Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 35
[You have this strange obsession with Neo Turf Masters despite never having played it. In fact, you haven't really tried to get into any golf game other than Ribbit King since getting your ass kicked in Mario Golf on the N64 by the coffee shop stoner girls you used to work with...
Make of that what you will!]
Now that I've at least come to grips with all fifty games, what better way to go hunting in the proverbial rough than to interrogate their designs one-by-one in search of golf-shaped sand traps!
01 Barbuta
Barbuta is not Golf. For the purpose of this analysis going forward, eggs are not secretly golf balls, and protective bat spirits do not count as caddies.
02 Bug Hunter (Golfiness: 2/5)
Bug Hunter knows what golf looks like. Elevation matters, and conceptually there is some arcing of shots and jumps to pass over things and hit targets. The X kills in Y turns victory condition is vaguely par-adjacent. There are holes, and you can knock enemies into said holes as part of the larger cleansing objective. That said, there are no Golf-esque feelings or smells in here, but if knocking the bugs into holes rewarded any more kill points than simply shooting them this might get a 3/5.
03 Ninpek
Ninpek is not Golf. Collecting balls on an active driving range would require a lot of dodging, but no one would accuse you of playing the sport by doing so, no matter how many double-jumps might be involved.
04 Paint Chase
Paint Chase is not Golf. Someone's got to drive those overseeders around coating the fairways with grass seed, but if you and your slacker friend crash them into each other competing for coverage one more time, then neither of you will have enough money for weed this summer. Because you'll be fired.
05 Magic Garden
Magic Garden is not Golf. You already asked that cute witch Cloveranna if she was interested in playing a few rounds on your daddy the arch-magus' private dream course, after you saw the way she used her staff to chip that rogue oppy over the garden wall. She just turned bright red and mumbled something about a handicap before running off again...
06 Mortol (Golfiness: 2/5)
Mortol practices like Golf. Each level is a little like a hole on the course, and your lives act like a stroke limit. The way it wants you to learn those levels and string together a single performance with scoring that carries over? Well, Golf is so mechanically potent that even a little tiny dose of the stuff can change how you interact with a simple platformer.
07 Velgress
Velgress is not Golf. There is a pro shop of sorts, but you haven't been able to catch the name of the cute lady running it, no matter how many times you insist on visiting between courses.
08 Planet Zoldath
Planet Zoldath is not Golf. Though, randomly generated courses with reasonable designs and completable pars might be worth looking into. If you do, please don't make the player randomly search for their clubs, and let them carry more than two at a time.
09 Attactics
Attactics is not Golf. But thinking deeply about whether or not it could be might inspire you to design a Golf-themed version of Plants vs. Zombies where you deploy different types of golfers onto a TopGolf style driving range to keep alien invaders at bay with a hailstorm of explosive hooks and slices...
10 Devilition
Devilition is not Golf. The holes that open up on this particular green are not to be interacted with in any way; they are merely obstacles. Despite Golf requiring some amount of strategic planning and the launching of projectiles at targets, the sport here is closer to a rube goldburg machine than sequential play.
11 Kick Club (Golfiness: 3/5)
Kick Club has Golf on its mind. Be warned, the shot strength and angled control will make you start to think of your feet as a pair of versatile clubs that you run around on. There's a lot of different angry sports hiding inside here and I haven't finished it. Even if it turns out there aren't swarming Golf ball enemies, or a club bag boss that shoots Golf balls like a minigun, the fact that such Golfy ideas would fit in Kick Club is quite telling.
12 Avianos
Avianos is not Golf. But imagine if you had to pray to a different manufacturer than you did last stroke to be granted different clubs that got better the more favor you showed...
13 Mooncat (Golfiness: 2/5)
Mooncat secretly dreams of Golf. No, not because the eyeballs eternally spawn and roll into holes; not even because ground-pounding near them pops them up; that's some pinball tilt foolishness.
Listen. The whole situation here is too weird for me to just explain. Go learn to control Mooncat until the platforming starts feeling natural. Then, try double-tapping one side or the other in midair after a running jump. Okay, now practice changing direction during a ground-pound onto an enemy or mushroom so that you bounce off in the opposite direction than you were travelling...
You feel that backspin? You grokking that topspin? Now you know why Mooncat dreams of Golf.
14 Bushido Ball (Golfiness: 3/5)
Bushido Ball pretends that air hockey can make you better at Golf. It's all in the ball english and tension, really. In the fictional world of Bushido Ball, there is a "Golf" anime where they use weapons instead of clubs, and in the second season they discover that there's an "inverted course" on the other side of the holes you can travel to via holes-in-one. "Beyond the Back Nine" was unfortunately where the series peaked before all the filler arcs following caddies the main cast left behind.
