Mario Kart World, P-Switches, and Why Micro-Challenges Make for Great Bite-Sized Game Design
Mario Kart World features a “Free Roam” mode that populates the world with P-Switches, Peach Medallions, and ? Panels. All of these collectables serve as invitations to complete bite-sized challenges that tutorialize and test the player’s understanding of the game’s movement systems. // Image: Nintendo
Being an early adopter of a new console never fails to be an interesting experience. You have a limited pool of games to choose from, and your first impression from an entire console is often informed by the very first game you play on your new device. In the case of the Nintendo Switch’s launch in 2017, many early adopters found themselves quickly getting lost in the vast world of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. From the game’s Shrines, Divine Beasts, Korok Seeds, and numerous side quests, Breath of the Wild created an immense variety of content for players to engage in. The result was a remarkable first impression of the Nintendo Switch for many of its early adopters. A large aspect of what makes Breath of the Wild so special of a game for so many people is that it makes the very act of completing objectives feel ever-satisfying. Rewarding the player for every adventure they embark upon creates an intoxicating level of feedback, practically demanding players to play the game even longer, just to find one more secret around the corner and see what the reward for discovering it may be.
With the recent launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, many early adopters’ first impression with the new system has been through Mario Kart World. Needless to say, there are a wide variety of differences between the frantic multiplayer chaos of Mario Kart and the grand, immersive scale of a 3D Zelda game. However, these two launch titles actually have a lot more in common than one may expect. Like Breath of the Wild before it, Mario Kart World creates a breadcrumb trail of satisfaction for its players through the utilization of micro-objectives that populate the world that the player is meant to explore. This string of satisfying rewards given to the player for completing objectives assigned to them makes for an unmistakably fun experience, often releasing feel-good chemicals like endorphins and dopamine. The fact that both of these games do a phenomenal job at achieving this is a topic that I feel begets more discussion.
The launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 has brought forth many conversations, including that of the controversial Game-Key Cards, the discourse surrounding an $80 price tag for video games, and whether Mario Kart World is a step forward or backwards from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. All of these conversations are ones worth having, however I want to take a second to focus on discussing the impact of micro-challenges as part of a game’s design - a topic that the launch game Mario Kart World helps illustrate.
As someone that’s spent the majority of my Switch 2 playtime thus far focused on getting every collectable in Mario Kart World’s “Free Roam” mode, I’ve found myself greatly admiring the way Nintendo has constructed Mario Kart World’s map. Every time I acquire a collectable in World’s “Free Roam” mode, I can’t help but feel a release of chemicals in my brain that fuels me with inspiration to find the next collectable. How do games like Mario Kart World and Breath of the Wild achieve this? And how can other games take lessons from such a style of game design? Let’s discuss the underestimated power of micro-challenges!
Many of the P-Switch missions in Mario Kart World make the player navigate the world using the mechanics introduced in World. Micro-challenges can go a long way in acclimating players to new concepts they can apply elsewhere in the game. // Image: Nintendo
The Mario Kart franchise is seldom associated with enticing single-player content. Since the original Super Mario Kart’s release in 1992, every Mario Kart game has been primarily focused on offering unrelenting chaos in its races. There’s nothing wrong with the series prioritizing this - after all, the franchise’s commitment to this has resulted in the series being closely associated with party nights and as a vehicle for fun, chaotic banter with friends. However, this has, in the eyes of some, prevented Mario Kart from ever surpassing the potential offered by some of the franchise’s competitors. As far back as Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing, the kart racer genre has been filled with attempts to make fulfilling single-player campaigns that help justify their respective price tags. While certain kart racers took influence from platformers to incentivize players to complete a journey by acquiring collectables and defeating bosses in challenging races, Mario Kart has largely opted to forgo these attempts to diversify gameplay. Mario Kart has primarily only offered an experience that makes single-player and multiplayer sessions symmetrical in their design. Players racing against bots in a single-player context won’t get that much of a different gameplay experience than they would in a context with other players in the room.
