Golf Club Nostalgia

At first I was really underwhelmed with the game, but then I understood the point: It's more an audio-visual adventure rather than a game. The setting is extremely stylish, small animations are brilliant and the radio, oh the radio! Unfortunately, it's not a 5 / 5: The actual game is really thin and some holes feel more filler than anything else. Still, the biggest downside is that it had potential to be so much more. On the other hand, it might not have fit the story that well. Oh well, I'd say 3.5 stars out of 5...which rounds to 4. Also, if you're a Tesla-fan then you might want to skip this as it comes with plenty of serious critique of the tech-lord mentality.

When I saw the trailers for the game, I fell in love with the art style and the atmosphere that oozed from every not and pixel. Having completed the game, I have to say I'd prefer it to be a cartoon movie instead. The graphics are every bit as stylish as the trailers and screenshots suggest. The soundtrack, too, is as atmospheric as the snippets in the trailers hint, and the callers who present their stories at Radio Nostalgia from Mars indirectly highlight some of the problems of our civilization and where it might be heading. And maybe that's the problem - Golf Club Wasteland (which was the original name) so much focuses on its artistic direction that it neglects the game part. The beautiful idea - playing a round of golf with ruins of the Earth civilization as the backdrops, while discovering what brought your hero back from Mars - is marred by the second half of the game feeling more like a tiresome chore than fun. The playability lacks polish. You do get slightly better over time but never really feel in control of your swing. So your best chance is to find some graphic element for each stroke to aim your cursor at (the corner of this platform, the middle of that beam) until you find one that mostly leads to your ball landing where you need it to, and gradually trial and error your way through each of the 34 levels this way. Unfortunately, my impressions of the gameplay were so bad that the game's ending (even though I could see what the authors were trying to achieve) lacked any catharsis for me. Paradoxically, you find "the medium is the message" as one of the graffiti in the game. I can't shake the feeling a game was either the wrong choice here or it needed more effort and testing invested.

Overall very nice design with varied landscapes. Some stages tell little background stories. Wish they could have added some more secret rooms or interactivity. The soundtrack is great. A radioshow that the golfer listens to through his suit's built in receiver. Some good music, interviews, advertisements etc, all written specifically for the game. Really good idea. Too bad the gameplay is lacking. Uninspiring golf game with some different stage mechanics. Don't shoot the ball close to a squirrel or it will snatch it, shoot a ball into a pipe to transport it elsewhere, stuff like that. The stages are not really puzzles but very simple. I found most of them boring. Sometimes controls are a bit janky but it's not a big problem. Much of the story is told through a diary or a sentence or two that are displayed between stages. You unlock diary entries by completing stages in less than a set number of shots. Sometimes a level has several entries. First entry unlocked if you complete the stage in less than 8 shots, second if less than 6, for example. I didn't find the entries very interesting. Feels bad to give the game a 2/5 since I like the idea, design and the radio show. But the game itself is very lacking and the story failed to impress. Radio show interviews were well written and imaginative but the actual story feels generic and bland.

GolfClubNostalgia is a nice, charming 2D mini golf game, with amazing music and graphics, projects of locations and deep lore. The lack of speed in loading the stages and menus, and the delayed strikes, because the character must actually swing the club, which makes it a bit more difficult when there are moving elements, the game makes up with the narrative and the feelings of melancholy.

Story sunk in repetitive dumb minigame.