Cursed to Golf Reviews

DO NOT PURCHASE unless youre super great at really specific small detailed actions that are hindered by a lack of play testing and unfriendly user controls and unfinshed menu design game looks great but it plays like poo poo a kaizo golf game if there ever was one the rougelike element is not thought out well and not executed well 2 dollars wasnt worth the frustration of not being able to cancel shots becaue you didnt realize you had the wrong club or not being able to move the camera far enough during the shot this game needs to be less like golf irl and neeeds to pplay like a video game big mad

I want to start by saying the soundtrack is awesome. Mark Sparling's music is always fun to listen to. The art and visual style of the game is also fantastic. There are a lot of unique sprites and the maps definitely look cool. Unfortunately, however, the game has some issues. As for the actual game, there are too many bugs. Bugs with the HUD as well as with the core gameplay. Too many of the gimmicks with the Ace Cards don't even work properly, or at least don't behave the way they say they do. Also some pins just straight up don't work sometimes. Additionally, some of the obstacles/shortcuts don't work correctly either. I think some of these problems are caused by stopping during a round and re-opening the game later to continue it.

Almost a good game. Golf roguelike that suffers from bad controls which can't be adjusted. There isn't that much variety from the short amount of time I played, and I ultimately stopped playing because I was on the fence about my enjoyment and ran into a bug that didn't let me hit to the right... Also, it's kind of dumb that you can redo the power of your swing over and over (even though the game doesn't teach you) and it's the ANGLE you have to hard-commit to. I feel like it should be the opposite. The hitting feels really repetitive and frustrating when you can undo half of your mistakes but suffer from the other half.

This game is about golfing your way out of hell, and the final levels really emphasize that idea. Bosses are hard, the regular levels not terribly so. It's a long one though, for a game that takes you back to the beginning on death, but the stakes getting higher as the run gets deeper is part of the thrill/frustration/catharsis loop of a good rougelite. The RNG does play a huge role, as some levels are almost impossible if you run out of powers, so use them wisely as you go. Portals and drills are huge in boss rounds.

unplayeable, controllers randomly stop working. Both with mouse/keybord and controller

As a big lover of golf and roguelike games, I really wanted to like this, and I usually dismiss the other kind of negative reviews that talk about bad design decisions or a lack of a tutorial or difficulty as people being salty, but I can really see the problem here. This game has great presentation, the concept is great and it should be everything I love, but my god, so many terrible design choices here, and the fact that this game has gotten so many updates without any of these glaringly bad decisions being addressed really makes me concerned about really sinking any more time into this game. One of the worst aspects about this game is the camera, at zoomed out and while taking your shot, it's not enough to see where your ball is actually going to go. I have no idea why they'd do this, but literally the start of every level, I had to keep switching between shot mode and camera to try and figure out where my angle was going to go. Camera mode itself is bizarre, with only two levels of zoom and the default one of them being more zoomed in than the already far-too-close camera you started with. You can move and zoom the camera outside of this mode (although a limited amount), so why not just let me set my camera how I want? Why not have a more fine tuned variable zoom? This would go a huge way into making this game playable and seems like such a simple fix. Not being able to see what you are doing is not a good way of introducing challenge in a golf game! There are aftertouch mechanics on the ball that don't seem to be explained, the controls screen doesn't really seem to say anything, there is no spin mechanics, you can just cancel your shot during angle any time so power setting makes no difference, but instead of your plan of angle being the important thing in golf (like it always usually is), instead the angle of your shot is fanned out in this awkward limited space and you just have to try and press at the right time, making it quite unsatisfying as a golf game. Your knowledge of golf and puzzle solving here isn't really being challenged in a way that is consistent or satisfying. Going against the standards of these mechanics doesn't make your game stand out, there is a reason hundreds of golf games have done this. Don't try to be Primal Rage. Setting shots is tedious, some kind of preview of range or power or angle would go a long way when selecting clubs. There is also an animation that plays every time you take a shot that has your character turning into a ghost and being sucked into a portal. This adds nothing to the game except it makes everything feel just a little more tedious. I think the dev picked up on this as there is a prominent 'fast forward' option, but this is a really dumb solution and fix, give me a skip or an option to turn this off. Are you really that stubborn that you can't let people skip a tiny animation? I don't want to see this hundreds of times, I've never known a golf game try to enforce such tedium. Another point I want to make is with my short amount of time on this game, difficulty seems incredibly erratic and random without rhyme or reason. The overworld map navigation looks nice, but it is yet another 'why!?' that doesn't really add anything to the gameplay and feels like it serves to yet disrespect your time more as a player. My last criticism would be in the use of language. I've played a lot of golf games where a 'rocket ball' was a ball that had more power or flew in a straight line. In this game, it was a ball you could control for a limited time before it lost all momentum and dropped dead, which was the opposite of what I expected. There is an explanation for this powerup in-game in two places but neither of them explain this at all. Just fuck me I guess, I picked the wrong thing so now I have to restart again.

Cute game but pretty difficult to play as some of the levels are really difficult you and you'd have to rely on "cards" to add pars or control the movement of your golf ball.

The gameplay can be fun and the music is great, but the game is rather unbalanced. Either you abuse the pins and make most of it trivial or you don't use the pins and bosses become blatantly unfair, nvm the rng on lvls sometimes. A game like this needs a really fine line to feel challenging and rewarding. Losing to stuff that is out of your control isn't part of that. I am still going to recommend it despite its flaws, cause the artwork is lovely, the music alone is wroth it. Its a fun time if you don't take it too srs, which is ironically the message of the game.

Why the fuck is the tutorial so long? I mean like 90% of it is characters talking or some kind of weird exposition. It could be so much better if 15 minutes into a game you're not stuck in some wack-o tutorial. Not really a rouge-lite either. I paid 2 bucks. I'm not going to refund, there was effort put into this, but damn some of the design decisions are just weird.

I wanted to like Cursed to Golf but this game is just tedious. It’s not a roguelike, it’s a physics puzzle game that makes you beat the whole game without failing. There’s nothing about roguelikes here that makes them interesting. Instead you’re left with kinda procgen levels and…that’s about it? And the game is DULL. Characters blabber endlessly about nothing as the devs want you to watch the same “quirky” animations over and over and over again. For a game where each run could take hours this is terrible. There’s some interesting stuff here but it’s just buried in frustration. Also the camera is just awful requiring you to constantly fiddle with zoom to even see the hole ahead of you. It also doesn’t explain was various power ups do and you’re punished for experimenting with them. Avoid unless you really like everything golf and you can get it for cheap.