Constructing a miniature cardboard piano that plays a melodic range of cat meows and old man moans is a long but ultimately enjoyable undertaking. Most of the five cardboard toys in the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit result in this same feeling. The process of following Labo’s step-by-step instructions, which can descend into tedium at times, is saved by the final product: wonderfully weird playthings and the option of more creative tinkering. It’s classic Nintendo silliness with a delightfully crafty feel.
With three distinct sections that urge you to “Make,” “Play,” and “Discover,” there’s plenty to do with Nintendo’s $69 Labo Variety Kit. As the sections progress they take you deeper into the oddly innovative workings behind each cardboard toy, eventually giving you the chance to tailor them however you please in both looks and function. The Variety Kit may look like child's play, but there's a treasure trove of zany secrets and customization hidden below the surface.This kit includes five main projects (a pair of RC Cars, a fishing rod, a house, a motorbike, and a piano) to build and decorate, along with a few standalone odds and ends for personal experimenting. Five projects may not seem like much, but when you first open the box you may be legitimately surprised by the amount of cardboard sheets and other materials it takes to build every toy.
Under the “Make” tab in the software, Labo does its best to estimate the amount of time it should take one to cobble together each project, starting as low as 10 minutes (one RC car) and topping out at three and a half hours (the piano). I took some small degree of pride when I managed to knock out both RC cars in those estimated 10 minutes and came in just under two hours when building my piano. Your mileage may vary, but even the most accomplished cardboard crafter would likely spend a good seven to eight hours snapping all five projects into place.When you start work on a new creation, Labo will walk you through the proper folds needed to create and combine each project’s unique sections. Annoyingly, there’s no “auto play” feature to be found here to scroll through instructions at a reasonable pace, so builders are expected to hold down the “next” button until new instructions have appeared. As I built my second creation, the house, I was struck by just how painfully slow this process could be, especially if you sat through it at normal speed. The key, at least for those of us who don’t need to see how to properly loosen a cardboard tab for the hundredth time, is to use the fast-forward option. Though Labo promotes using the Switch’s touch screen, I soon found that using the right Joy-Con as a remote was a far more efficient option.
As funny as it may sound, the quality of the cardboard Nintendo decided to ship with the Labo sets is excellent. It has just the right thickness and flexibility to stand up to hours of play and some rough treatment from younger fans. Popping out each individual cardboard piece is easy and feels strangely enjoyable. Like building a LEGO set, there is certainly some fun to be had when putting together each project. It’s satisfying to see a wonky slab of cardboard morph into a chimney or a motorbike in a few simple folds, and even more satisfying when multiple sections of a project come together to create its final boxy form.
Customizing a project further is something that Labo leaves up to you. None of the cardboard used is particularly eye-catching, so drawing on some flame decals or sloppily gluing googly eyes to your new handiwork is completely on your own terms. Making a piano can be rewarding, but personalizing it with a few of your own sparkly dinosaur stickers (as I did) can really take your musical career to a whole new level.
One downside to all these cardboard creations is that, unlike a LEGO set, they’re not made to come apart. Once you’ve built a Labo toy it’s supposed to stay in one piece. That’s a bit inconvenient if you don’t have a lot of living space. The largest of the toys aren’t huge by any stretch of the imagination, but I found myself unsure where exactly to store them when they weren’t being used. Perhaps I need to build a secret Labo-ratory...Play Your Part
Once you’ve constructed a project, or Labo is at least convinced you have, the option to “Play” with that project is unlocked, and that’s where the Variety Kit begins to feel like a showcase of all the creative potential housed within the Switch’s portable screen and its small but mighty Joy-Con. Each project is tied to a simple game or activity for you to play around in. The motorbike drives with motion controls, the fishing rod reels in fish, and the RC cars (which are more like giant RC bugs) shuffle violently around via the HD rumble. How much time you’ll want to spend interacting with each individual toy is based solely on how interesting you find its themed game and how inclined you are to explore.
