Arcane Golf (Review)

Arcane Golf is a miniature golf puzzle game set in a fantasy world full of dungeons, dangers, gems, and geometry. Developed and published by Gold5Games.

In Arcade Golf you play mystical mini-golf throughout four different dungeons, each with it's own theme, music, and set of 50 levels. Totaling at 200 levels there's a lot to play through, Though is it worth your money and precious time? The game is played using simple mouse controls, click and drag your mouse cursor in the opposite direction of where you want your red orb-like ball to go, and release to launch it. The force of each launch depends on how far back you pull the cursor.

Every level starts with your ball bouncing on the ground, or falling towards something lethal like spikes or fire. Once you start aiming your ball freezes in place, however you only have about two seconds to aim and shoot before your time runs out and the ball launches itself in whatever direction it's facing. This is very annoying and in my personal opinion was a very poor design choice, as the game gets boring very quickly after dying over and over to some stupid misstep In your accuracy or aiming too soon when dealing with a timed puzzle. There are plenty of timed puzzles that give you little to no leeway when it comes to time constraints, if you aren't making perfect shots you're not gonna pass the level. Trying these levels time and time again was tedious and boring after not hitting that precise shot for about the twentieth time in a row. Timed puzzles wouldn't be that much of a chore if it wasn't for the aim timer, I think it would greatly improve the game if the developers added an option to remove the timer for players who want a more casual experience.

Now that that's out of the way lets talk about the levels themselves. The goal of each level is to traverse through puzzles and platforms by bouncing and ricocheting your ball off of walls, ceilings, and other platforms and objects in able to reach the portal exit. Obstacles like spikes, fire spouts, timed chain doors, crystals that must be broken in order to open the exit portal, slimes that you'll get stuck in if touched (the hitboxes aren't perfect), and a few others are out to make it much harder on you. Slimes are also used as puzzle elements, they are usually stuck in tight places between spikes or other dangerous objects. They are a pain to use as hitting your ball out of a slime is far slower than a normal hit, this is obviously because slimes are sticky and what not, but during fast high precision based segments this really threw me off and frustrated me more than not.

Honestly I didn't make It farther than the first half of the game, I tried really hard to like this game but I just can't. It was interesting at first but quickly felt tedious, irritating, and boring, maybe I'm just bad at this kind of game, although I doubt that's the case. The best thing I can say about Arcane Golf is that the pixel art is pretty decent, I'm sure there are gamers out there that will enjoy this, but it's just not for me. Arcane Golf is available for $8.99 on Pc/Steam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khDsYapla0M