There was, however, one instance where Mario Kart made an effort to make compelling single-player content: 2005’s Mario Kart DS.
DS offered a Mission Mode that tasked the player with completing a variety of objectives - ranging from collecting coins, destroying item boxes, defeating enemies, and beating other characters or bosses in races. Many of these missions were under a minute - as such, they may have individually not been enough to make for interesting single-player content. But when offered in quantity and variety, the missions offered in Mario Kart DS quickly became a fan-favorite feature - to the point where a Mission Mode was among the most highly requested features for any upcoming Mario Kart game thereafter. Mario Kart Wii, 7, 8 and its Deluxe edition all came and went with nothing akin to DS’ Mission Mode in sight, disappointing players. The series went back to having meager single-player offerings, leaving players with little to do by themselves other than compete in offline or online races and battles.
When Mario Kart World was announced, Nintendo poised themselves to break this pattern. Upon the game’s proper unveiling in the Nintendo Switch 2’s dedicated Nintendo Direct in April 2025, Mario Kart World was revealed to be a game where players could “drive virtually everywhere”. An open world Mario Kart was an inherently enticing concept, especially considering that other games like the Forza Horizon titles had long proven that racing games could very much work in an open world context. For any game implementing an open, inter-connected world, though, they need to justify their scope and size. Forza Horizon’s answer for this is to pepper the game’s world with interesting activities to complete that help give variety to complement the primary racing gameplay. It would become evident that Mario Kart World would take a similar approach in justifying its open-world design.
World implements aspects of Mario Kart DS’ Mission Mode, but recontextualizes it via the game’s “Free Roam” mode. In this mode selectable from World’s main menu, “Free Roam” allows the player to drive wherever they please on a map that connects the game’s 32 courses. If Mario Kart World simply offered a map that players could drive around in, it would certainly be a cool novelty, but it would be one that would ware off fast for most players. Getting to explore a massive, diverse environment for the sake of it isn’t enough when designing a world - to make a meaningful gameplay experience, designers need to craft a world that feels worth exploring and features things for the player to do in it. The way to accomplish this is through creating content that players complete as rewards for satiating their curiosity. As a reward for exploring as much of the game’s world as possible, players get to complete micro-challenges that test the player’s familiarity with the game’s mechanics - some of which are brand new to Mario Kart World.
Many of Mario Kart World’s missions made available through the various P-Switches around the world are fairly basic in their objective. Oftentimes, they only require players to drive through a part of the map with added obstacles, collect Blue Coins in a given area, or compete in a race around a certain region. In addition to the plethora of P-Switches throughout the game’s map, Mario Kart World also features other content to find on its map in the form of Peach Medallions and ? Panels - both of which challenge the players’ skills in traversal and ability to inspect the game’s environment.
Sonic Frontiers makes navigating the world feel like a minigame in and of itself. A large part of what makes this minigame work as well as it does are the incredible number of Memory Tokens that invite the player to engage with the various different movement tools at the player’s disposal. Each Memory Token is a small step towards mastering the game’s many navigational mechanics that the player may otherwise struggle to master. // Image: SEGA
The rewards for completing P-Switch challenges or finding Peach Medallions and ? Panels are all negligible in the grand scheme of things. They merely unlock stickers that the player can use to personalize their in-game profile. Mario Kart World tricks players into completing its various objectives not out of an exuberance of gameplay benefits and rewards given to the player but for the sheer joy of completing such objectives. Put another way, Mario Kart World prioritizes the journey over the destination when it comes to its challenges. Designing a game in such a way is evocative of arcade-style design, where high scores offered no tangible reward or benefit outside of bragging rights, but rather, high scores were a typical indicator of how skilled the player had become at the game in question. Giving the player a vast swath of content to complete, all of which tests their understanding and ability to apply acquired knowledge of the game, makes completing such content feel like a reward in and of itself. The more P-Switch Challenges, Peach Medallions, and ? Panels that are completed or acquired, the more the player is assured that they’ve become better at the game.
