Five years later and the Nintendo Switch is still a bit of a marvel to me. Taking your home console games on the go with you never gets old. Though Nintendo didn’t simply pack their new games onto a console that could be played on both a TV or handheld—their whole philosophy of game design shifted as well to accommodate.
Many folks engage with handheld games differently than they do with console games. Any game can be enjoyed for a long stretch of time, but handheld adds convenient access to play from anywhere and in short periods of time. Maybe You’ve got a 10-minute bus ride to catch. Or perhaps you’re in the waiting room for a doctor’s appointment. It’s a great opportunity to pull the old Switch and start playing. When designing new games, Nintendo had to take some serious consideration into both these long and short stretches of game time to appeal to all options of play.
You can see this in action in Super Mario Odyssey. The first 3D Mario collect-a-thon since the Super Mario Galaxy games on the Wii. Some of the most notable changes since the last of this series have been the game not kicking you out after your collect a Star (in this case, Moon) plus the sheer number of them at over 800. You can’t go 10 minutes without uncovering something in that game and that is very much intentional. If you only have enough time to poke around in the game until your coffee is ready, you will find something new and feel your time was valued. The same goes for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Korok seeds are hidden under every rock and there’s an absolute abundance of shrines to explore—puzzle rooms taking only about 10 minutes to complete.
These are just two games. But the Nintendo catalog of first-party, AAA third-party, and indie games is full of games perfect for these short bursts. What are your favorites? We’d love to hear!
Some quick rules for your nominations:
1) Your nomination should contain the name of a specific Nintendo Switch game, why it is your favorite for short bursts, a link where it can be purchased, and an image.
2) You can nominate multiple games, but please put each one in a separate comment or reply on Twitter.
3) Vote by starring someone else’s comment or liking someone else’s Twitter reply.