A Little Golf Journey

Genre: Sports (Golf)

Players: 1

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Review:

A Little Golf Journey is a simple, family-friendly Golf game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game has players trying to reach the hole on various small self-contained courses using as few shots as possible, though that’s sorta’ just the starting point of this game.

A Little Golf Journey does something surprising for a golf game – it makes Golf something beautiful, even a little magical. While trying to line up your shot, you may find some hidden secret that can lead you in an unexpected direction or unlock a new path, and the game’s minimalist nature makes it easier to appreciate the natural beauty of the game’s artificial environments.

Of course, much of that beauty is abstract – the game uses fairly simple low-poly 3D visuals for its environments, and it doesn’t depict the golfer at all. However, the game makes amazing use of color, and there’s some surprising detail to be found in the environments if you want, such as some nice textures within a patch of grass, and there are some truly wonderful animations as the game seems to magically expand the world’s color out to newly-accessible areas, or transform a spot in a course after discovering a secret. I did notice a little bit of slowdown here and there, but it wasn’t major and didn’t hinder the gameplay, and overall I thought the presentation here was delightful, as if depicting a small slice of nature in the form of a diorama.

However, the real bright spot in the presentation here is the sound, which combines relaxing piano and violin music with wonderful nature noises, and some really good sound design for the impacts of the golf ball itself. This wonderful sound design does a phenomenal job creating the game’s wonderfully peaceful atmosphere here.

The gameplay strips the game of Golf down to its most basic form. There’s no power bar, swing meter, or accuracy bar here requiring timed button presses. With each shot, you choose where you want to aim, and when you hit the ball, you can be assured it will land in the circular area the game tells you it will. Players who want more accuracy can time the press of the swing button in time with a swaying dot bouncing around within the circle, making for the requisite element of skill. Because of this simple mechanic, A Little Golf Story becomes less of a game about trying to contend with bats and meters and guesstimating the general area your ball will land in, and more about planning out ideal shots.

While this simplistic gameplay is already so wonderful a concept it’s kinda’ astounding I don’t recall seeing anything quite like it before, what’s even better is that the simplicity of this concept allows the game’s designers to get really creative with the level design. Even early into the game, you have one level designed like a horseshoe with a tiny island between both end points, clearly indicating that less-skilled players can take the long way around to the hole while perfectionists can try to find the right path through the tops of the blocking trees to hit that tiny island and then reach the hole faster. Another early level has the hole atop a spiral mountain, where players need to move around the mountain to reach the top. In any other game, the imprecision in the gameplay would make these kinds of shots nearly impossible, but here it’s relatively simple.

However, as I indicated earlier, this is just the start of the gameplay. Levels have hidden secrets, secret holes that lead to other exits like finding an alternate path in Super Mario World, bonuses that unlock even more secrets to find in levels you’ve already completed… I can’t help but feel like, in freeing themselves from many of the conventions of traditional golf games, this game’s designers have given themselves license to play around with the whole idea of golf to find fun new ways to explore that gameplay, albeit none anywhere near so outlandish as what we saw in What the Golf?.

The result is that A Little Golf Journey isn’t the most challenging, detailed, or realistic Golf game out there, but it is by far one of the most enjoyable Golf games I have ever played. The placid presentation, the delightfully straightforward gameplay, the excellent level design, and the sense of secrets hiding around every corner make this a true delight. I don’t think this is quite so good that it will appeal to those who hate Golf, and it lacks multiplayer and a lot of other features players may be used to in other Golf games. However, even so, I can only hope game developers see this game and take it as inspiration to rethink other sports.

tl;dr – A Little Golf Journey is a simple, family-friendly Golf game that presents its courses as dioramas, and strips down the gameplay to its essentials. In doing so, it makes for a smooth, streamlined experience that’s free to explore new possibilities within the genre, hiding secrets in the game’s levels and giving us some excellent level design, all within a presentation that’s absolutely delightful. This isn’t the most realistic or technical Golf game out there, but it is by far one of the most enjoyable.

Grade: B+

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