

Firstly, anyone who plays will unlock a 10 percent off voucher to use on Great Yellow Brick. This voucher is, however, limited to F1 sets and others that the company determines to be “‘car’ based sets”.

We managed to unlock this voucher, which will be emailed to you, and we recommend carefully reading the terms and conditions at the bottom of the email for exact details on what is and isn’t applicable for the 10 percent reduction.

Secondly, there are prizes. Every week, four players will win a Speed Champions F1 set. Each of these sets is worth R499, so this is a nice little treat for F1 and LEGO fans. The grand prize for one winner, however, is set 42171: Technic Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance. This set is worth R4 199, contains 1 642 pieces and, when assembled, builds a 1:8 scale F1 car measuring in at 63 centimetres long.

For the prizing, we again recommend that everyone reads the fine print at the bottom of the game’s webpage.

While we like this campaign and any throwback to the days of Flash games, it seems there are some bugs in the system. The game will routinely fail to load, even when following the suggestions on the page. This doesn’t seem to just be an “us” problem as, when we finally did get a chance to play, we only saw three other users on the scoreboard.

We recommend giving the system some time to become fully operational as it only launched a few hours ago as part of LEGO South Africa’s 1st April new sets and promotions.

This game and its focus on F1 are part of a larger partnership between the two organisations. See our guide to this partnership and its dozens of toys and collectibles below.