The mysterious Nintendo Switch Online playtest announced a couple of weeks ago has leaked, because of course it has, and the feature that it appears to be heralding is…well, it’s pretty odd, to say the least.
Said playtest was first announced on October 10th, and although Nintendo gave nothing away, speculation was rife. Was this the introduction of GameCube games to Switch Online? A new game altogether? Some kind of secret, heretofore-unknown DLC?
Within minutes of Nintendo announcing the playtest, the company revealed that signups were full, and with so many people taking part, the content of the playtest was bound to leak sooner or later. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what’s happened.
Before long, enterprising playtesters had leaked the page shown to them by Nintendo for the playtest, and another leaker compiled a Google Doc that showed off everything in the playtest in detail.
In short, the leaks appear to show a game in which you must develop a planet by “utilizing creativity and farmed resources”. Nintendo’s stated aim with the playtest is to “test the boundaries of mass multiplayer functionality and gameplay on our servers”.
As you play this new game, you’ll gain Beacons, which you can place within your Planetary Block. Within your Beacon, you can “move, lift, [and] edit items”, and outside player Beacons, anyone can build.
You’ll socialize with other players within an area called the Dev Core, which is also where you’ll level up your character, get new items, and more. The test looks like it’s showing off a game that’s somewhere between Minecraft, Dreams, and a shared open-world MMO like Worlds Adrift.
The eventual goal is for all players to create their own planet together, and said planet will seemingly be a mixture of player-created Beacons and communally-created spaces outside the Beacons.
It’s not clear whether this game will eventually see the light of day for the general public or whether it’s intended solely as a way for Nintendo to test its server infrastructure, but it seems like a pretty typically Nintendo idea to me. We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
