Nintendo Labo Variety Kit Software Each kit includes a physical version of the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit software. The Variety Kit is the best introduction to Nintendo’s Labo; it packs in several Toy-Cons and a gentle learning curve. You’ll have a blast building and playing - though you’ll probably get.

In all my years of reviewing video games and being a part of this industry I never thought I would be writing a review about a cardboard kit but Nintendo has once again bucked the trend and delivered something truly unique with Labo, a series of DYI cardboard sets that interact with the Switch console and the Joy-Con controllers to create an experience that is unlike anything else that the company has ever delivered yet is very obviously something only Nintendo could make and have us take it seriously. In this review we’ll be taking a look at the first set which includes not one, not two but five different Toy-Cons (what a great name) for you to build, play and create with.

Unlike other video games, playing with Nintendo Labo means that you’ll need to do some construction before getting into the actual ‘game’ parts of the package. The whole set comes on printed cardboard sheets with perforated outlines of the pieces that make up each Toy-Con. Inside the box there’s also a game card that once inserted into your Switch console will begin your Labo experience. You’ll start off by building tiny cardboard Joy-Con sleeves as a sort of tutorial stage where you are explained the importance of folding pieces properly along crease lines in order to help them snap into place better and what each section of the cardboard piece is called. Honestly it was a bit annoying as an older player to go through this pretty boring intro but I understand that I don’t fall into Labo’s target audience and kids will get a kick out of learning how this all comes together (more on that front in a bit).

Once you’re Joy-Con sleeve is complete you get to choose which Toy-Con set you want to tackle though the obvious entry point is the RC Car (which really looks like a bug more than a car). This was a pretty quick and simple build and the whole thing came together in about 5-10 minutes (I was following the instructions pretty diligently) so the payoff was quite immediate with this one. The RC Car functions by sliding the Joy-Cons into its sides and controller the HD Rumble of each via the Switch’s touch screen allowing the car to ‘drive’ around the floor and terrorize cats everywhere. It’s a pretty cute creation but actually makes use of one of the Switch’s most underused features – the IR Camera in a very novel way and acts as a tutorial as to how that will work in more complex Toy-Cons to come.

Essentially this seemingly forgotten element of the right Joy-Con serves as Labo’s eyes and allows for some pretty out their interactions. For the RC Car it can be used in a couple of ways. For one it can be used as a sort of night-vision mode so you can terrorize you cat even in the middle of the night which is pretty nifty. More impressively however it can be used to track special reflective stickers that can be placed on the included targets to hunt them down or used to create tracks for the RC Car to follow. It’s a pretty novel way to give the Labo creations an interactive element beyond simple button presses and shows just how far Nintendo thought of things when crafting the Switch hardware itself.

Overall however the RC Car, while a cute and novel feature is also a pretty light Toy-Con and after about 10 minutes of chasing my cat around the apartment I had gotten bored (and she was annoyed) and I was ready to move onto the next project which in my case would be the Fishing Rod. And oh boy does the RC Car not prepare you adequately for this thing. Again, I was following the instructions pretty diligently and it took me nearly three hours to put the thing together at which point my Switch console was on its last legs in terms of battery so I had to take a bit of break from folding cardboard but once it was recharged I got my first real taste of Labo magic.

To know how the RC Car works one simply needs to take a quick glance at the Labo trailer and all is revealed, but for the other Toy-Cons there’s a lost more going on behind the scenes and discovering how all these moving parts come together is a big part of the Labo experience. The Fishing Rod for example uses cardboard, string, elastics, motion controls and the Switch console itself to make something somehow, despite having not a drop of water anywhere near it actually feels like fishing. After building the adorably named ‘ocean’ component which the Switch console slides into you’ll be able to play a mini-game where you try to catch different types of fish. The deeper you go the higher the difficulty level is which helps give the game a bit of depth (pun very proudly intended).

However it was at this point that one of my main issues with Labo started becoming apparent. So while I was having a blast actually building these Toy-Cons the games actually associated with them were seeming a bit too simple and not very rewarding considering the hours of work that go into building the Toy-Con. The fishing game isn’t too bad but it was definitely something that after about 20 minutes I had grown tired of and was ready for the next set, which was the House and… here’s where a lot of that Labo magic started wearing a bit thin.

