Cursed To Golf Preview – This ain’t your daddy’s PGA…

Time Stamp: March 25, 2022 11:00 AM

Golf adjacent games are so in right now. While fans of proper golf sims have likely got a bit of a wait on their hands before 2K and EA do battle for supremacy, indie devs have been figuring out more and more inventive ways to build games around the simple idea of hitting a small ball with a long metal stick.

Cursed to Golf asks the question “What if it’s a roguelike, but golf?” OK, so maybe the question is “What if it’s golf, but a roguelike?” but either way, the answer is the same. Cursed to Golf challenges you to reach the hole of each dungeon-like course while staying below par, and any failure to do so sends you right the way back to the beginning to take on a whole new set of courses.

While you start the game as a golfing champion on their way to yet another successful tournament, you’re struck down in your prime, a swing away from glory, zapped by lightning and sent to Golf Purgatory, plummeting all the way down and being greeted by the ghostly visage of a Scotsman (who seems to have died from taking a golf ball to the heart?) and his ruined golf shop, Eterni-Tee. Here you will stay, unless you can ascend up through 18 holes, going round and round until you can succeed.

These aren’t just any old golf courses, though. What lies before you is a motley assortment of greens, sand bunkers, water, fans, teleporters, TNT, and other hazards. For one thing, this game is a side-scrolling affair, rendered in a cutesy pixel art style, but where you might expect to find a 16-bit recreation of rolling hills and the undulations of a fairway, everything here is strictly at the horizontal and vertical. It’s all blocky, flat, and at 90º with no slopes or gradients to be found.

Getting through a hole leans back on some classic timed button presses and power meters. You have a simple selection of three clubs – a driver, iron and wedge – each of which has a particular arc and range. You’ll want the driver for longer shots, iron for a bit more precision, and the wedge for closer, more precise hits while helping to get out of bunkers. In any case, you have to set power from a rapidly shifting power meter, and then time your press as the arc swings back and forth. If you’re not happy with the power or your club choice, you can easily tap back and start that over again, but it’s incredibly straightforward and lets you keep the focus on what you want to do instead of being overly punishing of mediocre timing.

Wait. Back up a second. Did I say fans, TNT, and teleporters? I did? What’s going on with that? Well, I’m assuming that health and safety isn’t really required after life has ended, and the evil Greenskeeper that’s trapped you here has thrown all manner of quirky gizmos and explosives to the courses. As you’re trying to get through the hole in as few strokes as possible, these elements will often help you, the TNT opening up secret paths, teleporters whizzing you off to a different part of the hole, and fans picking up your ball and spitting it out in a particular direction.

Even then, you’ve only got five shots, and will definitely want more. That’s where the silver and gold shot idols come in, as clattering through these will add two or four shots to your par shot counter, giving you a longer leash to get through.

You also have Ace Cards – what, you didn’t think this game would incorporate the last big game mechanic favourite? Either earned, picked up from chests between holes, or bought from Eterni-Tee in randomised packs, these can be played to boost your run or shot in all sorts of ways. There’s basic par score boosts, Mulligans to let you revert to your previous position, and then there’s things like being able to remotely trigger TNT, reverse the direction of your ball’s flight mid-air, leaden the ball so it doesn’t bounce, freeze it so that it will stop mid-flight and drop straight down, and plenty more besides.

I’m sure that hoarding these cards will become key to success, especially when each biome ends with a boss battle, a 1-on-1 duel to reach the hole first. The first world is capped off by the aforementioned Scotsman, all about huge and powerful swings. It would be impossible to keep up with his power game, were it not for his self-imposed handicap of littering the greens with statues that will stun him if you hit them. Even so, it’s a gruelling task to try and beat him, and I failed miserably after decent start.

Oh well, back to the beginning, whereupon the Scotsman decides to teach me about perhaps the biggest trick you need for success: spin. Rapidly tapping a button in mid-air lets you then spin the ball back and forth once it hits the green again, even switching directions between bounces if you want. It’s sure to be wildly powerful and important to master.

From a quick sprint through the demo, Cursed to Golf is shaping up really nicely. It’s accessible, it’s full of daft and fun ideas, but there’s sure to be a meaner degree of difficulty through later biomes and boss battles. This is definitely one to keep an eye on for when it releases this summer.

But you should actually play it right now! There’s a time limited demo available this weekend on PC via Steam, giving access to this first biome and a great sample of what’s to come in the full game.

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