Setup: iPhone XS Max (iOS 13)
Developer: Triband
Publisher: The Label
Release Date: 9/19/2019
Platforms: Apple Arcade, PC
What is a sandwich?
More importantly, what could be a sandwich? Is a hot dog a sandwich? What about a taco? Is a hoagie really a sandwich or are we all just deluded about that? Do burgers fit into the sandwich genus or are they distinct entities? Classification is important to a degree – after all, we can definitively state that soup is not a sandwich – but we need to be careful not to split hairs too finely. Arguing over what is and isn’t a sandwich isn’t going to get us anywhere. Also a taco is actually a doner kebab, not a sandwich.
What the Golf? has no room for overclassification whatsoever. Bowling? Golf. Dodging cars? Golf. Racing a sheep with an exploding barrel? Golf. Everything you can think of – except maybe for golf itself – can and will be used as golf eventually in What the Golf? and it will be used in ways you weren’t expecting. It’s this unlimited possibility that makes What the Golf? so charming – and honestly, a little terrifying too.
At its core, there are three mechanics at work in What the Golf?. Aim, pull back, fire. This is represented visually by a power bar arrow. When you first touch your finger onto the screen, you can change the direction of fire. When you pull back, you can maximize the firepower. The trick is in guessing what will happen when you let go. Will you hit the ball? Will you be launched into the air? Will the game change so fundamentally on you that you’re not even sure what you’re looking at? All things are possible in What the Golf?.
Nothing is Golf, Everything is Permitted
Nobody is really sure when and where golf was first played. While most scholars agree that the modern incarnation of the game was first played in 15th-century Scotland, it turns out that people all over the world have been hitting ball-like objects with club-like objects into target- or hole-esque objects in the least number of strokes for at least a thousand years.
Golf’s simplicity makes it palatable compared to other games, and it’s this simplicity that allowed Triband to make a game with so much variation still, invariably, about golf.
See, you’re not playing golf in What The Golf?. You’re running through a series of golf-adjacent experiments. Some of these experiments involve bowling. Other experiments involve precise mortar fire and orbital trajectories. Everything has a very Aperture Science-esque feel to it. There’s even a computer system in control of access to different parts of the facility.
Is there a story? Does there need to be? I don’t think so. Instead, What The Golf? lets us exist in a series of possibility spaces where the only limit is what we can think to do with our “ball.” It’s an absolute delight.
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