A great illustration of this is the fact that many of the P-Switch challenges specifically focus on the new mechanics introduced in Mario Kart World - particularly with regard to the rail grinding and wall riding mechanics. It isn’t uncommon in Mario Kart World to see a challenge that forces the player to take full advantage of these mechanics to collect Blue Coins or simply reach the challenge’s goal in time. These challenges give the perfect opportunity for players to test their understanding and skill regarding these new mechanics and provide a safe environment for them to improve at combining these skills for use in actual races against other players. Many of the P-Switch challenges are under a minute long, so even if a player struggles to perform tricks involving grinding or wall riding, they can simply retry the challenge and improve with each added attempt - a process that may take only a few seconds. Giving the player a safe environment, particularly in single-player content, for them to master game mechanics ultimately provides the player with more resources that they can apply elsewhere in the game. Thanks to the P-Switch challenges that necessitate adapting to Mario Kart World’s unique mechanics, drift trajectories, items, and more - players are more properly equipped to apply their knowledge of these mechanics to other spaces of the game - particularly in multiplayer settings.
As I continue playing through Mario Kart World, I can’t help but recall my playthrough of Sonic Frontiers, another game that expertly implemented micro-challenges to test the player’s understanding of the game’s various mechanics. Like World, Sonic Frontiers is distinct from previous games in its franchise thanks to its emphasis on creating a “flow” that connects its various mechanics. Not dissimilar to how Mario Kart World tasks players with combining tricks, wall riding, rail grinding, slipstreaming behind other races, and judiciously using items, Sonic Frontiers hands players the keys to various jungle gyms - all of which invite the player to string together many of the moves available to Sonic. From performing homing attacks to grinding on rails to wall jumping, to running and climbing along the game’s scalable walls, Sonic Frontiers features a lot of navigational and combat mechanics that Sonic needs to take into account when navigating the world of Frontiers. Among the game’s many collectables are the Memory Tokens - MacGuffins that are initially used to free many of Sonic’s friends on each of the game’s islands. Given that there are far more Memory Tokens to collect than what’s required to progress the main story, the player is given the freedom to pick and choose with Memory Tokens they want to go after, in addition to being given the choice to collect every Memory Token in the game if they so desire.
Each Memory Token is a miniature challenge that often involves stringing together various moves at Sonic’s disposal. Given the fast-paced nature of Sonic Frontiers’ movement, many of Frontiers’ micro-challenges require quick decision-making over which skill to use to progress through the challenge. Each of these micro-challenges also only lasts a couple seconds with optimal movement, making the collection process snappier as the player gets better and better at taking advantage of every ability at their disposal. After getting used to the game’s structure that it lays out for collecting Memory Tokens, there’s a kind of rhythm that comes with each of the environmental mini-stages that accompany the many Memory Tokens in the game. Rhythm and flow make the process of collecting Memory Tokens become as consistently rewarding as they are quick and plentiful. Individually, Memory Tokens don’t offer a significant push forward towards the player’s objectives, however the very process of collecting Memory Tokens is what makes for a fun experience.
Moreover, the ways in which players need to exercise their understanding of Sonic’s diverse toolset and how to string together certain abilities is a skill given to the player that they can then apply to Sonic Frontiers’ main platforming stages and boss fights. For a game as mechanically busy as Sonic Frontiers, offering a wide variety of bite-sized challenges within the environments of the game’s open zones gives players the ideal setting to become comfortable with each of Sonic Frontiers mechanics, and sets them up for success when trying to figure out how these different mechanics can be strung together to facilitate the flow and rhythm inherent to Sonic Frontiers’ gameplay when mastered.
