At its core Mario Maker isn’t really a game at all; it’s a set of tools for making your own game, one styled after Mario’s earliest adventures in 2D. It’s not a new idea — games like LittleBigPlanet and Disney Infinity have similarly tried to make game creation a big part of the experience. But none of those games grabbed me like Mario Maker has. I’ve played a lot of LittleBigPlanet, but most of that time was spent enjoying other people’s creations, not building my own. In Mario Maker, it’s the exact opposite.

Like learning a language when you already know most of the words

Part of that has to do with the controller. A standard gamepad with analog sticks and a bunch of buttons isn’t the best tool for level creation. It makes placing objects and manipulating terrain fiddly and annoying; LittleBigPlanet has done an admirable job of streamlining the process, but it’s far from ideal. A touchscreen, on the other hand, is perfect. Adding platforms for Mario to jump on, or enemies to avoid, is as simple as tapping the screen. If you want to fill a secret area with coins, you can scribble them in with the stylus. It’s easy to wrap your head around, especially because there’s so little explanation needed; anyone playing this game knows what a goomba or piranha plant is, so almost all of the objects you’re working with are familiar. Building stages in Mario Maker is like learning a language when you already know most of the words.

Mario Maker gives you a few dozen objects to play around with — from power-ups to moving platforms to Bowser himself — and you can style your level in any of four different ways, each based on a classic Mario adventure: the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and the more modern, 2.5D New Super Mario Bros. Each has its own distinct look and feel, and it’s fun to construct a level and then quickly see what it would look like in a different style. (It’s more than an aesthetic change too, as certain game elements, like Mario’s ability to wall jump in NSMB, will change depending on the theme.) You can also choose different level types, so you can make your dream level underwater, in a haunted house, or in your own take on Bowser’s castle.

You won’t be able to play around with all of those tools from the outset. Mario Maker hides much of its content initially, and the only way to access it is simply to play. You don’t have to achieve any specific goals, but so long as you mess around in the creation mode for at least five minutes each day, a new batch of toys will be at your disposal the following day. It took me around a week to unlock everything.

At first this was frustrating — my first idea for a level required warp pipes, which weren’t available for a few days — but in retrospect I think it’s for the best, especially for players who aren’t used to making games. I’m not a game designer by any stretch, and often when I play these kinds of games I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. But in Mario Maker I started out building a really simple stage, and then as I unlocked content I was able to iterate on that core idea, revising the original concept into something more refined and complex. The timed structure comfortably eased me into what would otherwise be an intimidating experience.