Super Inefficient Golf Review

[AlphaKing]

Have you ever dreamed of playing a golf game where instead of using a golf club you make clever use of explosive mines to guide your ball into the hole? No, me neither. But thanks to developer 34BigThings and their creation Super Inefficient Golf, it is something you get to experience. And boy is it fun.

The premise is simple, there’s a course of 18 holes you need to complete by placing mines on your ball and detonating them to travel in any direction necessary. Everything starts off simple as you’re introduced to the different techniques you’ll need. Beginning holes do a good job at teaching you the basic moves necessary for progress. This ranges from moving the ball forward to more complicated tasks like jumping up ledges and traversing huge gaps.

Even stranger than the whole explosive golf thing is that the game’s genre is a rare mix of sandbox physics and sports. As part of this, every level has a variety of ways you can finish it. Sure in some cases it is easier to just use forward momentum to reach the end, but it is much more fun blow your ball into the air and shoot it across large gaps while using mines on the sides to alter directions and achieve awe-inspiring acrobatics.

There’s usually several intended ways you can handle a level, as well as the crazier inventive ways you can sort out yourself. Usually they’re a mix between more traditional golf, hitting the ball around on the floor, to flying from the tee straight to the hole while breaking down walls and performing aerial stunts.

Mines affect the way the ball rolls and slows down momentum, so you do have to really think about where you place them. They can be stacked up to four for each of the four colors, all of one type will detonate at the single press of a button.

You get points for how many strokes it takes, with the usual par, birdie, etc. As well as this. how much airtime you get, how many mines you have left and whether you go out of bounds or not all have an impact.

Strangely you can pick whichever hole you want straight from the beginning, so there’s no real progress. I guess since it’s a sandbox game this makes sense but you’re given enough mines to finish any level even with a ridiculous amount of strokes so I’d have liked some form of progression.

Super Inefficient Golf is a prime example of easy to pick up difficult to master. One of the strongest points of the game is that the journey from beginner to pro is incredibly fun and satisfying. Key to this is the physics engine. Once you’ve got past the first couple of levels and get a hang for the way the ball moves and how powerful the mines are, everything starts to work the way you would expect. Unlike real golf, it is quite easy to know what you want to achieve and then do it almost perfectly every time. There is precision required, however, as just placing a mine slightly off can lead to catastrophic spins, sending you wildly off course, literally.

As good as the gameplay is, it’s impossible to escape the fact it is so short, it took me just over an hour to finish every stage without going back over them. Leaderboards and endless ways to finish a hole can add a little extra to the experience but lack of levels and multiplayer makes its lifespan very short. At the moment there aren’t that many players – which I don’t expect to change – and there’s definitely a drop as you get to the later holes. The first one had 994 players and the last has 127. Thankfully, Super Inefficient Golf’s lack of levels is reflected in the low price of less than $5, but most will be left wishing for more.