Cursed to Golf

It even has a deck of cards! In this game you are task to complete the hellish gauntlet of a randomly generated golf course to cheat death itself. Its got great art ad characters and a gameplay loop that will get you thinking long and hard about each swing.

These golf courses aren’t simple. There are many obstacles to content with. New obstacles will get introduced to you the further you get in a run. Play your cards right and you’ll be able to make it through under par!

You’re able to play a card before each swing and these cards allow you to redirect the trajectory of the ball, remove certain obstacles, give your swing more OOMPH, and much more. These cards will influence how you plot a course through each level and adjust for any mistakes you make along the way. The best part about this game is the cathartic feeling of overcoming a course with proper planning and execution. In that aspect, it resembles golf perfectly.

But I have my gripes.
Cursed to Golf is a roguelike. I don’t have any issue with that genre, but I feel that some roguelikes sacrifice a lot of potentially fantastic level design when adhering to the genre. The randomly generated levels need to account for a player doing card-less swings and it severely restricts the level design. Even the environment has to bend to the will of level generation. It’s tile-based, blocky, and isn’t very compatible with smacking a ball around.

You can still make that work, but what about the permadeath? You are sent back to the beginning of the game for each failure. Cursed to Golf’s gameplay is like figuring out a puzzle and solving it with precision. On repeat, it feels lame to have to redo levels you have already solved and figured out. The beauty of a roguelike is supposed to be the each run is different, but in Cursed to Golf neither the cards or the level design will change gameplan here.

It’s a long game too. A full run may take 8 hours so you might need multiple sessions to beat the game. What if you were to mess up near the end? Would you be excited for the next run?

Had this game been designed with each level being hand-crafted and didn’t make you redo the whole game upon failing I genuinely think it would have turned out better. As it is, it’s still very fun. Whether or not the level design/permadeath bothers you is up to your tolerance. I think it’s still worth a shot though. Pulling off fun 2D golf is a remarkable feat on its own.