In my experience, the Variety Kit’s top toys are easily the piano and the motorbike. The sheer amount of musical variety and manipulation involved in the Labo piano is staggering. It’s not just smashing keys tied to different scales and sound effects. You can actually cut out and insert custom cardboard and paper cards to set drum beats and waveforms. While the piano excels at giving you a huge amount of space to play around in musically, the motorbike is just a solid take on some very basic driving mechanics. The motocross handlebars feel close enough to the real thing that revving up your bike and popping a wheelie never grows old.With a clicking reel and a motion-sensitive handle, the fishing rod also has a great real-world feel. It carries a bit more excitement and nibbles than real fishing, but I found it a bit too repetitive and lackluster to really hold my attention. This was also true for the RC cars, which can’t reach very high speeds and cause quite the racket on a hard surface. Building a race track for them to scoot along or having them battle and bump was fun the first time, but didn’t seem like something I would want to return to much in the future.
The house, one of the largest, strangest, and most time-consuming projects, was the biggest disappointment. Playing with it simply revolves around inserting and removing different plug-ins into its walls and floor, as a small furry creature goes about its day on the Switch’s screen. Plug in a faucet handle and you can fill the living room with water. Plug in a crank and the creature will hop on a treadmill. There’s no obvious goal or end point to these adorable shenanigans, but I soon found that certain actions led to my creature finding small pieces of candy hidden in each room. It wasn’t something Labo had told me to search out, but this small thrill of discovery I had made was something that I would experience multiple times as I poked around each toys gamespace. Unfortunately for those exploring the house toy, it’s just not enough to warrant much replay.
Even with Labo’s hidden features and Easter eggs, some of its Play sessions can grow stale quickly. There are only so many secrets to be found and high scores to be beaten before some games begin to lose their luster, and often times this is a few hours at best.That’s why Nintendo’s recent inclusion of Labo toys in other areas of the Switch library is such a welcome addition. Thanks to an update to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe you can now maneuver your kart via the Labo motorbike handlebars. While somewhat more difficult than playing with a normal controller, this new driving method does feel like a fun and wholly original challenge for anyone who has already mastered the average Mario Kart gyro controls. It’s collaborations and inclusion like this that are most likely to keep the Variety Kit from falling by the wayside in terms of gameplay.
Hidden Depths
The best part of Labo’s Play sessions is enhanced and expanded in its Discover section. Discover features the kid-friendly explanations behind how every toy really works via faux online chats with Labo characters Professor Gerry, Lerna, and Plaise. It’s cute, and a great way to give you a better understanding as to how the tech inside your Joy-Con and Switch bring the Labo toys to life in their own wacky ways.
Discover is also where one can come to build the Variety Kit’s extra bits and bobs. Little cardboard figures and quickly constructed doodads can be found in every corner, giving you a small taste of what Labo is truly capable of producing. One of my favorite examples is the Toy-Con scanner, a miniature gun that uses the right Joy-Con’s infrared sensor (which I’m sure many didn’t know existed) to map the depth of real-world objects and turn them into motocross terrain. By simply pointing it at my keyboard or an old GameCube controller I could create a brand-new arena of valleys and ramps to race around. To build an actual race track, Labo had me insert the left Joy-Con into a miniature cardboard motorbike and drive it through the air at different heights. The motion sensors captured the movements and in no time a radical new race track had been born.
Tucked away at the bottom of the Discover menu, represented by a clattering manhole cover, is Labo’s greatest mode: Toy-Con Garage. This is where the real magic happens. Toy-Con Garage is essentially an open platform that allows you to engineer your own toys and contraptions by connecting different input and output “nodes.” These easy-to-manage code blocks let you tether Joy-Con and touchscreen actions to a variety of different results. Want to light up a screen by shaking a Joy-Con? Just connect the blocks. How about setting off a laser noise every time you touch the Switch screen? It’s astonishingly easy.If there was one part of Labo’s Variety Kit that held my attention the longest (and has yet to let go) it’s the Toy-Con Garage. It’s as simple or as complex as you want to make it, and has the potential to bring out a creative side you might not even know you had. Building and playing with the various projects may seem like the star of the show, but Toy-Con Garage ultimately shines through as Labo’s most alluring experience.