15 Block Koala (Golfiness: 1/5)
Block Koala hired a miniature Golf landscaper. While your actions within them lack Golfiness, the water-hogging villain Flamingus has curated a series of spaces that look suspiciously like The Red Queen is about to burst through a hedgerow, grab him by the feet, and hit a croquet ball with his beak.
...I should probably spend more time solving puzzles and less time kink shaming fictional birds.
16 Camouflage (Golfiness: 3/5)
Camouflage is hiding inside Golf. The terrain needs to be neatly partitioned with discreet boundaries between the elements. You need clarity that you're hiding in a sand trap, a fairway, the rough, water hazards, or the green. And then the little white lizards have gotta make it into the single hole on each level? Come on.
17 Campanella (Golfiness: 2/5)
Campanella puts Golf on tilt. To see it, you sort of need to flip the world on its side such that gravity is constantly pulling the UFO-ball toward one side of each little course. That basketball boss encounter of all things was what made this occur to me. The miniature-Golf-meets-pinball vibes would be enhanced if anything at all other than your ship needed to enter that level-ending hole.
18 Golfaria (Golfiness: 5/5)
Golfaria is a Golf RPG Adventure. If these properties weren't constrained by Palmer's Law, this would be a 6/5. That's a good thing; trust me when I say you do not want to know what that amount of Golfiness would be like.
19 The Big Bell Race
The Big Bell Race is not Golf. It takes what Golfiness exists in Campanella and trades it out for go kart racing. The fun center & arcade laws of equivalent exchange are just brutal like that.
20 WarpTank
WarpTank is not Golf. If your PerfectPutt™ indoor ball return system begins to regularly flip between the floor and ceiling, do not attempt to intercept any of the balls it is firing. Contact customer support immediately and stay clear of the device, especially while it is in the process of warping.
21 Waldorf's Journey (Golfiness: 5/5)
Waldorf's Journey is Golf. In fact, realizing this was one of the original motivators that caused me to question the Golfiness of all the other games. Post-shot walrus control aside, this is a Golf platformer with a lot of fanciful powerups and a fish-powered ball telekinesis meter.
22 Porgy
Porgy is not Golf. Though I could imagine a Mini & Max style "honey I shrunk the sub" themed sequel that takes place in a water hazard...
23 Onion Delivery
Onion Delivery is not Golf. When they finally stop trying to resurrect Crazy Taxi in various forms, perhaps there will be room for some sort of "Crazy Caddy" golf cart time attack spiritual successor...
24 Caramel Caramel
Caramel Caramel is not Golf. Mixing a little photography into other genres is a noble pursuit, though. Imagine a golf game where pausing your ball mid-flight and taking pictures of certain terrain features from that heightened perspective empowered the remainder of the shot by making the ball sticky, bouncy, or keeping it aloft longer...
25 Party House
Party House is not Golf. I would say that a golfer character would make an interesting party guest class, but his bag of clubs and/or caddy friend probably make him take up two Capacity, and I just don't think that his special ability of making Rich Pals worth 1 Popularity in addition to 1 Cash is worth it!
26 Hot Foot
Hot Foot is not Golf. Despite the beanbag mechanics having some angular and velocity-driven play. Dodgeball and Golf do not mix, and telling your parents that you were careful to only aim at your siblings' legs isn't going to get you out of trouble.
27 Divers
Divers is not Golf. Near as I can tell the whole game takes place underwater, so the physics and themeing might be a strange fit.
28 Rail Heist
Rail Heist is not Golf. Yes, even though you git to punch yer own holes in the levels. If you really want this game to steal some Golfiness points, yer gonna have to hop on Big Blue yerself and convince the others that there country club's hiding more than cleats an' funny hats. Now, git!
-Gran
29 Vainger
Vainger is not Golf. I strongly believe that the world is ready for some sort of Golf search action/metroidvania game, but inverting gravity would be an extremely late game ability, if it appeared at all.
30 Rock On! Island
Rock On! Island is not Golf. In order to research this thoroughly I have consulted the indie game Puttsy that was created for Ludum Dare 41 with the theme "Combine 2 Incompatible Genres."
Increasing genre fusion compatibility with Golf seems to require more tower offense than defense.
31 Pingolf (Golfiness: 5/5)
Pinggolf is sidescrolling pinball Golf. You may resume thanking your lucky stars that there are still conceptual limits to Golfiness in video games.
32 Mortol II (Golfiness: 1/5)
Mortol II cherishes memories of Golf. The shift away from individual levels reduces the Golfiness, in that it's very hard to imagine an open-ended course where you play holes freely in order to open up others. The class system also complicates the lives-as-strokes analogy somewhat. On the other hand, the Engineer class literally creates piped holes for future doods to roll down!
33 Fist Hell
Fist Hell is not Golf. It theoretically has room for some Golf club beatdowns a la Casey Jones, but I haven't been able to find evidence of such a weapon.
