What The Golf? by developer Triband is advertised as a golf game for people who hate golf and I hate both watching the actual sport as it feels like watching paint dry and also playing any type of sports game, especially golf or those annual titles for a variety of sports. Right from the start, What The Golf? didn’t disappoint and turned the boring sport into an utterly chaotic, fun and rather addictive experience.
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Catch What The Golf? trailer below to see the craziness in action and listen to its soothing music present throughout the game.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ehC96ytKNI” width=”900″]
At first glance What The Golf looked like a cartoonish, slightly odd golf game but that changed in the first few minutes. Chaos ensued as I tried to hit the ball and realised that the cute little player character became the ball and I had to putt him to the hole. Things just escalated from there with smacking a cowboy into bowling pins, smacking a little toy car in a racing game (hilariously called Driving Range), using a house like a ball and almost anything else you can think of, not to mention black cats!
That’s the essence of What The Golf?, a game that is basically a collection of awesome minigames with the view changing from top-down to side-scrolling and even an FPS-like minigame where you get to experience what it would look like through viewpoint of a golf ball. While all the levels are great to play, it is the physics that really take the experience to the next level of enjoyment.
Everything in What The Golf? is physics-based and all the crazy objects acting as your golf ball have their own weight, making some harder (yet still enjoyable) to get into that hole or hit the flag with. For example, a bunch of balls together will spray out in different directions when you hit them, while a house will roll forward slowly even when hitting it pretty hard and an office chair will roll around on its wheels and bounce when it falls in a certain way.
Then, you also have to take the environment into consideration, from trying to make it through a farm to playing soccer against an AI opponent, to trying to get a character off a very wobbly jumping board into a swimming pool.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#16EBD0″ class=”” size=”18″]It is this variety that keeps the game fresh from start to finish[/perfectpullquote]
Hopefully, you see how much variety there is to What The Golf? by now and it is this variety that keeps the game fresh from start to finish. Between minigames, you take the form of a golf ball in some secret lab and you have to hit the doors open to continue onward, completing objectives along the way. It is in this lab where you decide which challenge to take on next and there is even a strange cow inside because why not!
These levels are all unlocked in groups and a group has the same general gameplay theme and if one is a bit too challenging, you can always head to another group and try to complete it first. What The Golf? isn’t an extremely challenging game but it does have optional side-objectives, such as getting a hole-in-one. These side objectives are quite difficult and can feel a bit frustrating if you try to complete them all, but thankfully, developer Triband doesn’t force you to do them to complete the game.
While one type of level never overstays its welcome, I simply wanted more of some types of levels. I thoroughly enjoyed the Driving Range and the Mario-like levels more than anything else and I wanted more. However, the game changes so quickly from type to type and each minigame has it’s own unique charm to it.
Combine all this with soothing music and cartoonish graphics that oozes charm, and it is clear that What The Golf? is par for the course (sorry). Then you also have some levels that change the graphics, for example, a level that looks like Superhot with its red and white colour scheme called “Super Putt”. The game is an Epic Games Store timed-exclusive on PC and although I didn’t run into any major issues, I did experience two crashes in several hours of play. With that being said, the game looks and plays great if you are into cartoonish graphics and physics-based gameplay.
What The Golf? offers players a very unique “golfing” experience from developer Triband that you can binge in a day and go back to in order to complete challenges or just replay your favourite minigames.
Smacking around a horse acting as a golf ball or putting an egg into a frying pan all while witnessing pun after pun appear after each level can only go so far, but with What The Golf? it definitely hit the green (sorry again), at the very least.
The Verdict
What The Golf? takes a boring sport and creates something special. Developer Triband has hit a hole-in-one with this fun little title, creating a collection of minigames that simply never got old. The game isn’t all that challenging unless you complete optional objectives, but it is extremely addictive.
Throwing more golf puns at you than you can imagine handling, a variety of levels from a Superhot-like FPS to a side-scroller to a little racing game, Super Mario-like levels and a plethora of others, What The Golf always felt fresh and exciting. You can binge the game in one day if you want as it boasts over eight hours of content. For the asking price, especially if you don’t like golf but love puns and dad jokes, the game is totally worth it.
This What The Golf? review was based on a code sent to us by Triband
Available On: PC and Apple Arcade | Reviewed On: PC | Release Date: 1 October 2019 | Price: $8.99 (R136)
