Secret Nintendo Switch online playtest leaked but it’s not what you think

The mysterious Nintendo Switch Online game has already been leaked by playtesters and it’s not anything anyone previously guessed at.

It might be Nintendo Switch 2 news that everyone is waiting for at the moment but there is an additional mystery surrounding Nintendo at the moment, after they announced a ‘Playtest Program’ which they say is ‘related to a new feature for the Nintendo Switch Online service offered for the Nintendo Switch system.’

That’s the only thing they’ve said though, so it’s been impossible to tell what exactly it is. Although our initial guess, that it’s some sort of network stress test for a new game, seems to be correct.

The test involves upwards of 10,000 people, so inevitably a number have already leaked information, revealing it to be a massively multiplayer game where you’re collaborating with others to build an entire virtual planet.

Strangely, the game doesn’t seem to have been given a name yet, but then the playtest doesn’t start until Wednesday, October 23. What’s leaked out seems to be the help pages for participants to read up on, before the test begins.

Screenshots of the pages have appeared on social media, and you know they’re real because Nintendo has been having them taken down – although that seems a pointless effort given how many people are involved.

What’s also pointless is the plea that one of the leakers made before posting the images, saying ‘Hope Nintendo doesn’t kill me for this.’ They’re no doubt dead already and Nintendo will lawyer us to death too if we reposted the images, although they’re relatively easy to find if you look online.

What kind of game is the Nintendo Switch Online: Playtest Program?

Since no one has played the game yet it’s difficult to piece together exactly how it works, but it seems to involve both collecting resources and battling enemies.

Players co-operate on a discrete section of the planet, until it’s full developed, at which point they presumably move onto another.

How long it takes to complete a planet is unclear but there’s also a social hub area to the game, where you can chat to and interact with other players.

It’s clear it’s a substantial game, with talk of levelling up characters and acquiring items, so it’s a very peculiar thing to release right at the end of the Nintendo Switch’s life.

That makes it almost certain that the game will also be playable on Switch 2, probably from launch, so perhaps the social hub is intended as a replacement of sorts for Miiverse – the Wii U’s social hub.

None of this is at all what anyone expected and almost looks like something Peter Molyneux would come up with, rather than Nintendo.

There are a lot more questions still to be answered, including what the game is called and when Nintendo will announce it, but the biggest mystery at the moment is how they thought they were going to keep any of this secret in the first place.