My Favorite Game of 2025 is a Game You Cannot Play

Posted on 2025.12.31

On July 17th, 2025, Nintendo announced a second run of the Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program. Nintendo had run the first test in October 2024, and I was one of the lucky 10,000 who got to participate. I thought the idea for the game was neat and had some potential, but I didn’t really think too much of it. Nevertheless, I was interested in participating again for the second test. This one had many more spots for applicants, and you even got the chance to apply with friends. I formed a little squad with friends who were interested but didn’t play the first session, and I got us in. The Playtest Program ran for two weeks.

I was ready to just play this game on-and-off and just find it neat like I did last time. What I didn’t anticipate is that I was about to have the two greatest weeks of gaming in what was a borderline life-changing experience. This game completely blew my mind. The game was still the same as the first session at its cores, but the tweaks Nintendo made to the formula amounted to a better-designed and more cohesive experience that augmented the strengths of the game, and it’s in these strengths that Nintendo was able to provide a game like no other.

This is my experience with the Playtest Program, my favorite game of 2025.

> Connections is the name of the game

First and foremost, this game is all about connections. This game is an MMO where the main overarching objective is to fully develop a planet covered in darkness. The planet is divided into a million planetary blocks, and inside each one you must work together with other players to cover the lands with lights using beacons and other tools. Once a block has reached the necessary threshold of light on the surface, development of that block is considered complete and adjacent undeveloped blocks become available. Lighting up the surface for yourself nets you Dev Points, with which you can buy recipes for tools, weapons and machines that will help you along your developer journey. Develop surface → acquire Dev Points → get tools to develop faster → repeat. This is the main gameplay loop at its core, but as it will soon become apparent, this is far, far from the only thing you’ll be doing here.

This game heavily emphasizes socializing and interacting with other players. Players are spread around the globe, but regardless of location everyone can access a central hub called the Dev Core. A lot goes on here: it’s where you talk with the Dev Mind (the leading force of your adventure) and where you can access the in-game shops and do a bunch of activities with other players. There’s an area dedicated to sharing text and images (since there’s no in-game chat), there’s a Deco museum (more on this later), and there’s always fun activities and minigames happening. Outside of the Dev Core, the game encourages group participation in events such as Planetary Errors, in which a newly uncovered block must be developed under special rules and conditions. And of course, there’s always the possibility of encountering random players while developing ordinary blocks.

Social actions such as shaking hands with players and giving thumb-ups to other people’s creations reward you and the other player with Connex points, the other in-game currency. I think this is a great system that encourages players to become social, as these points can be used in exchange for stuff that expands your interaction possibilities and creative tools (more on that later). The combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to connect with others is a key aspect of this game. As I continue talking about the playtest, you’ll quickly notice how often connections with other players pop up and how they make up an important part of the gameplay experience. I truly believe the magic of this game lies in this and it’s a big reason why this game had such a lasting impact on me.

> The Joy of Discovery

Being this brand new secret game with no presence on the greater internet, everything about this game had to be learned in-game. The game has a very short tutorial to explain some of the core mechanics, but after that, you’re on your own. Tail mechanics, movement techniques, block properties, tools, items, machines… the game barely explains anything to you (maybe to a fault), and it’s up to you to figure out how everything works. I cannot overstate how much of a good thing this is. In an era where players instantly put every bit of information about the game in wikis, social media and such, playing a game where none of that existed was a breath of fresh air. It felt SO satisfying to figure out certain mechanics on my own, like how to optimize ore mining. And, much like the old days’ slow spread, another method of learning things was to interact with other players.

I played this game with my squadmates on VC and I remember being SHOCKED when they showed me stuff like fusing in parallel and lassoing blocks with your tail. And you don’t need VC to experience this! In the Dev Core, people frequently publicly shared information they discovered, or they asked questions which would be subsequently answered. This reminded me of the old days of Minecraft where I would learn about features and mechanics by talking about the game with other kids in the playground. The drive to figure out how this game works being both self-driven and led by interacting with other players in-game (as opposed to looking up info on the internet) elevated that sense of wonder and is an aspect of the game I very much enjoyed.

