The earth has been decimated, and become an abandoned junk yard. Whilst humanity survives on Mars, what better location for the ultra elite playing golf than the radioactive remains of earthly civilization? You wouldn't think that playing golf in the apocalypse is relaxing, but it truly is.

The smooth voice of a Mars radio DJ will provide you with most of the story, epistolary style, with news snippets, interviews and an emotional genre-spanning soundtrack written for the game (and buying the game nets you a free copy of the soundtrack, too). In between levels, you'll realize that someone is watching you play, someone who was left behind on the planet... so you also get a third person view of the situation.

Demagog Studio calls this approach Constellation Storytelling, a term I love, to depict "stories told through nonlinear media with a focus on gaming". I'm all in.

At the beginning of the game you're told to play with headphones, and I highly recommend it. Audio is critical to the atmosphere. It's strange to feel emotional about the story of the apocalypse, whilst playing golf, but the environment is immersive and won't fail to draw you in.

The main gameplay is simple golf, aim, angle and strength, whack the ball through the debris and get it in the hole. If you mess up, reset - it won't affect the story which plays on regardless of how well you're golfing. The challenge comes from dodging sand pits, lakes and rivers, navigating abandoned buildings and cities, and of course, avoiding radioactive cows who will eat your golf ball if it gets too close. You know, just golf things.

Most levels are fairly straight forward, but there are quite a few secrets to be found and achievements to be earned. Occasionally a level will become a bit of a puzzle, but on the whole, nothing too cerebral, the relaxing atmosphere is maintained - unless you choose Iron Man difficulty, and then you have only yourself to blame.

There are three difficulty levels for replayability and challenge, although you'll already have experienced the story so future playthroughs won't have that magic. A single story playthrough will only take a few hours, but at a fiver, it feels excellent value for money.

Relaxation and immersion is exactly what I need right now, so I'm giving this a big thumbs up - I just didn't expect to find it in the apocalypse, whilst playing golf!

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beautiful and mysteriously sad storyline with a decent mini golf game!

10/10 recommend.

I'm not gonna spend an hour trying to dissect this game just for a review on steam that nobody is gonna read.
You just need to know that it is an actual game, made for people that are willing to listen when art decides to talk to them; it's also quite serious despite being drenched in satire from start to end.
Metaphores, parallelisms and a whole lot of heart wrapped up in a neat and very atmospheric golf game.
The devs even gift you the OST once you finish the game, which is awesome. Radio Nostalgia from Mars is my favourite radio station!

This is strictly an art piece instead of a game. It looks nice but the game design is just terrible. You take a shot, you have to wait 5 seconds while the golfer casually flies or walks to the ball depending on how far it is. Completely unskippable. You messed up your first shot and want to reset the hole? Enjoy this 2-3 second animation while the camera pans to the sky until you reach the pause menu for some reason.

The golf side isn't even consistent. You can pull your club back all the way at a particular angle and you'll be just short and go into a hazard. You'll reset to the same spot. You pull your club back all the way and barely adjust the angle so you won't be short and you overshoot it entirely.

If you want to make an artsy golf game, that's fine, you can do it. But the golfing is bad and there are so many tedious time wasting animations for no reason that I didn't even want to muscle through to the end of the game. There's a total of 35 holes and I ended up giving up at hole 15 because it wasn't fun.

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Golf Club Wasteland is a casual golf/puzzle game set in the wastelands of Earth.

Since the ecological disaster on Earth, humans have colonized Mars and are adjusting to life on a hostile planet. The mega rich citizens travel back to Earth to play golf in the toxic atmosphere, donning space suits and breathing apparatus.

Charlie is not rich, but has been heralded as a hero of the evacuation, and is allowed to travel back to Earth, free of charge, to play his favourite game of golf.

As he plays on the thirty-five-hole course, he listens to Radio Nostalgia, where people reminisce about life on Earth, what they miss, and how life on Mars has been so difficult.

https://youtu.be/j84TYjzcGhQ

Golf Club Wasteland is a real mixed golf bag. As a golf game it doesn’t really stand up. Its casual nature is charming, but the controls are basic, and shot taking is frustrating at times. As a puzzle game it doesn’t challenge. Routes are mostly easy to determine, and difficulty levels, in the story mode at least, are too easy. As a narrative game, there are some interesting stories of events on Earth, and some clever observations of how colonists have had to adapt on Mars, but there are equally as much boring and annoying snippets of life, which repeat after a while, and it becomes a distraction from playing golf.

