Crazy Zen Mini Golf

Genre: Sports (Mini Golf)

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Alternating)

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Review:

Crazy Zen Mini Golf is, as I’m sure you’ve already surmised, a Mini Golf game, with players trying to get the ball to the hole at the end of a series of increasingly zany courses, with the “Zen” in the title referring to the zen gardens these golf courses have been built in, with various Chinese-themed elements often factoring into the courses.

As far as the presentation goes, this game is a bit uneven. On the one hand, the courses are fairly low-poly, the framerates often dip to pretty low levels, and there’s a lot of clipping going on, especially every time your ball falls off the course (which will be a lot). On the other hand, some of the textures are actually pretty nice, including the grass of the course and the sand of the zen garden itself. This is paired with serviceable sounds, and a soundtrack that’s annoying and repetitive far more often than it is pleasant to listen to.

As for the gameplay, this game handicaps itself right from the start with an awkward, confusing control scheme that has the aiming tied to the left stick and the power tied to the right stick, when it would work far better the other way around. The tutorial doesn’t do the best job of explaining things, either.

However, once you get the hang of how the game works, it has a unique charm to it, in particular the ability for the player to have some limited effect on the ball after hitting it, including making it jump or having it turn. This is fueled by a meter that shows you how long you have left before reality takes over and physics guides the ball the rest of the way.

It’s a clever conceit, but even beyond the odd controls, this game is working against a difficulty level that spikes pretty early, as well as its own janky design – this is a game that was clearly cobbled together on the cheap, and this unskilled design rears its head pretty frequently in numerous small ways throughout the game.

Overall, those looking for a decent Mini Golf game on the Switch may find Crazy Zen Mini Golf to be entertaining, if they can get past its odd control scheme and often amateurish design. It has some interesting gameplay ideas at work here that make it fairly unique, and once you actually know how the heck to play the game, it can be fun. However, that is if you can get past the odd controls and the difficulty spikes.

tl;dr – Crazy Zen Mini Golf is a Mini Golf game that makes use of an interesting system that allows you to exert limited control over the ball after hitting it. It has a terrible control scheme and suffers from nasty difficulty spikes and at times amateurish design, but there is some fun to be had here if you can overcome the game’s flaws and quirks.

Grade: C-

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