Review: What the Golf? What is golf?

The boy carefully aims at the ball, swings his club – and flies forward, somersaulting in the grass. In the next scene, there is neither a club nor a ball – instead of them we are trying to bring the sofa to the hole. It’s What’s the Golf? – is a golf game for those who hate golf.

• Developer: Triband
• Publisher: Fig Publishing Inc.
• Release Date: October 2, 2019

What is the Golf? – is a parody game, the creators of which honestly admit that they do not understand anything about golf. In fact, there is no need to learn the rules, memorize the location of the holes and distinguish the iron from the putter. Instead, you will have fun trying to bring various objects to the destination, whether it be a small ball or a huge house.

The game contains a campaign lasting 4-5 hours, during which you will witness a strange love story between a ball and a computer, visit space, control an exploding barrel and do a lot of crazy actions. What’s the Golf? constantly changing scenery and genres: in one level it is a top-down physics puzzle game, in another it is a side-view platformer, in the third it is a 3D racing game or even a first-person shooter. Management, however, is the same everywhere – set the direction, indicate the force, execute the blow.

However, the project is not limited to golf with various objects instead of a ball. No, there are other sports here – football, bowling, snowboarding. Of course, also turned inside out and based on stupid physics, changing the rules on the fly and creating hilarious situations.
Local levels, although not a serious challenge, sometimes make you sweat. Especially if you want to go through them with the conditions “with an asterisk”: each level, in addition to the normal mode, contains two more complicated ones. And sometimes the game will not let you go further until you collect a few crowns that are outstanding as a reward for fulfilling such conditions. This may be a limit on the number of moves in which you need to deliver the object to the hole, or a test in which all elements of the environment will try to prevent you from reaching the goal. Yes, it’s hard at times, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.

The game is fun not only to complete tasks, but also to find references to numerous video games – from classics to new ones. The developers joked about Super Mario Bros., Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, Portal and other popular projects, but kindly, without mockery.

In addition to the story campaign, What the Golf? there are a few more activities. For example, challenges of the day where you compete with other players for places in the leaderboard, or tasks for streamers. From the main menu of the game, you can go to the Discord channel and chat with the developers – like many indie studios, Triband is open to communication with the audience. Ultimately What the Golf? leaves more than positive impressions – this is the perfect game to relieve stress and have fun in those moments when you do not want to do something more serious.

PROS

• Nice graphics
• Lots of jokes
• Variety of tests
• Good balance of difficulty

CONS

• Not the best mouse control