Nintendo surprise drops a free jump roping game for Switch

Nintendo surprise drops a free jump roping game for Switch

It’s as simple as it gets

Jumping rope is A) one of the easy things that we did on a playground in elementary school, and B) one of the difficult things that we hate to do too much of in a gym. It’s a good workout, though, if your knees can handle it.

Nintendo has been trying to figure out this whole “work from home” thing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes not being able to produce enough copies of Ring Fit Adventure to satisfy the masses, and so a few of its employees took their newfound home time to heart and developed an exergame to tackle both.

The game, Jump Rope Challenge, is extremely simple. By grabbing two Joy-Cons (with straps — trust me on this one) players jump a virtual rope and burn a few of those calories. The action is portrayed on-screen as a bunny hops up and down, swinging a rope over its head. Players can jump at their leisure, and can set daily challenge goals to do 100 or more virtual jumps. JRC tracks consecutive days playing the game and allows for a second player to compete against. And that’s it. The animation is rudimentary, and the tracking is hardly all that accurate, but it’s a simple execution, and isn’t trying to be more than that. At the very least, it’s a way for Nintendo to understand how their employees can work off-site, and how quickly they can create and test games.

And hey, it’s free, so there’s no reason to at least not add another icon to your Switch screen collection. Jump Rope Challenge is available now on the eShop.