Premium golf experience gone wrong

Gone Golfing is a paid sports game that combines elements of action and adventure on top of its survival horror focus. Like most golf games, you are tasked with putting the ball in the hole in as few strokes. However, the experience is not par for the course, with the mini golf resort being filled with traps and threats. 

In Gone Golfing, you need to get that ball in and get yourself out of this golfing park. Imagine a What the Golf game combined with the horrors of Poppy Playtime in a scary physics-based experience with a rather short playthrough.

A golf ball chases you

When you start playing Gone Golfing, you are treated to a low-energy introduction that describes your character as an unwitting everyday man looking to unwind at a newly-opened golf resort. It starts fairly easy, teaching you how to play the game and use its intuitive controls. Soon enough, you meet the awkwardly menacing giant golf ball that will hunt you down.

The main challenge in this game is to complete all courses in the resort. The courses are not sequential, and you’ll have to find each of them, complete their respective quests, and put the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible. This combination of puzzle, platforming, sports, and horror all make the game challenging as the nerve-wracking giant golf ball makes almost every shot under pressure.

As mentioned, the main drawback of a game this enjoyable is that it has a short playthrough. Provided you don’t encounter too many deaths or have difficulty finding the courses, the game can be completed in less than an hour. However, the developers could use better AI systems for the golf ball monster’s behavior. It is too linear and too predictable, taking away half of the game’s appeal.

Unique premise with an easy playthrough

It goes without saying that Gone Golfing has struck gold in combining survival horror with casual golfing. Introducing a giant golf ball that will whack you unconscious makes the supposedly relaxing activity of mini golf a stressful yet exciting ordeal. However, it could use more content such as an entirely different mini golf resort, or at least improve the AI pathfinding capability to make the game more interesting.