This week I played Super Mario Odyssey, which is developed by Nintendo EPD for the Nintendo Switch 2. The target audience of this game is very broad, including both children and adults, because it is not very difficult for players to understand the rules and ways of playing. While traveling through different worlds like the Sand Kingdom, Metro Kingdom, and Bowser’s Kingdom, I noticed something interesting: I almost never felt lost or confused after entering a new area. Every place felt totally distinct right away. This made me reflect on how the game actually builds its world—not by dumping text on us, but by letting players figure each kingdom out naturally through hands-on exploration.
I really felt this approach when I first stepped into the Sand Kingdom. Nobody handed me a rulebook or forced me through a long tutorial. Instead, I just looked around and saw ice-covered dunes, massive pyramids, and skeletons walking around in sombreros. My brain instantly started connecting the dots: “Okay, something weird happened here and this desert is freezing over.” In The Psychology of World Building, it’s argued that players build a “mental model” of a game world through environmental cues rather than long explanations. That’s exactly what happened to me—I picked up on the story just by looking at the buildings, listening to the music, and hanging out with the local NPCs.
What’s cool is that the gameplay mechanics themselves double as world-building. In Bowser’s Kingdom, I ran into Pokio, a little bird-like creature based on traditional Japanese design. Capturing Pokio gave me the ability to poke my beak into walls and flick myself up tall surfaces. Looking at this through the MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics), Pokio isn’t just a generic movement power-up. Because I could only find Pokio in Bowser’s Kingdom, using that mechanic made me feel like I was engaging directly with the cultural identity of that specific realm. If I could use that bird anywhere in the game, it would just feel like a random tool.
Even the boss fights are tailored to make the world feel alive rather than just giving me a standard challenge. Fighting the Broodals—the rabbit wedding planners in fancy tuxedos—felt totally tied to the storyline because everything they did revolved around setting up a giant wedding. Later on, fighting the RoboBrood on top of traditional Japanese roofs mixed high-tech robotics with old-school architecture. In typical platforming games, bosses usually just feel like mechanical tests that interrupt the world. Here, beating these bosses actually helped me understand the vibe and style of the kingdom even more.
Comparing Odyssey with my time playing A Short Hike helped me realize how different games handle player immersion. In A Short Hike, my exploration felt really cozy, quiet, and down-to-earth. Odyssey, on the other hand, goes for big, flashy, super-stylized themes that grab your attention immediately. But looking at it critically, this design choice has a small trade-off. Because each kingdom is built around one single, dominant gimmick, the worlds end up feeling a bit simplified. There isn’t much real social conflict or deep cultural history inside these kingdoms—they are designed to be fun playgrounds first and real societies second.
In the end, Super Mario Odyssey works so well because it trusts me as a player to figure things out by moving, jumping, and observing. Connecting the mechanics to specific places makes every environment feel unique. If I could change one thing to make the world-building even better, I’d love to see more connections between the different kingdoms. Right now, each world feels like its own separate island; letting my actions in one place affect another kingdom would make the game feel less like a set of isolated levels and more like one huge, interconnected world.