Could Sonic Frontiers’ many mechanics have been taught, communicated, and presented as challenges to the player without the implementation of micro-challenges? Most likely. However, I think the size and quantity of the game’s hundreds of Memory Token micro-challenges help inform the player of how many different possibilities that give way to different movement approaches for the player to undertake, and I don’t think such a thing could be achieved to the same degree had Sonic Team decided to instead test the player’s knowledge of the game’s mechanics in only the game’s main stages and boss fights.
The Koroks throughout The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom require the player to look at the world in different ways. In Tears of the Kingdom, specifically, many of the Koroks “looking for their friends” invite the player to improvise with Ultrahand creations to concoct a means of traversing through a certain part of the world. These instances give players skills they can apply towards other sections of the game. // Image: Nintendo
There is a way to determine how effective any video game’s design is. You simply need to ask yourself, “How much is this game teaching me? Is the game teaching me in a way that sets me up for success? Am I learning mechanics through playing the game? And if I am, does it feel like I’m learning?”. The reality is that many video game players do not want to feel like they’re directly being talked to when a game teaches them mechanics and how to utilize them. Players don’t want to feel like the game is teaching them mechanics, so games need to find ways to teach players about how to play the game without being direct about it. Being directly told how to take advantage of a certain mechanic robs the player of the satisfaction of figuring out how to apply that mechanic for themselves. Moreover, being told exactly how to use a certain mechanic inhibits the player’s possible creative application of mechanics. Put another way, great game design is shown, not told. Great game design gives the player a full toolbox and trusts the player to choose which tools to use for the job in front of them instead of handing them a hammer and a step-by-step instruction booklet on how to hammer in a nail.
The aforementioned Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom do a fantastic job at this. In both games, the existence of Korok Seeds teaches the player to look at the world in a different way. The player is taught to be suspicious of and willing to investigate oddities in the game’s world. See an incomplete circle of rocks in the environment? See an apple sitting beside an empty offering shrine? Chances are, these strange occurrences in the game’s world will likely reward the player with a Korok Seed when inspected by the player.
In Tears of the Kingdom, specifically, there are many Koroks with oversized backpacks that lament over having to find their friend. Thanks to their large cargo, however, these Koroks can’t move on their own and need to be transported by Link in order to reunite with their friend. How the player can do this, however, is only limited by the player’s own imagination. If the player wants to use the Ultrahand ability to simply walk and carry the Korok over to their friend, they can do that. However, the player can also choose to build vehicles using parts found nearby the Korok - or they can also just decide to attach a rocket to the Korok’s backpack and blast them off towards their friend in question. The possibilities are endless - and that’s what makes the various instances of these backpacked Koroks never get old. Every time that the player finds a backpacked Korok, they are trusted by the game’s design to resolve the problem in front of them by applying their individual understanding of the game’s mechanics. Transporting a Korok may encourage the player to experiment more with Ultrahand and make many different contraptions until they find one that works well for the specific situation. Likewise, the player can also apply their knowledge of certain in-game items they can attach to Koroks that can expedite the entire process of transporting the wooden fellas. The micro-challenge presented before the player creates an environment where the player can experiment and apply their acquired knowledge of different mechanics in order to acquire their reward.
Korok Seeds are primarily used to increase the size of the player’s inventory in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. While this reward is individually small, it’s big enough to instill a feeling of satisfaction when acquiring each and every Korok Seed. That, and the delightful jingle that plays whenever acquiring is also a great piece of auditory feedback that keeps the player coming back for more. Like with the other examples I’ve presented, having things like Korok Seeds in the game encourages the player to be attentive to their own curiosity and of the game’s various mechanics in other contexts within the game. Acquiring different Korok Seeds naturally makes the player more willing to explore the land on a micro and macro level, as well as making them more willing to engage with the game’s different mechanics like Ultrahand, Cryosis, Stasis, and more. Players can take the skills they acquire in the low-risk environments of micro-challenges and apply them towards the game’s larger challenges - those being Shrines, Divine Beasts, and Temples in the case of the open-air Zelda duology.
