What The Golf (2019) [PC]

Golf is a game in which you yell ‘fore’, shoot six and write down five.

– Paul Harvey

Let me ask you a question: What IS Golf? If you had to explain golf to a person who has no idea what it is, how would you explain it?

You’d probably say something like, “Golf is a sport about taking a ball and getting it into a small hole at the end of a limited map with a club in as few swings as possible.”

They don’t understand. Simplify.

“Golf is a sport about taking a spherical object and getting it to a small hole at the end of a stage by hitting it with a club as fast as possible.”

Simplify more.

“Golf is a game about taking an object and getting it to a predetermined destination by hitting it a few times.”

More.

“Golf is a game about moving things around a stage to achieve a goal by hitting things quickly.”

This is What the Golf. It knows, basically, what golf is. You have a thing at point a. You want to get it to point b. Sometimes the thing is a ball. What kind? Could be a golf ball. Could be a soccer ball, bowling ball, bomb. Could be a cow. Sphere shape is not required. Point B could be a hole shaped like a number one (Hole in one, get it?). It could be a soccer goal. It could be a planet on the edge of the galaxy. Your ball could have a jetpack or behave like a katamari. It could be sticky, bouncy, or Spider-Man. The point is, there’s a lot that COULD be golf, and What The Golf explores all of those possibilities in a game chock full of references, memes, cats, and hot dogs. 

Oh, there are things LIKE golf in it, of course. Most of the stages are something akin to a regular course: ball at one end, goal at the other, but no two stages are even remotely alike. Some may have you dodging explosive barrels while the next has you hitting them. Some are Mario themed, some are Meatboy themed, some are Superhot themed, some are Guitar Hero. There are lots of games that What the Golf has managed to squish and mold and turn into golf. It’s a ridiculous, wild ride. 

Golf, Redefined

How many ways can there possibly be to be wholly irreverent to a sport, you ask? While the game doesn’t use these terms, I’ve chosen them to try to describe just how much golf-adjacent gaming there is. What the Golf takes place in a facility that at one point in the past studied and reinvented golf. There are ten-ish “worlds” in this facility with a boss “fight” at the end. Each world has two to four levels on it to beat before you can take on the boss. Each level has anywhere between three to nine stages to complete, and each stage has up to three events in it. You need to beat the first event of every level to progress, though one point requires beating a certain number of third events. Phase one is always limitless. Just putt, get from point A to point B. Phase 2 is usually a par challenge, pushing you to limit your shots. Phase 3 is a challenge stage and could be anything from knocking over a bunch of cats to racing either a sheep or the clock, or just “figure out the puzzle by seeing what happens first.” Ultimately, that’s what this game is: a silly physics-based puzzle game wrapped around the concept of an often boring sport.

I’m not typically a fan of golf. Yeah, I know “Tiger Woods” and “PGA” but if you ask me about my thoughts on Arnold Palmer, I’ll tell you that while I love sweet tea, I’m not much a fan of lemonade. Yet these days, I’m finding myself drawn to certain golf games. While I haven’t taken the dive yet, I took a long hard look at Golf Story on the Switch when I had a gift card to spend. I followed What the Golf on Twitter for years before the game came out, charmed by the concept and visual appeal. It’s a strange convergence that two prominent golf games released within the last few years vary from the standard formula of golf enough to draw in people who would normally pass on the sports genre. Golf Story focuses on the sport in an RPG format, while What the Golf twists it into puzzles and toes the line of what “golf” is. And yet, they’ve done their job in freshening up a video game genre almost as old as console gaming.

The 8-Bit Review

 Visuals: 8/10

A bright and cheerful but not eye-searing feast for the eyes where the silly visual style perfectly matches the game’s tone and gameplay. The designs are simple, but also just right.

 Audio: 7/10

The music is sporadic depending on the level, allowing you to focus on your putting. You get rewarded for success with a polite golf clap. Sometimes there are chicken noises. The sound effects are really where the game shines, small, brief moments that make you smile, like the tingle of piano keys as you roll over a giant keyboard.

 Gameplay: 8/10

You will get addicted to this strange version of golf. It’s one of those “one more try” games. One more try leads to one more level leads to one more stage and then it’s well past your bedtime and you’re making a horse dodge boxes falling from the sky on top of a moving train. “Is this golf?” you ask in a late-night addled stupor. Yes. It must be. 

 Challenge: 6/10

The first phase of every level is relatively easy: point a to point b. The challenge portions are where the difficulty comes out. 100% is possible, but it will definitely make you sit and think about what you’re doing and the best way to do it. Luckily, the respawn rate is quick, so you won’t be waiting long for another go on a missed shot.

 Replayability: 6/10

This really depends on how you play the initial run. If you do all three parts of every level the first time, there’s not really any reason to come back to this unless you just feel like a casual romp on the green. If you did the bare minimum, then the challenge portions of levels are worth giving a shot. There’s a daily challenge, but it is just a random combination of existent levels that you try to complete in as few moves as possible.

 Uniqueness: 10/10

There are golf games. There are puzzle games. There are physics games. There are no other golf-themed physics-based puzzle games. 

 Accessibility: 9/10

Requiring only a mouse and a left click to play, this game could probably not be more accessible. Only reason it’s not a 10 out of 10 is that a few levels require precision I found difficult to nail down or required a lot of fast, repeated movement. Luckily, these were not long levels, typically, but could wear on the wrist a bit.

Personal: 8/10

If you’d told me three years ago that there’d be a golf game I would not only complete but get close to 100% on (curse you, three challenge stages…) I probably would have given you a Look. You could have explained that it was only golf in essence, and I wouldn’t have understood. Golf is just golf, isn’t it? No. Golf can be so much more, and so much stranger, and so much more fun.

Aggregated Score: 7.7

Maggie Maxwell spends most of her days buried in her fiction writing, only coming up for air to dive into the escapism of video games, cartoons, or movies. She can usually be found on Twitter as @wanderingquille and @MaxNChachi or streaming on Twitch with her husband, also as MaxNChachi.