Once again, this creation took about three hours to put together (I’m not doing all of these in a day by the way) and while I still enjoyed putting the actual thing together all that folding and creasing gets very repetitive after a while, especially since I was building these solo without another set of hands to share the load with. This is the exact opposite of other DIY toys like Lego where you can start building as soon as you get your hands on the bricks. With Labo there’s so much set up involved that it can often be hours before your get to ‘play’ with your Toy-Con and by then the reward for assembling it might not be that tantalizing, as is the case with the House.

With this Toy-Con you are interacting with a little creature inside of his home. When different pieces are put into the House different microgames are unlocked letting you do things like feed, clean and play with your little pet. It’s like one of those old Tamagotchi pets except a lot less endearing and engaging. After just a few minutes I was completely bored with the House and felt like my time spent assembling it could have been put too much better use. The problem with this Toy-Con in particular is that it doesn’t feel like it needs to be a House, it could be anything else with a monster inside of it and so it’s a pretty disconnecting experience overall which goes against pretty much everything that Labo stands for.

Thankfully the other two Toy-Cons included in the Variety Kit are top-notch and definitely the highlights of the whole pack. The Motor Bike has you constructing the handles of a motorcycle and sliding the Switch console into the handlebars themselves, letting you race around a track Mario Kart style. In fact out of all the games included in the Variety Kit this was the most fleshed out and complete as not only could you race against computer opponents but you are also given access to a full track editor that lets you build the raceway of your dreams either by tracing the track with Joy-Con (inside a cute little bike of its own) or by scanning an object with the IR camera.

The final Toy-Con is the one I was most excited for out of all the Nintendo Labo kits – the Piano, and while it does take quite a lot of time to build (took me about 4 hours) the result is well worth the wait. Thanks to an incredibly clever use of the Joy-Con’s IR camera you can essentially make the Piano make any type of tune you can dream of. This is accomplished through the use of special stickers and tape that the camera can read and translate into music that you play by pressing the keys. It’s also incredibly versatile letting you punch out your own cardboard cards and make new music and creations. Not only that but the Piano also interacts with the Fishing Rod to create a virtual aquarium that can not only set to your own music but populated with your own fishy creations as well. All in all I was extremely impressed with the Piano and found it a great example to show people when they were wondering if these cardboard sets would actually deliver on their lofty promises.

So what’s the verdict on the gameplay found in Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit? Honestly it’s a bit of a mixed bag with several throwaway mini-games clogging up the experience. That being said, what is good here is really good and definitely an experience unlike any other. The actual building of the Toy-Cons is just as novel though it does start to get a bit too repetitive, especially on the longer builds when their’s no immediate reward for your efforts. That being said there’s no denying that Nintendo has something very special on their hands here with Labo though we haven’t even begun covering what makes this kit in particular so impressive.

Tucked literally deep inside of the game is the Toy-Con Garage mode where you are given practically the full set of development tools to make the Switch console, and the Joy-Cons do whatever your mind can come up with. This development suite is extremely robust and is the real star of the Toy-Con Variety Kit allowing players to essentially build their own creations with to their heart’s content. In fact in the week’s since the game has released we’ve already seen some incredible displays of creativity from users playing around with the Toy-Con Garage mode ranging from musical instruments, makeshift Game & Watch games, micro computers and various automatons.

Nintendo Labo Variety Kit Price

The Toy-Con Garage mode is where the true heart of Nintendo Labo lies and gives the whole package something that is basically the antithesis of following directions to assemble cardboard kits – creativity. With Toy-Con Garage you can essentially make the system and it’s controllers do whatever you want and build that with any regular old household items. It really is an impressive creative suite and one that I hope really gets the imaginative folks out there thinking and coming up with innovative new ways to play. I just wish it wasn’t so darn complicated!

