Nintendo Labo Variety Kit

The RC car is very easy to build, requiring two cardboard sheets and about ten minutes of folding. One large piece folds together into a six-legged shell with slots on the sides to insert the Joy-Cons.

The Toy-Con projects are printed on multiple sheets of perforated, precut cardboard. Each sheet is identified by a color and a letter, letting you easily figure out which one is needed for which step of which Toy-Con.

The precut pieces easily pop out of their holes on each sheet with a gentle push, and with modest care I managed to remove dozens upon dozens of intricate shapes without a single unintended bend or rip.

I put together the fishing rod (estimated at 90 to 150 minutes) in just over an hour.

I built the piano (estimated at 150 to 210 minutes) in just under three hours.

The physical Toy-Cons are only part of the equation. They require the Switch's Joy-Con controllers to function, and the right Joy-Con contains Labo's real genius. The black bar on the bottom of the right Joy-Con is an infrared camera, and while it doesn't take visually appealing pictures, it's impressively accurate when detecting reflective material.

The construction instructions are provided entirely on the Switch, easily visible on the console itself or when plugged into a TV. Each Toy-Con project is broken into multiple stages, showing you how to assemble each major component of the Toy-Con.

Playing with the RC car is as simple as building it. Two large paddles appear on the screen with sliding switches next to them. Each paddle makes one of the Joy-Cons vibrate, and each switch adjusts the frequency of the vibration.

You can scan any object by holding the Joy-Con in a small gun-shaped scanner Toy-Con, and a three-dimensional map of that object will become a terrain map for the stadium.

The Piano game mode lets you use the piano Toy-Con as a simple 13-key piano. It shows a cluster of 13 cute figures in tubes that pop up and sing notes when you press a key on the piano.

The Studio game mode takes the piano Toy-Con's abilities even further. It lets you switch between five different octaves using the pitch lever for a total of 65 notes. It also lets you add a drum line using a cardboard punch card you insert into the top, removing circles (or putting them back in the holes) to set the bass drum, snare, and cymbals.

The Toy-Con Garage uses a basic tile-based programming system to connect different inputs and outputs between the Switch tablet and the Joy-Cons. Inputs can include tapping on-screen buttons, pressing physical buttons on either Joy-Con, or physically swinging them around. These can trigger outputs that range from lighting up panels on the screen to playing different sounds (with a full array of sound effects and notes from the Piano and Studio modes), to making either Joy-Con vibrate.