34 Overbold (Golfiness: 1/5)
Overbold has stress dreams about Golf. One would think wagering that you can hit the par/goal prior to attempts would be more common in actual Golf games, given casual country club betting. Having that directly affect the difficulty of the hole would be pretty wild. Also, the way enemies pour out of holes in the corners might technically be more of a pool table nightmare than a Golf one?
35 Campanella 2 (Golfiness: 1/5)
Campanella 2 is losing its grip on Golf. The same tilted "putt thruster" physics from Campanella are here, but between the huge levels and all the platforming/shooting, nearly all the fairground miniature Golf vibes have fled.
36 Hyper Contender (Golfiness: 1/5)
Hyper Contender contains Donkus. And Donkus is made of Golf. If you know, then you know.
37 Valbrace
Valbrace is not Golf. And after the madness that is Golfaria, I'm skeptical that there'd be room here for a dungeon crawling take on Golf on top of that. One for the 16-bit inspired UFO Soft collection, eh?
38 Rakshasa (Golfiness: 1/5)
Rakshasa died before Golf. There's something vaguely Golfy lurking in that death minigame, but I'm struggling to pin it down. A sequence of fixed points you need to guide your soul into in order to progress.
39 Star Waspir
Star Waspir is not Golf. Because I promised that a bevvy of bullets, or eggs, or other random ovoids would not count for the purposes of this highly scientific inquiry.
40 Grimstone (Golfiness: 2/5)
Grimstone shoots like Golf. Because of the guns, you might be equating these attack timing checks with the active reloads in Gears of War. But where do you think they originally got that idea? Are you implying that Cliffy B. did not enjoy Kirby's Dream Course?! I thought not.
41 Lords of Diskonia (Golfiness: 4/5)
Lords of Diskonia is Croquet. This is worth a surprising amount of Golfiness, but in order to claim that final point, you'd have to be flicking these disks into divots to claim resources instead of caroming off them like pegs. The use of terrain and bounces is more Miniature Golf than Golf, but last time I checked, that was a also a type of Golf.
42 Night Manor (Golfiness: 2/5)
Night Manor is afraid of Golf. The tense deployment of a swing timing/power meter is a surprising representation of what it takes to control your own movement and breathing while hiding from a fungal nightmare creature. One could inject a bit of horror into any Golf game by introducing increasingly difficult UI inputs with a hard-to-determine endpoint; "oh no, just swing, not another tension gauge, they're coming, NO not another spin meter, they're getting closer SWING AT THE BALL!"
43 Elfazar's Hat
Elfazar's Hat is not Golf. But only due to a lack of connecting mechanics. There are some fantastic miniature Golf course vibes running through all sorts of aesthetic things in here.
44 Pilot Quest (Golfiness: 1/5)
Pilot Quest is repeatedly initiated by Golf. Those asteroids that constantly send you plummeting back to Zoldath? Yeah, the planet is unfortunately situated right in the middle of a galactic driving range.
45 Mini & Max
Mini & Max is not Golf. Nor is it particularly mini Golf, despite the title. A lot of miniature Golf games have wacky powerups and such, right? Playing around with scale could be a thing; the ball is too big for the hole, so you need to hit it through a shrinking beam first, that sort of thing...
46 CombatAnts
CombatAnts is not Golf. However, if it zooms out at the end and reveals that the battles have all been taking place near the parking lot of a Golf course, boy will I ever be eating crow.
47 Quibble Race (Golfiness: 2/5)
Quibble Race is paced a little like Golf at times. Once your bet is in; once your club makes contact with the ball, the part of the tension loop where you're waiting with baited breath to see if the effort you put into setting up the shot is gonna pay out...
48 Seaside Drive
Seaside Drive is not Golf. Grandma's "special" scotch pies will get you higher than you've ever been in your life, but she's not a fan of the sport. Always thought her late husband was a bit daft to be waking up so early just to go traipsing through the lowlands after wee balls.
49 Campanella 3
Campanella 3 is not Golf. They've done it. In a last gasp of sequelitis, they finally managed to purge the tiny whiff of Golfiness the series had, and we may be poorer for it. No longer does the Campanella "take swings" at enemies in melee, with that little bump of follow-through feedback.
50 Cyber Owls (Golfiness: 1/5?)
Cyber Owls probably isn't Golf. But with so many different modes and my not having completed it, can I really say for sure? A single point of Golfiness then, in the name of uncertainty; it's possible there's a Golf tee in this haystack of needles I'm missing. Sneaking this in before the game reveals that the final mission uses Golf mechanics to stop the missile.
This may not seem like all that much Golf in the grand scheme of things, but I think we can all agree that it's more Golf than we were expecting going in, and much more Golf than we thought there would be before writing/reading this blog post.
That's just game design science. I don't make up the rules, just the numbers I merely run the numbers.
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