Nintendo's gonna teach kids how to make games on a Switch

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2021-05-28 03:00:07

There were some chuckles directed at the company's Labo experiment, with its focus on folding cardboard and using physical objects assembled by players themselves to enhance simple games. But those paper creations belie an energizing leap for a company that has traditionally leaned hardest on its intensely familiar stable of beloved series.

Nowhere is the shift more evident than in Labo Garage, the build-what-you-want mode that lets people play with the same kinds of tools that make stock Labo projects work. Now Nintendo is forging ahead with that concept, ditching the cardboard and delivering a Switch game cartridge that carries all the tools one might need to build an entire Switch game.

It starts with Nodons. These "creatures with big personalities," as Nintendo describes them, are the building blocks of any Game Builder Garage creation. On the programming screen they appear as little colorful boxes that can take on any number of roles. By forming connections between different Nodons, literally by drawing a line between them, you're mapping out under-the-hood game rules.

So a Stick Nodon — which sports a cute, little control stick character to help you identify it — that tells the Switch how to respond when someone moves the control stick left or right could be attached to a Person Nodon's Left/Right movements. If you want that Person Nodon to be able to jump as well, you'd simply summon up a Button Nodon and connect it to the right spot on the Person Nodon.

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