A Little Golf Journey

If you’re looking for a game to relax and sink your mind into, a Little Golf Journey is a pleasant surprise. It not only has excellent handling, but it also boasts wonderfully designed settings, a varied and extensive soundtrack, and a heartwarming plot that is difficult to put down. A Little Golf Journey, easily one of the greatest golfing games of the year, is the ideal way to unwind.

Gameplay

The setup is simple enough that you can get into the swing of things fast. You're a golfer, and a pal has invited you to drive and putt your way through a series of low poly dioramas. The environments range from a classic woodland forest like you'd find in any North American country club to a very Japanese cherry blossom zen garden to a pink and blue cyber world straight out of Tron.

Players begin their trip on the golf course, where they learn how to arc the ball, employ power strokes, focus, and flip the camera to enhance the precision of each swing. Over time, the golf course continues to expand up into several biomes such as lakes, woodlands, and Japanese gardens, each one vibrantly colored and with a distinct layout that always seems new. With each new biome comes a tiny increase in difficulty, one that closely follows the player's advancement and never creates a situation in which reaching par feels impossible or unjust.

Controls

A Little Golf Journey capitalizes on the advantages of basic controls to produce some very innovative approaches to achieve a perfect score. For example, unless players actively focus for a few seconds, the arc that indicates the ball's direction may fluctuate. This wobbling will ultimately force the arch to expand beyond its landing region, providing a small window of opportunity to deliver the ball to otherwise inaccessible locations. While there are several ways to approach a level, A Little Golf Journey appears to promote such tactics since successfully applying techniques always allows the player to experience a technique that guarantees success.

Progression in A Little Golf Journey

Traveling between levels will appear familiar to gamers who have played 2D Super Mario games such as Super Mario Bros. 3, since there are clearly marked routes in the overworld that lead to holes to jump into and surprises. Additionally, it sports some similarities in terms of gameplay to PGA Tour 2K21, although it doesn’t come close to it in terms of depth. It's easy to tell which levels feature secrets because there's generally a visual clue close but somewhat off the main path. Secrets appear as transparent cubes to run into or as an occasional environmental trigger that initiates a task that, when accomplished, unlocks the over-secret world's path.

Verdict

If there’s one gripe I’ve had with this game, it’s probably the grind for blue objects required to make it past some stages late into the game.

Pros

• Relaxing ambience
• Fluid controls
• Gorgeous environments

Cons

• Grindy on later stages