VR was meant to be the future, and it still yet might be, but the current selection of virtual reality devices is in the main expensive, impractical and nausea-inducing. Initially tethered to high-end computers with wires, neither the Oculus Rift nor the HTC Vive VR headsets have yet captured the public imagination as much as that of investors, and lower-end contraptions such as Google Cardboard haven’t offered interesting enough experiences to become popular. Nintendo Labo, on the other hand, shows virtual reality for what it really is, at least right now: an interesting toy. With a 7+ PEGI rating, in contrast to the 12+ recommendation for every other VR device, it has the age suitability to match.
Labo is not the VR device that will finally break through and make the technology ubiquitous, but that’s not what it’s trying to do. Like the other Nintendo Labo kits, released last year for Nintendo Switch, it is an interesting and educational toy aimed at curious children and their families. In the box are sets of cardboard sheets and a game cartridge containing the instructions to fold them into ingenious models. Pop the cart into the Switch, assemble your viewer according to the friendly directions, slot the console into the model, and you have a little working VR headset.
Hold the contraption up to your eyes like a pair of binoculars and you can play a range of cool little games using the Switch controllers, the models and – in one game, at least – your breath, thanks to a little cardboard pinwheel attachment. It looks endearingly ridiculous.
The Labo VR kit comes with a few cardboard models other than the basic viewer. One is a cardboard flapping bird, used to control a few flight games. The largest is a blaster with an elastic-band-powered reload and a trigger, used to shoot coloured balls at aliens or feed hippos with fruit fired from its muzzle. One is a camera, with a satisfying cardboard shutter; another looks like an elephant with a prehensile trunk. Each model can be used to play different games, from a selection of 64.
Most of these games are short-lived demos that use the Nintendo Switch’s sensors in fascinating, unexpected ways, and give an insight into how both VR technology and the Switch itself works – functions that are further explained by tutorials in the game that lay out how the games are made and how the console senses your movements. Technologically-minded kids can dive into an inventors’ garage and construct their own simple VR games, from fairground-style shooting galleries to simple run-and-jump affairs.
Like the other Labo kits, this astounds with its ingenuity. It is still amazing to see a few sheets of cardboard turn into a working controller for use with a unique game. Building the models is satisfying by itself, but using them to control games feels almost magical. This is VR as Willy Wonka might approach it, full of wild throwaway ideas and imagination.
Crucial to Labo VR’s family appeal is the fact that you don’t have to lock yourself away in the headset. Instead you hold it like a viewer: you don’t even need headphones. It can be passed around to play with family and friends, though only one of you can see what’s on the screen at any time. Surprisingly, the low resolution of the Switch screen isn’t a problem even when it’s viewed up close through a pair of goggles – though after an hour with Labo VR I had a couple of red marks from holding cardboard up to my face or quickly pressing a cardboard trigger.
Labo VR takes the same accessible, clever approach to VR as the Nintendo 3DS did to 3D technology. It’s cheap, unfussy and playful, neither as sophisticated as much more expensive equipment nor as ambitious – but a lot more fun. It’s not likely to be something that kids will play with for months or years. However, on the evidence of the other Labo kits, which had you constructing cardboard flight decks and pianos, a weekend with this might be more fun and enriching (for parents as much as kids) than 30 hours with your typical video game.
• Nintendo Labo VR Kit is out 12 April; £69.99