You see, the Toy-Con Garage is not a very user-friendly set up. There’s no real tutorial on hose to use it and someone with no experience in logic coding or will have a hard time figuring out what all these boxes and lines mean. Sure it’s not that hard once you get the hang of it but the lack of support from the game is really suspicious considering that the rest of the Labo experience is accompanied by one of the best set of digital instructions ever put together but when it comes to the Toy-Con Garage, arguably the part where you need the most assistance it’s all gone. That being said, the Garage is an incredible piece of software, one that Nintendo could honestly have spun off into its own product separate from the rest of Labo and still been a solid set of creator tools and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this mode and the creators who make the most out of it.

Speaking of the game’s instructions that’s basically what you will be looking at the most while building the Toy-Cons and like I mentioned earlier, they are absolutely excellent and do a great job at showing you every possible angle while you put your creation together. You can rotate full 3D models of every single cardboard piece so you don’t miss a step and have full control over rewinding or fast-forwarding through the instructions. It’s a fantastic setup that ensures that nothing gets missed and the silly text that accompanies the construction is always worth a read and keeps the process interesting. I do wish the game offered different music tracks during the construction process as listening to the same song for up to five hours at a time can be a bit trying.

But the best part Labo’s presentation is how it shows you exactly how everything works. While this may not seem like all that important an element it’s absolutely integral to one of Labo’s main missions – to teach gamers, especially younger players, how all of this comes together to make something that physically works. Having the Toy-Con’s machinations shown to you is a really neat feature and one I found myself using quite a bit, even though I was never really ‘surprised’ as to how the magic was made but the fact that such complex machines can be put together with what is essentially just cardboard is nothing short of impressive.

Moving onto the mini-games themselves, they all share an aesthetic that ties them together but also separates them from any other Nintendo property. You won’t find any Mario, Zelda or Splatoon stuff here as the Labo identity is all its own. Actually it reminded me somewhat of the Wii U launch title NintendoLand where colorful visuals met a ‘constructed’ environments. For the most part this lack of recognizable faces doesn’t hurt the experience at all and the only time I felt like a bit of classic Nintendo involvement would have been interesting is with the Motor Bike Toy-Con that is only a few coins short of being ripped right out of Mario Kart.

The biggest question when it comes to the Nintendo Labo however is if this box of cardboard is worth the price of a full retail game, and in the case of the Variety Kit the answer is a resounding yes. Sure the Toy-Cons are a bit uneven in their use but the ones that are great are really great and will provide players with hours of fun. But the real meat of the package is the Toy-Con Garage. Access to that tool alone makes it worth the price of admission for me since it allows you access to what is essentially a build-you-own-game toolkit, one that offers limitless (seriously) options for creativity and exploration and that’s a really important part of the Labo experience.

A lot has been made about the fact that we’re being asked to build gaming tools out of cardboard which of course does not have a reputation as the most robust of materials. So if you’re going to be spending the price of a full game you might be worried that the Toy-Cons won’t hold up to repeated use. Well I am happy to report that these things are sturdy and aren’t likely to break unless they are being purposefully misused. That being said, that also means that they won’t come apart easily, in fact I do not recommend trying to disassemble a Toy-Con at all since you’re likely to do more damage than good. That means you’re going to be stuck with these fairly large cardboard sets until they either wear out or you toss them out. Also – Toy-Con creation will result in a lot of cardboard bits and pieces being flung around your room and eventually needing to be recycled so be warned that this does not seem to be the ‘greenest’ of packages out there.

Nintendo Labo is something only Nintendo could pull off. No other company, let alone a gaming company, could sell us a nearly a box full of cardboard at premium prices and make us believe that it could be used for gaming but that’s exactly what they do with the Variety Kit. Creativity and being allowed to express it is one of the most important elements in inspiring young minds and I have no doubt that for this generation of players Labo will be a part of that. Sure it’s not a perfect experience but for those that really put their heart and soul into making Labo into something special this game will mean the world to them and hopefully open up other players to a whole new world of ideas.

Nintendo Labo Variety Kit Review

• 8.5/10
  Gameplay - 8.5/10
• 9.5/10
  Content - 9.5/10
• 8.2/10
  Presentation - 8.2/10
• 8.5/10
  Value - 8.5/10

Summary - The game is overall a good experience with a few small issues.

Nintendo Labo Variety Kit Prize

“Nintendo Labo is something only Nintendo could pull off.”