Micro-challenges create small but meaningful opportunities for developers to flex their game design muscles. These small but effective bits of game design go a long way at teaching players about mechanics in a way that doesn’t make the player feel like they’re undergoing a learning experience. Games like Mario Kart World, Sonic Frontiers, and Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom are all unified in that they introduce many new mechanics to franchises historically conservative on introducing new major features within their design. Each of these titles implement micro-challenges to create environments where learning these brand-new mechanics never feel daunting or overwhelming to the player. Through the bite-sized nature of these smaller challenges, players can get acclimated to different mechanics one step at a time. Moreover, since all of these games offer their micro-challenges in a nonlinear game world, players can tackle micro-challenges in an order that makes sense to them. If players want to prioritize micro-challenges that help them get better at rail grinding in Mario Kart World, they can do that. Likewise, if players find themselves needing to learn how to optimize their movement when racing on water, they can prioritize completing micro-challenges focused on that. Or if they simply want to navigate the world and simply undertake whatever challenges they naturally discover, they can choose to do that and merely drift from one challenge to the next. Micro-challenges help give player options on how they want to teach themselves the game’s mechanics, while also providing a safe environment where players aren’t punished for retrying and gradually mastering a certain challenge.
Lastly, micro-challenges are just fun. They often play little jingles and make numbers go up, and such things will make anyone’s endorphins increase in number. The microdose of game design inherent to micro-challenges also puts players in a position where they can get in a rhythm and go from completing one objective right into starting a brand new one with little downtime in between. This excision of downtime between completing objectives makes the player always feel like they’re accomplishing something; like they’re always making progress in some capacity. Such a thing goes a long way towards making the player feel consistently satisfied throughout their gameplay experience.
Of course, this is all under the assumption that a game’s micro-challenges are fun to complete in and of themselves. The rewards for these challenges don’t need to be incredibly important, however they do have to feel important enough to make their existence feel justified. Collecting feathers in Assassin’s Creed II just feels like busywork and a checklist for the sake of it - it doesn’t result in tangible gameplay benefits, nor does it feel like a fulfilling challenge in and of itself. If your game can implement a collectable like Sonic Frontiers’ Memory Tokens - you can give enough value to completing these micro-challenges to make players feel like they’re making progress without making players who don’t complete every challenge not feel like they’re missing out. Even in the case of Mario Kart World’s P-Switches, Peach Medallions, and ? Panels - the rewards given to the player are ultimately unimportant, but that ends up not mattering. These challenges’ rapidity and proximity to one another ensure that players engaging with the game’s micro-challenges are consistently met with meaningful things to do. This makes the rewards given to the player just feel like a nice bonus that gives the player enough feedback to want to jump into another challenge right away.
When creating a vertical slice of a game - that is, creating a focused segment that accurately conveys and represents a game’s entire design -, it’s important to make such a thing as succinct as possible. Illustrating what a game’s entire design looks like in a relatively short amount of time goes a long way at convincing the player of a game’s mechanical depth and diversity. Micro-challenges help accomplish this. Through creating brief snippets of game design that compartmentalize and test different mechanics, players can get introduced and brought up to speed with various facets of a game without ever being bombarded with multiple mechanics at once. Implementing micro-challenges can make a difference in encouraging a player to stick with a mechanically dense game when they otherwise may feel discouraged to even try to master any single mechanic in a game.
It’s for reasons like this that I feel we should be paying more attention to the games that are implementing micro-challenges. There’s a reason that these slivers of game design are becoming more commonplace - they’re just good teachers and exams for players. If a game’s design can school players in flexible ways to accommodate different types of players, I see no reason why we shouldn’t allow such lessons to be brought farther up the syllabus.
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on micro-challenges being used to facilitate bite-sized pieces of game design? Are micro-challenges effective at teaching the player about a game’s mechanics? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.
