Nintendo has revealed the winners of its first Nintendo Labo Creators Contest, a competition for Nintendo Switch modders to really get creative with cardboard and Joy-Con controllers. The winning entries include a solar-powered accordion, a miniature tree house, and an analog alarm clock.
If you're unfamiliar with the Labo kits, they give Switch owners the opportunity to mod their gaming devices in all kinds of ways, often using nothing but a few sheets of carefully folded cardboard. Official templates from Nintendo include a toy piano, a fishing rod game, and a motorized buggy.
Nintendo hasn't ranked the winners of the competition in order, but did split them up into categories. All of the modders who made the final cut are getting a reward in the form of a Labo-themed Switch.
In the Best Decorated Toy-Con category (extra points for style and polish), we have a Legend of Music mod of the official Labo toy piano – a host of flourishes inspired by the Legend of Zelda games, including a Master Sword and mushroom buttons. The judges praised its "thoughtful attention to detail" in their summary.
The other winners in this category were a Jurassic PaRC dinosaur mod of the Toy-Con RC Car template, making good use of extra materials and colors, and a No Grown-Ups Allowed project that uses a Switch as a basis for a tiny treehouse. From the tire swing to the cardboard sign, there's plenty of detail to look at.
The next category picked out winners making use of the Toy-Con Garage programming kit to offer extra functions on the software side. Top picks included an Analog Clock with Alarm, based on the toy piano mod – the cardboard knobs that are part of the piano kit can be used to set the alarm time, a mod described as a "stroke of genius" by the judges.
Also in this category was a Fix-It game testing reaction times, with a custom cardboard overlay and some clever modded controls, and another game called Creature Says – here players need to follow the instructions from the "creature" inside the Toy-Con house, and the judges praised its "great presentation, great game concept, and great thinking" in their final summary.
Finally, the last category covered Toy-Con Garage inventions built from scratch as completely new projects (not mods of existing templates). Perhaps most impressive was a solar-powered cardboard accordion, using filtered sunlight as a control mechanism to play notes – a mechanism described as "ingenious" by the judges.
Joining the accordion was a Labo Tea Time project, a simple game using cardboard teapots that each hide a Joy-Con controller. There's also another game called Don't Break The Line!, which cleverly combines a coin slot, a basic on-screen game, and even a candy dispenser to dish out rewards for players.
Congratulations to all the winners – you can see them all in the photo gallery.
Source: Nintendo