> Creativity and player expression

Another huge pillar of this game is creativity! One of the big things you can do in this game is create Deco. These are little costumes you can create and wear around in public! You create these with a simple 3D modeling program, which means you start from scratch and create literally anything you want!! You have a set number of pieces, and for each piece you can choose the shape, apply some basic transformations in 3 axes, and give it a color. Despite its limitations (such as position boundaries and polygon counts), the system is robust enough to let you get away with some pretty fascinating designs. They encourage you to get clever and creative, and these limitations also work in favor of the game’s aesthetics since it ends up giving all Deco a very distinctive charm.

Wearing Deco and showing it around is really cool, but you know what’s even cooler? SHARING IT!! One of the standout features of the Dev Core is the Deco museum, a dedicated area for players to show off their creations! Players can claim a spot and use it to display any of the Deco in your inventory (doesn’t even have to be yours), and once displayed other players can come over to try it out and take home a copy. I always checked this area every few hours just to see if there were any new cool ones to take – I kept a collection of all my favorite ones in my base. It was so incredibly cool to see all the amazing costumes other players were able to make with this system. I enjoyed seeing everyone in general create and wear anything from accessories like logos, a Guitar Hero controller, the FLUDD pack, Tetris pieces, Virtual Boy headsets, every PlayStation console strapped to you… to full on character costumes like Hatsune Miku, Tenna, Phoenix Wright, Among Us crewmates, Sonic the Hedgehog, and any Pokémon you can imagine. I personally created two Decos. My first was a full costume of my favorite character, Marie (Splatoon). It took a lot of effort but I’m really happy with how it turned out! I also made a Tetris hat showing a DT Cannon setup.

Being a voxel-based game like Minecraft where you can play around with blocks, another creative avenue you have is building! Areas covered by your beacons are your own and are safe from outsiders, so you’re free to go wild inside them. In my base I built a little platform to place all my work stations, and I also built a giant pixel art statue of Marie Splatoon. I’ve seen people build beautiful houses, pixel art statues, racetracks, fashion runways, and more. I even saw people use technical blocks to create contraptions a la Minecraft redstone, such as countdown lights for races and song-playing machines! Building is also where Connex points come into play, since you can use those to buy sets that allow you to change the look of blocks, such as changing the color or the pattern of wood and stone.

Speaking of Connex points, all the stuff you can obtain with them is based on player expression. You can get stuff to add flair to your bases, such as the kits I just mentioned, music tracks, and visual effects. You can also get poses, sound effects and emojis so that you can emote anywhere in the game. I think it’s really cool how Connex points are obtained by socializing with other people, and in return you can get stuff to augment your socializing experience. Another small way in which player expression manifests itself is through movement mechanics. This game boasts really cool movement physics that allow you to schmoove through the world: swinging like Spider-Man, speeding with machines and abusing momentum instead of just walking everywhere. I even learned some of this movement tech from my squadmates, like discovering you can use ground-pound momentum when clinging from a ceiling to boost yourself upwards.

> Friends and immaculate vibes

One big difference between this playtest and the first session is that you could sign up with and play with friends. This is probably one of the biggest reasons I enjoyed this playtest so much; playing with my squadmates on VC and doing silly stuff together elevated the experience in ways that playing solo couldn’t have. We developed blocks together, spent a lot of time chilling with other players at the Dev core, goofed around in our own blocks, and more. Even when we went our separate ways, we’d hang in VC and talk about our current doings. Interacting with other people in-game is its own fun (and kinda the main point of the game), but playing and communicating with someone you know outside of the game is a whole league of its own. It expands the amount of stuff you can do and for me, it massively increased the amount of fun I had with this game.

I’ll also take this moment to talk about the whole vibe of the game because it is just sublime. It has such a cool artstyle and animation style. The character design is really charming, and the simplicity of Decos lend itself to this art style (I don’t think Deco would have looked good if we had more options). Also can we talk about the soundtrack?? It’s insane that this 90+ track masterpiece is just hidden away in the depths of Nintendo’s servers. The music in this game is really good and I’m eagerly awaiting the day the wider public becomes aware of it. I also really like the whole Developer theming of this game. I’m sure it started off as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that this is a playtest for a game that’s still in development, but the worldbuilding is so fleshed out that I feel this should just be the game’s identity in the final product. There’s little hints of lore in tutorial text and in-game descriptions that suggest a greater narrative going on, and it’s vague enough so far that it leaves a lot of room for interpretations and curiosity.

