They’re such a simple thing, yet to a child it could be a pirate ship, a rocket, a racing car or a castle. I have no idea what the cat thinks it is, but I do know trying to get him out of one when he’s not ready comes with a 1d6 chance of being swiped at.

The creative folks at Nintendo have come up with another innovative use for cardboard that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before — they’ve combined it with the Nintendo Switch handheld console to create something truly amazing.

The idea behind Nintendo Labo is that you construct items (known as “Toy-Con”) out of cardboard sheets with perforated design outlines on it — such as a racing car, a piano, a fishing rod, or even a giant robot — attach the Switch controllers, and interact with the creation via the Switch console itself.

It is a lot of fun, and the resulting product expertly combines construction (who doesn’t like building things?) with gaming to create a fun, family-friendly experience of the sort Nintendo are rightly famed for.

My first experience with Labo was at a hands-on event at Nintendo HQ, building a racing car from the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit with the guidance of two of Nintendo’s team.

After making the car, the controllers were attached to either side and the Switch was turned into a radio control unit, with the controllers vibrating to make the car move across the table and around obstacles. Even more impressively, the Switch controller’s infra-red sensor became a night-vision camera, allowing me to where the car was going from a driver’s perspective. In fact, my first thought, after “This is awesome and my kids will absolutely love this!” was “I can’t wait to see how this confuses the cat”.

The fishing rod kit was also a lot of fun; the Switch displays an ocean view that gets deeper as you unwind the reel in an effort to catch bigger fish. Its engaging simplicity and fun reminded me a lot of the phenomenally successful Wii Bowling (also a Nintendo product).

The piano was also a lot of fun, and the house is hard to describe but allows you to interact with a cartoon creature living in it, including changing day to night in their world, sending them on adventures through tunnels under the house, or even filling their living room with water from a giant tap if that’s your thing.

The Labo software on the Switch is divided into three parts — make play and explorer. The first part are interactive instructions, walking you through how to take the cardboard kits and turn them into a 3D object. Unlike the instructions from a well-known Scandinavian furnishing and homewares store, the Labo instructions are fully 3D and can be rotated and adjusted by the user to give a clear idea of what needs to go where.

The play element is putting your creation through its paces as a toy, while the discover mode helps you go under the bonnet and learn more about how each Toy-Con works, as well as ways you can enhance it (such as by setting up an automatic driving route for the car, or creating your own sounds for the piano).

While the Labo is nominally aimed at the family market (particularly children in the 6-12 range), it’s a lot of fun for all ages, and the robot kit (a stand-alone Toy-Con kit) is an absolute blast. It takes several hours to assemble, including a backpack, visor, and arm and foot controls, but once you don the backpack and visor, you assume the guise (on a TV screen) of a giant Transformer-like robot stomping around a city, smashing buildings and cars, flying through the air, and generally doing all the stuff we would all want to do if we were a giant robot.

Nintendo Australia media and PR specialist Kirsty Sculler said the Labo project was a direct development from the Switch and had taken about two years to create.

“After the development of Nintendo Switch, the development team worked on creating all kinds of different prototypes, with the theme of creating something that was straightforward and that only the Nintendo Switch and Joy-Con (Switch controllers) could make happen; Nintendo Labo came out of this process,” she said.

Ms Sculler said Labo continued Nintendo’s longstanding mission of “making people smile by surprising them with new entertainment experiences” and was designed to inspire curiosity, creativity and imagination in people of all ages — but especially children.

“Nintendo Labo is not a video game in the traditional sense; it combines physical and digital experiences to enable a whole new way to make, play and discover,” she said.

“We also believe in delivering surprising experiences to people that they didn’t even know were possible.”

One of the elements of the Nintendo Labo is that people can create their own elements to it, including Toy-Con, and program them as well via the Toy-Con Garage software for the Switch. It’s a well done program that offers a surprising amount of flexibility, and users have wasted no time in getting creative with the Labo since it was released a few weeks ago.

“We are excited by the creativity that has been shown with Nintendo Labo, with users demonstrating many imaginative ways to engage with the physical elements of Nintendo Labo (through creativity with cardboard, design and materials) and through using Toy-Con Garage to create new ways to play,” Ms Sculler said.

I was extremely impressed by the Labo experience and particularly enjoyed the unique combination of real-world construction along with gaming. There’s something here for the whole family to enjoy and the ability to create and program your own Toy-Con is another tick in the box here. It’s educational, it’s fun, and it’s accessible — all great things.

You don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy the Nintendo Labo, and that’s part of what makes it so interesting — it expertly combines construction with gaming in an accessible way that will appeal to both gamers and non-gamers alike, and give families and friends something to work on together.

It’s great to see something truly innovative and unique and the gaming and electronic entertainment marketplace — who would have thought cardboard, string and reflective tape could create such a wonderful gaming experience when combined with a portable console?

If you like building or discovering things, or have a child in the house who does, Labo is well worth looking into — it’s rewarding and quite unlike anything else out there at the moment.