Day 64 - Gold Sunday

Sports, Short and Free, Immersive Sim · 03 Jul 2024

Sam’s Take:

Sometimes when I have the time, I’ll play through a few games before choosing one to review. Obviously we aren’t picky here on Flash-Forward(tm), but oftentimes the game is too similar to something we played recently, or my review would just be another “they made it in two days during a game jam, what do you want from me”. Today Skeeter messaged me about Youtube recommending golf videos to him, so I searched itch.io for “golf” and just clicked on something. What I got was Golf Sunday.

I started messing around with it, not taking any screenshots or anything yet, just playing around seeing if it was reviewable. I found out you could drive golf carts around the course. An open world golf game? That’s cute. I played around for a bit and on one hole I parked my cart right in front of the tee.

Assuming this didn’t matter I went to take my swing and the ball bounced off of the cart, tilting the cart slightly and landing behind me:

I was stunned, I had just been immersive simmed by a free golf game. I laughed out loud and took my cart for a joyride. I took many carts on many joyrides. Some drowned in lakes, others were destroyed signage, some were parked on the green after successfully removing a flag from its hole:

The game itself is very simple, aim where you want to shoot, and the ball semi-randomly lands in that area (the shorter the shot, the less variance the shot will have). Each hole has a par to beat, and the scoring is mostly reasonable. Just these mechanics are enough for a simple arcade golf game, but the ability to cause chaos with golf carts elevates it to new heights, mostly because it’s just so unexpected. Why did Johan Peitz take the time to make the carts solid objects? Why did he create interactions between the carts and so many other objects? Why are there hilarious skid marks when you make fast turns?

It’s all for me, Johan did it so that I would have something to talk about in my review today. He did it so that I wouldn’t have to search for another game. Thanks Johan. Golf Sunday doesn’t have any crazy depth, but you can drive a cart off a bridge in between holes and that’s beautiful enough to cause grown men to weep.

Recommend: Yes

Replay Percentage Chance: 5%

Time Played: 17 Minutes + 10 Minutes to replay and take a picture of my score after Skeeter’s challenge

Skeeter’s Take:

Honestly, Golf Sunday’s charm lies greatly in its attention to detail.

First, I love that you can drive a golf cart around the course. It’s a simple thing, but having the player manually drive is so much more immersive and entertaining (and also the most fun part about this game). I think I would have enjoyed Golf Sunday a lot less had it just teleported me to each starting tee like they do in Mario Golf. And Golf Sunday is smart about where it places its golf carts. It knows you are going to most likely drive to the start of the hole, leave the cart there and walk to shoot your ball. It knows this, so it also places a golf cart at the green of each hole as well. In addition to driving a cart around just being fun, it also interacts with the golf course in interesting ways. I also had that same moment Sam did where I parked my golf cart right on top of my tee, thinking it wouldn’t matter. After I hit the ball, it immediately bounced off of the cart and shot off into the previous course.

After that, I started driving my cart onto the course and using it as a shield from sand pits and water traps, or backstops for the green:

The carts can run over and demolish the number signs for each hole. They can knock over the flag, and they even drive slower in the sand pits. I tried driving though the water traps and wouldn’t you know it, the cart sank just like you would expect it to. There was a little sinking animation for it and everything.

Driving the cart is by far my favorite part of Golf Sunday. I’d be cool if it was re-made as “Cart Sunday” where the player races golf carts around the course and plays a hole of golf in between each lap.

Another great moment I had was on my first putt. When you land on the green in Golf Sunday, you get a power bar pop-up with very obvious indicators of what power you need hit for the ball to go in the hole:

Well, I obviously ignored those the first time and proceeded to hit the ball full neon yellow blast while the indicator was actually somewhere near the red.

Much like the cart, the golf ball went ricocheting off of the flagpole and flying into the sand pit. All these little moments of interactivity are great, and as a player I loved discovering them (AKA it’s fun to run over things in the golf cart). It really helps add a “realistic”(?) feeling to the game. The sandpits feel like sand pits, the water feels like water, etc. And given the pixel art direction of the game, that is very welcome. I mean, you do play as 6 pixels: