We were recently invited to try out a new and innovative product, the Nintendo Labo for the Nintendo Switch. I opted to try the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit to review and share with you, so the kids have been giving it a go.
I confess when I first heard about the Nintendo Labo, I couldn’t really get my head around what it was and how it worked. I’m not much of a gamer these days, though having grown up as games consoles developed (Oh my, how I loved Sonic, Mario and Tetris!) I’m not completely hopeless. But this Nintendo Labo was like nothing I’d seen before so I was keen to better understand it and see what the kids made of it.
Put as simply as I can, the Nintendo Labo kit is a batch of cardboard sheets, with pieces that push out easily to allow you to assemble various builds. Once these builds are in place, they can then interact with the Nintendo Switch and Labo game to create a series of mini games and activities.
In the case of the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit, it contains five different products to build and play with:
Two Toy-Con RC Cars
Toy-Con Fishing Rod
Toy-Con House
Toy-Con Motorbike
Toy-Con Piano
The instructions for each build are all on the Nintendo Switch’s screen. These are step by step and easy to follow, though some builds do take more time and patience than others. Little Man, aged 5, was fine with the smaller builds, but then Boo, aged 8, took over with the more complicated projects along with her dad or cousin. I’d say that she was capable of doing these on her own, they’d just have taken a little more time to complete.
Here’s the Fishing Rod in full swing…
The cardboard creation is designed to be fully interactive with the Nintendo Switch. In each case it is placed within the cardboard, or the controllers are, and it then becomes interactive with the screen. For example, this fishing rod can be used to catch and reel in the fish that are shown on the screen. It is very clever stuff!
And then there’s the house, the kids’ current favourite creation…
The house allows the children to look after a cat-like creature, involving various games to enable you to level-up your pet. The kids adore theirs and as I write this I can hear their giggles whilst they are playing with it!
The kids have made three of the Toy-Cons now, and we plan to build the other three every few days over the holiday. I have to say that each and every one amazes me. I love seeing the concentration on their faces as they sit and put these kits together, following along carefully with the step by step instructions. To see technology so seamlessly working with engineering in this way is wonderful.
As well as the game play once these are built, the value in the Nintendo Labo is in the build itself. I have watched the kids put these together with one another, with their dad and then with their cousin. Creating through following the onscreen instructions is a huge part of the Nintendo Labo’s appeal.
I cannot rate the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit highly enough. It’s brought a whole new dimension to gaming and interactivity in our home, and each and every creation so far as really engaged the kids. Being cardboard, I’d be surprised if these kits lasted for years, but for now they are proving to be sturdy enough to withstand playing with my two and I think the engineering involved in the build process and then the fun afterwards does equate to value for money with these kits. When you look at them in comparison with normal Nintendo Switch releases, they are only around £10-15 more and yet I believe that they offer so much more.
You can buy the Nintendo Labo Toy-Con 01: Variety Kit
What do you think of the Nintendo Labo? Is this something that you can see your kids enjoying?
Disclosure: We received this product FOC to enable us to trial it and share our opinions, and this post also contains affiliate links