DESPITE being someone who gets insanely frustrated when playing roguelikes, I’m absolutely addicted to them or any game with roguelike or roguelite elements. Games like Hades, The Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy and Returnal are some of the most addictively challenging and rewarding experiences of my gaming life, and I often find myself sinking a multitude of hours into them each time I dive in.
I also sink an unhealthy amount of time into arcadey Golf games like Mario Golf, with Everybody’s Golf on PS4 one of my most played titles of that console generation. You best believe I was gobsmacked when I stumbled across Golfie, an early access title on Steam that is not only a golf game with roguelike elements, but deckbuilding also.
Golfie sees you tasked with navigating your little robotic golf ball buddy through 18 courses in a single life, with failure resulting in the agonising realisation that you will need to start from the very beginning.
As is customary in a game of Golf, your aim is to sink the ball in the cup in as few strokes as you can manage. Clearing a hole under par will reward you with coins equal to the amount of strokes under par, while each stroke over par will see your golf ball lose health. It’s a simple premise when explained, but Golfie actually has a surprising amount of depth to it, even though it’s only just entered early access.
Assisting you on your journey through Golfie is your deck of cards, which provide abilities that will apply to your stroke when a card is selected. The deck largely consists of relatively basic cards that grant abilities such as a more powerful shot or a lobbed shot, but there are plenty of other cards you will acquire along the way.
Personal favourites of mine include the Jetpack card that makes crossing bodies of water and lava much less scary, and the Sticky Paste card that allows you to fire a ball without having to worry about it possibly rolling somewhere you don’t want it to.
Cards can be used in conjunction with others, allowing you to craft a much more impressive stroke or an absolutely crazy one. While using all cards in your hand on a single stroke may seem like a good idea, you have to be careful not to overdo things, as each card has a heat rating, and too much heat will see your ball overheat.
Overheating results in losing all remaining cards in your hand, as well as some health, but it can come in handy in certain situations, especially in desperate situations where you may need to get to the cup in a hurry. Basic cards don’t build up as much heat as rarer cards such as my beloved Jetpack, but it’s best to keep an eye on the heat gauge.
The card system in Golfie is a heap of fun and gives you the freedom to experiment with all kinds of combinations. There are also a decent amount of cards already, with the promise of more as the game approaches full release.
In typical roguelike fashion, Golfie is going to see you die a lot. Despite feeling confident in my skills throughout runs (which last about 30-40 mins if you get to the last couple of stages), it took me roughly 10 hours to successfully complete a run of Golfie. It’s a game that manages to be really easy to pick up and play, but ridiculously difficult to master, with a cruel difficulty curve that will often murder your runs as you reach the last few holes. You’re more than likely going to have your heartbroken by Golfie and its savage nature, but if you’re up for the challenge, you’re going to have plenty of fun with its solid mini golf and deckbuilding mechanics.
Even though most of your runs are going to be failures, your attempts are not in vain, as each failed run will reward you with experience points depending on how well you performed. As you collect xp and level up, you will not only be given sweet cosmetics to deck your ball in like hats and skins, but also access to new cards and perks that can be found and used in future runs to hopefully make the journey just a little bit easier. Coins collected throughout runs can be spent at in-level vending machines in exchange for unlocked cards and perks, with perks often being things such as health upgrades and the ability to clone or draw additional cards.
When it comes to courses, they take place across various different locations, with some more hazardous than others. Areas such as the beach have their levels set on islands, which you’ll need to hop around as you head to the cup, while the dungeon looking levels have pitfalls full of lava and other hazards such as giant swinging axes. Visually they aren’t the most detailed given Golfie’s simple aesthetic, but they are pleasurable little vistas that are brimming with plenty of colour.
Courses start out quite small and basic in the early stages of the run, but they very quickly expand in complexity and size as you reach the latter stages of a run.
The majority of your Golfie experience is best spent in its core mode, but there are other modes present for you to try if you wish. Daily Challenge mode as its name suggests is a daily seeded run that you can partake in, with leaderboards allowing you to see how you stack up with others around the world.
Free Play mode is also an option if you wish to free yourself of Golfie’s roguelike tendencies. There’s plenty of content present in Golfie already, and with Multiplayer confirmed to be coming in a future update, there’s going to be even more.
Although I was hooked on Golfie throughout my time with it, it does have some issues. One of the biggest issues present in Golfie is the camera, which finds itself cramped quite often, leading to unfortunate instances where it’s either too far zoomed in, or in an awkward birds eye view position that makes it impossible to see where your shot is predicted to land. To make matters worse, it always seems to occur in the aforementioned dungeon levels right next to the level hazards, and it ruined a run on more than one occasion.
The procedurally generated levels also seem to be a bit samey across various runs, which is disappointing and makes the experience a tad less enjoyable when you realise you’re essentially playing the same level over and over again.
In some cases, two levels in a row on the same run would exhibit this issue. The bite-sized nature of levels do lessen the impact of this somewhat, but I’d like to have less repeated level layouts in future.
You also for some reason can’t deselect a card once you’ve assigned it to a stroke, which is really annoying when you change your mind on the approach as you set up your cards.
Despite being a game that has just only been released in an early access form, Golfie already has a decent chunk of content, and quality content at that. There are some problems such as a temperamental camera and the procedural generation not being as creative as it should be, but the addictive mishmash of roguelike elements, deckbuilding and minigolf is handled well and provides a satisfying level of challenge.
Golfie is already a solid experience that I recommend checking out, and it’s only going to get better as more visual polish, cards, perks and modes enter the fray.
#gameonAUS
Written by: @GrumpyGoron
