"We can't fully imagine all the types of ways that people will play": Like Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart World is going to thrive on player imagination

There has always been a certain flair to how the best Mario Kart players race. A tactical jump here, a cleverly used item there, a drift that just keeps on going… Mario Kart can be an art for the best out there, and with Mario Kart World, it'll only get more creative.

After all, this is the first "open world" Mario Kart game ever. Yet when I sit down to chat with Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki, he admits that isn't a term the development team uses about their new game.

"We don't feel the term open world is clear in terms of its definition," he says, with the suggestion that 'interconnected world' is a better representation of what Mario Kart World is offering. "We do have this expansive world, and we've placed therein the Mario Kart Circuit or Bowser's Castle or Choco Mountain, and tried to build a new Mario Kart."

What intrigues me about this new Mario Kart is just how much more freedom players will have to experiment. Like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom before it, Mario Kart World is going to thrive on racers' ability to carve their own paths to hopeful victory. Yes, the development team has placed carefully crafted tracks within this vast world, but the important part is that every road is connected to another, and that's where the creativity can really come in.

Riding racers

Mario Kart World is introducing new traversal tricks like wall and rail riding along with a charge jump. These new abilities will turn every surface in the game into a potential highway – it's just down to each player to figure out how to utilise each one. With such a wide range of terrain in the game – and particularly in a single race – how people utilise those tricks will become the thing for Mario Kart World.

"As you become more and more familiar with these various terrains and how to control the racers in Mario Kart World, you'll come to notice these guard rails where you'll think 'hey maybe I can jump on that' or you'll see the walls of the cliff and think 'maybe I could jump on that'. The more and more you play, you'll learn to leverage your imagination and curiosity," says Yabuki-san.

"It was fun for us to make, but for us, the real question is how players will actually play and drive, and leverage all these moves and tricks. We can't fully imagine all the types of ways that people will play."

It's got an air of the various brilliant creations people made with Tears of the Kingdom's construction tools. It's not quite puzzle-solving in the same way, but I can already see the kinds of incredible combos racers could pull off to sneak into pole position or avoid a dreaded blue shell being shared as feats across social media.

It's a knockout

That's going to be especially true for the new Knockout Mode. The 24-player checkpoint-based mode sees players knocked out at various markers throughout the race, with only the top four making it through to the final stretch.

"When we created this expansive world, the first thing that we wanted to do was to enable a race going from the Eastern Coast all the way to the Western coast," but Yabuki-san and the team knew that for some players being at the back of a race for the entire duration may not be all that fun, which is exactly the reason why the checkpoints exist.

"When looking at the hands-on events across the world, we could confirm that those who could race through to the end were happy, as well as those who dropped out midway. They both had fun in different ways. It was a happy surprise for us that those who could complete the race, and those who couldn't, both had a fun time."

Although it's seemingly going to work out okay from initial player feedback, Yabuki-san admits that he was "very careful" about adding a new mode for Mario Kart World. Not only would it fracture the player base as they split out across free roam, Grand Prix and Knockout Tour, but it was always the goal to make sure that, despite the big changes to the approach, it still retained the classic Mario Kart experience at its core.

Balance and banana peels

A big part of that was making sure everything was balanced with each track, which sounds easier said than done with an interconnected world design. But, it extended to all the power-ups and items, too, with the team even considering ditching some iconic items altogether.

"When we created this world from scratch, we re-reviewed all the elements that are included in this game, including the iconic banana skin. We actually did go through the exercise of asking ourselves, 'does it still make sense to include this item in Mario Kart World?'"

"Another example is the green shell as well. Obviously, it's been there for a long time in Mario Kart, but when we looked at it, we asked ourselves here, 'Is it sufficient when you can just throw it over the course?'. For example, the racers like Mario and such can ride over the guardrails. Should we not enable the shell to also slide over the rails?"

To answer these questions, the team at Nintendo had to consider "the implementation of each and every item", and decide whether each one should "remain the same as before" or "amend and add a different element to it".

As well as rediscovering old favorites (yes, the banana skin and green shell made it in), we've got plenty of new items in Mario Kart World to discover. Even from my preview time with the game, I'm already particularly hyped about the new feather. Not only does it let you jump higher to avoid attacks, including the dreaded blue shell, but it also lets you access different parts of the tracks to discover even more potential shortcuts. The new hammer is also intriguing as it lets you embed hammers into the course to hit rivals but also block off access to certain routes too.

It feels like everything the team has done with Mario Kart World is letting players be more creative and tactical. I'm sure that'll mean I am 1000% times worse going forward, but it's going to be exciting to see how players evolve their skills over time with this Switch 2 exclusive.

We've got plenty more about the upcoming Switch 2 games or all the Switch 2 launch games on GamesRadar+.