Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch!

Genre: Sports (Mini-Golf)

Players: 1

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Review:

Fun! Fun! Minigolf is a family-friendly Mini-Golf game that was originally released on Wii in 2008 via the WiiWare service, and then ported to the Nintendo 3DS in 2012 with new touchscreen controls, a few added features, and the word Touch! Added to the title with one more exclamation mark, just to make sure people think this is a port of a mobile game even though it isn’t.

I should note that this is a game developed by Snin’en, who is well-known for performing graphical miracles on Nintendo’s hardware, with impressive technological feats dating all the way back to the Game Boy Advance. I note this specifically because Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! Is… not that. Don’t get me wrong, the 3D visuals in this game look fine, they work, and actually have a good amount of polish, but there’s nothing truly impressive going on here like in many of this developer’s other games. Additionally, the sound effects are nice, the announcer is decent, and the music is light and fits the tone of this game well, but there’s nothing super impressive or memorable going on here.

Still, while the visuals here don’t impress, the gameplay is mostly pretty good. The touch controls don’t feel tacked on at all, and actually give a good amount of control over both the angle and power of your swing. What’s more, those who don’t want to use the touchscreen are welcome to use traditional gamepad controls, which work fine (though the touchscreen controls are still the better way to go). When it comes to the core gameplay, everything here works great.

However, this game has problems elsewhere, starting with the camera. It’s bad enough that your character is in the way of your line of sight if you’re shooting straight, but making things worse is the inability to fully explore each mini-golf course in three dimensions to get a better feel how to angle your shot. You can press “R” to go into camera mode, but this only allows you to move your camera along a two-dimensional plane, and is not conducive for judging the angles you need to hit.

Another issue is how overzealous this game’s measurements of “out of bounds” are. Each minigolf course has a starting area and an area near the hole, and often much of the stuff in-between is considered “out of bounds” if the ball comes to a stop there, even if it’s on the course, even when the ground is made up of the same material. This can be maddening when you get your ball closer to the hole but have to retake the shot because the game arbitrarily decided the area the ball ended up is out of bounds for some inexplicable reason.

Another issue here is variety and progression. This game boasts 81 holes, but it only has 3 locales, making many of the game’s courses feel samey. There are bonus “trick shot” courses where you try to use a limited number of shots to collect coins strewn about on a course, and this does add some much-needed variety into the game. Unfortunately, all of the courses in the game must be unlocked by collecting “points” and spending them in an in-game shop. This can unfortunately leave you grinding just to get to more content.

Finally, I have to address the lack of any sort of multiplayer mode here, or even an online leaderboard. The only real goals here are to unlock the game’s content and improve on your own score, that’s it.

It’s really frustrating that I have to make so many complaints about this game, because the core gameplay here is good, the amount of content is excellent for $5, and this is overall a fun and polished Mini-Golf game. However, there are so many areas that could do with improvement, and this could have easily been a much better game if these issues were addressed. Still, for only $5, it’s well worth getting if you’re looking for an inexpensive Mini-Golf game on your Nintendo 3DS.

tl;dr – Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! Is a Mini-Golf game where solo players can use touchscreen or traditional gamepad controls on a series of Mini-Golf holes, as well as “Trick Shot” courses. The core gameplay here is great, the game has a lot of polish, and a good amount of content for its small $5 price tag, but the camera controls are terrible, the “out of bounds” mechanic is broken, the game’s visuals are bland and samey, and the lack of any sort of multiplayer or leaderboards are disappointing. It’s still worth it for only $5, but this feels like it had the potential to be a much better game.

Grade: C+

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