> A sense of community

The last day of the playtest was my favorite. Something cool about the limited amount of time we had is that we basically experienced the two-week Minecraft phase but with end-of-service celebrations at the end of it. And in poetic fashion, this is the day where connections with other players felt the strongest.

One cute interaction I had early on happened on a Dev Core activity. It was like a free painting session where anyone could grab, place and paint blocks. I started making the Mario Maker Marie sprite all by myself; as I began to paint the pixel art statue, a random player saw what I was doing and decided to help. Recognizing the sprite I was painting, they helped me paint it with the correct colors on the right spots and everything. This sort of spontaneous collaboration with zero in-game communication made my day, and it highlights one of the coolest community aspects of this game. Another cool thing that happened: someone had advertised a “fashion show” on the Dev Core at a specific hour, and provided a way to teleport there. One of my squadmates and I visited it and found over 50 people all gathered up for this show. Players would take turns walking down the runway and showing off their deco, and audience players would react and emote. It was a fascinating experience, seeing how players themselves made, managed and participated in this user-created event without any involvement from the game itself. After the event ended, I hung around with a few other players who stayed. Eventually I visited a different block where one of those players built an elaborate and beautiful base. It had a large house furnished with Deco (one of the more clever uses of it), a floating island, a giant song-machine, and other places of interest. One of the coolest planetary blocks in the game for sure! I spent the rest of the day hanging out with other players in other blocks, and showing off my own block to other players. I even got to spend some time with a player I encountered in the first playtest session!

The finale was bittersweet (but mostly sweet!). So many players had gathered in the Dev Core that dozens of server instances were created, and I’m sure that in all of them we were all standing in the main platform celebrating and emoting during the final goodbye. Once the servers shut down, I took to social media to talk and reminisce about the game… and I never would’ve expected what happened next. Over the course of that final day and subsequent days I found and talked with so many playtest fans; I didn’t expect to find so many! It was honestly kinda fun to talk about the game in a tongue-in-cheek manner, speaking in euphemisms and riddles in order to avoid the Big N looming over our shoulders. I even sought out some of the players I encountered in-game and to my luck, I found a few of them! I ended up talking with: a player who spawned with me on the first playtest session, the player who built the incredible base I mentioned and hung out with for an hour, the player who inspired me to make my 2nd Deco and met while sharing it at the Dev Core, an artist who made some Splatoon-themed Deco and kept a copy of EVERY Splatoon Deco (including mine!), and one of my favorite artists whom I coincidentally met during a Day 2 in-game event.

> Conclusion

From the moment you first boot it up, the game reminds you that you are not alone. The title screen has a global progress counter that tracks how much percentage of the entire planet is developed. That progress bar, slowly crawling day by day as it holds the weight of a planet with unimaginable scale, really helps give a sense of how we’re all in this together, helping each other achieve this ultimate greater goal. Even if you’re playing alone, in a lone planetary block with no other players, you’re still contributing for everyone. This is a game about community, where progression is a community effort and you’re encouraged to be creative and have fun along the way.

No other game has felt like this, and no other game has made me feel this way. It’s become an everlasting presence on my psyche. The playtest is one of the most innovative games I’ve ever played. The first session in 2024 was fine, but I think Nintendo’s vision of the game was more fully realized with this second session. The game still has a lot of room for improvement and I’m looking forward to seeing where Nintendo takes this new IP next. It’s been a mindblowing experience inside and outside of the game. My squadmates and I formed some incredible memories from playing this game, and meeting other playtest fans has planted the seeds from which even greater memories are bound to blossom.

I’m still constantly thinking about the Playtest, and I eagerly await its return. I hope I’ve been able to explain why I consider the Playtest to be my favorite gaming experience of 2025.