Super Mario Maker 2

What the game is

Super Mario Maker 2 is Nintendo's own level-design tool, released for the Switch in June 2019 and sold only there. It is rated Everyone, supports one to four players on a single system, and costs full price.

The game has two halves. Story Mode is a conventional single-player Mario game with over a hundred built-in courses, framed as rebuilding Princess Peach's castle. Course Maker is the editor: a blank grid and a palette of Nintendo's own parts, where you place ground, pipes, enemies, moving platforms, switches and power-ups by dragging them onto the screen. You can hand a Joy-Con to a second person and build the same course together on one console.

The third part, Course World, is where courses are shared, played, ranked and commented on by other people. That half needs a Nintendo Switch Online subscription and a Nintendo Account, which is the single biggest thing to decide about before buying.

What you actually do

In the editor you place a block, then immediately press a button to jump into the level and try it. That switch between building and playing is instant, and it is the whole design of the thing. You find that a gap is one tile too wide, or that an enemy arrives too early, so you come back out, move it, and test again.

Nintendo enforces one rule: you cannot upload a course you have not cleared yourself. That single requirement turns a decoration exercise into design work. Getting better means building levels that are hard in an interesting way rather than merely unfair, and cutting the parts that only you can do.

What it exercises

• Builds something, tests it immediately, and changes one element based on the result.
• Judges whether a challenge is difficult or simply unfair.
• Reads a failure and identifies which specific placement caused it.
• Cuts a part that works for the maker but not for anyone else.
• Plans a sequence of obstacles that teaches a player before testing them.

Why we rate it Moderate Worksheet score 63 / 100

1. FitHow much real knowledge or skill does the play itself make you use?60weight 45%

   Fit is scored 60. Make, test, fail, adjust is not a lesson wrapped around a Mario game; it is the button layout. The requirement to clear your own course before uploading builds honest self-testing into the rules, which is real and unusual for a console game. It stays in the sixties because much of Story Mode is conventional platforming rather than the design loop itself.

2. TransferWill what you practise here work outside the game?50weight 30%

   Transfer is scored 50. What is practiced in the editor is the design loop itself: build a small thing, watch it fail, isolate the cause, change one variable. That pattern moves toward programming, model-making, writing and music, and the game makes it explicit rather than incidental, which is unusually high for a game aimed this young. It settles in the middle because the vocabulary stays Mario's own.

3. PracticeDoes the game make you use that skill again and again, as it gets harder?85weight 25%

   Practice is scored 85, the strongest score here. Players who take to this build for months, and every session is dozens of build-and-test cycles. Course World then supplies an endless stream of other people's designs to learn from. Few games return a player to the same skill this often, which is why the number sits near the top.

What the evidence says

Editorial onlyNobody outside our desk has checked this. It is our reading of how the game plays.

Editorial only: our judgment from what the game requires. Nintendo's official site and store page confirm the June 2019 Switch release, the price, the Everyone rating, the one to four player range, Story Mode's hundred-plus courses, cooperative building on one system, and that Course World and online play need a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Nothing there addresses learning outcomes, and no study of this game is cited. The claim about iterative design describes the loop the editor enforces, including the rule that a course must be cleared before it can be uploaded.

• Super Mario Maker 2 official site ↗ · Nintendo
• Super Mario Maker 2 on Nintendo Store ↗ · Nintendo