In my muddled and anxious attempt to play through just… a whole fuckton of Apple Arcade games, I finally stumbled into What The Golf, a weird physics game by developer Triband and publisher The Label. It’s, as mentioned, weird as hell. It’s also immensely playable, funny and, in some places, really surprising.
You start your game on a golf course, as one does in a golf game, with a ball at one end and the hole at the other. You swipe back, which increases the power of the “swing,” aim your shot, then release, and watch your ball soar to the hole, which is what you would expect a game of golf to result in. A few holes later, you do the very same thing, except when you let go, the little human avatar they spawned in for you goes flying instead of the ball.
What The Golf consistently tries to change the rules like that. Each hole is its own mini game (one reviewer likened it to Wario Ware, and the comparison is apt); sometimes it’ll parody another game, like Angry Birds or Flappy Bird, entirely, while once in a while it will just straight up morph into soccer or pinball. After you get through the tutorial, you’re sucked through a pipe, Mario-style, until you’re in a messy underground facility focused entirely on how to turn the sport of golf into an SCP entry.
I’m only 17 percent through the campaign, but what I’ve played so far has had me shooting golfballs in a vacuum, trying to correct my ball’s trajectory as it flew around bigger gravitational bodies. I’ve beaten an entire squad of kids at soccer. I yeeted a car over some exploding barrels. All in the name of… golf. It’s like if, while doing some of the Panopticon side missions in Control, I found a golf club Object of Power and used it to fundamentally alter reality.
What The Golf has me hooked. And what’s been great is that it’s actually utilizing my phone’s orientation in interesting ways. I started in portrait mode, but a subtle perspective shift occasionally will have me switch to landscape mode and vice versa. I wouldn’t be surprised if later the game used my phone’s gyroscopes and accelerometer more extensively. I’ll definitely be finishing this game for a full review.
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