"Play" implies a lack of seriousness.
To that end:
1. Blink an LED (this is more rewarding than it seems it should be, because it proves that the toolchain works)
2. Learn to fade that LED on and off instead of blink
3. Learn to make an RGB pixel using red, green, and blue LEDs and some tissue paper
4. Realize that's kind of limiting, and use a WS2812B LED pixel instead
5. Notice that there's whole panels of WS2812B available
6. Buy one. Make it display dumb memes or emojis or dickbutts or whatever.
7. Add a web interface.
8. Give it a domain name.
9. Aim a camera at it, fire up a twitch stream, send the link to HN, and we'll spend a few hours or days shitposting on your little video wall
10. ???
11. (there is no profit. it's supposed to be fun, right?)
One of my friends got a Pimoroni InkyFrame and was trying to figure out what to do with it. Ended up learning a substantial amount about how dithering works to convert images into the 7 colors the eInk display can produce. It just sits there playing the original Shrek at 1 minute per frame over and over again XD.
When he messed up the color conversion "Green Farquaad" was a recurring meme in our group chat.
I just have to add that this is a fucking brilliant plan. The number of useful things you will learn doing this is very high.