If I had to give Golf Club Wasteland a golfing score then it would be a PAR. It does some things well and some things not so well. It’s like having an erratic game of golf with lots of double bogeys, but then getting three holes in one and an albatross to end up parring the course.

If you want a golf simulator then look elsewhere. This is purely a casual hit and hope type of game. There is no club selection, and the power meter is very rudimentary with no numerical figure, power bar or any indication of how far the ball will travel. With a bit of trial and error, and practice, you can start to get a feel for the swing, but it will let you down on numerous occasions. I usually prefer to use a controller but soon swapped to mouse, as using the gamepad was far too sensitive and awkward to use.

The story mode is very easy, and you have limitless shots to complete the course. Here is where you will find a more relaxed and chilled vibe. There’s no pressure, and listening to the radio commentary feels a little more harmonious.

If you want something more difficult then try the challenge and iron man modes.

My main emotion whilst playing in these arenas was frustration. There is more at risk in these modes and mistakes are costly. Numerous holes require you to precisely land on platforms in the air, and to hinder shots even further, the ball can bounce enthusiastically on hard surfaces. A misjudged shot can send you back to the beginning, as your ball bounces off something and plunges downwards to the start, along with your morale. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if I felt my skill level was to blame, but the lack of any real indication of power means it is hard to judge, and difficult to learn from your mistakes.

The reset button, which you will use a lot, is very badly designed. Instead of quickly getting you back into the action, the screen scrolls upwards to the main menu, where you select reset, and it scrolls back down to the game. This actually made me feel nauseous and I had to look away as this was happening. There are other annoying pauses in the gameplay, mostly waiting for Charlie to reach the ball to play the next shot. If the ball is far away, after using a shortcut for example, it can take him a while to navigate the buildings to get there.

The iron man mode is ridiculously difficult. Attempting to play thirty-five holes without making one mistake is a recipe for a broken window. Losing a ball returns you back to the start again, and when I say start, I mean hole ONE. Surely, nobody can complete this mode? This is likely to prevent you getting one hundred percent achievements.

https://youtu.be/JXceD7K8q-I

Holes are interesting to play, and there are some beautiful environments to witness, with remnants of civilization and equal evidence of toxicity and rebirth. Obstacles fit nicely into the wasteland theme and each course has its own story, whether that be a memory from the past, like a nightclub scene, or observations on the rich and famous, like playing on a yacht.
There are diary entries which can add a little lore to the scene and occasionally, there are some comic moments which brightens the mood.

The reason I chose this game, apart from the golf, was the promise of a decent narrative based around the collapse of civilization on Earth and the colonization of Mars. I was a little disappointed with it to be honest. There isn’t a linear tale with a start, middle and ending. The story is told in a fragmented fashion through the voices of various commentators, some which are interesting and some which are annoying and pointless. I think my main issue with the story is that it seems to be on a loop without any thought of what scene you are playing. The stories last around two or three hours and then they start to repeat themselves. I understand it would be difficult to structure this with different people taking different times to complete the course, but this made it feel disjointed in my view. When I played certain holes, I could remember the commentary about it and I thought it would have been nice if I could hear that commentary now. The radio broadcasts are a really interesting concept though, and the DJ has a nice and relaxing voice, introducing some unusual but pleasurable songs which went well with the golf playing.

I particularly liked the announcements from the health and wellbeing committee advising citizens of Mars of such things like continuing to take their bone marrow supplements or not to take showers for more than thirty seconds. It was a nice way of opening a window and looking into the lives of the colonists. I also enjoyed some of the references to the predicament we are currently in, and it felt like a warning of what could happen. Their civilization ended in 2038. There were suggestive remarks and hidden messages throughout the game. I thought that was neat.

https://youtu.be/f30NerqVDLs


Pulling your mouse back in the opposite direction controls the power, and moving your mouse sets the direction. That is all you need to do to control your golfer. It's about as basic as you can get.

There is a bit of skill in picking the best route to the hole. Sometimes there can be a shortcut or various routes to take and you can view the whole course by pressing the RMB and scrolling. Some shortcuts can half the score total, usually manifesting as a pipe leading somewhere else.

It’s golf in a wasteland, but there are some hazards you need to be aware of. Hazards include water, sand, toxic waste and even naughty squirrels, radioactive cows and swamp monsters. You need to navigate over objects, across bridges, move from platform to platform whilst avoiding these hazards.

Sometimes, you need to be precise and hit your ball against buttons to open doors or start machinery, and occasionally, environmental hazards come into play like wind strength.

Golf Club Wasteland has a lot of good ideas but the overall package was a bit disappointing. I still enjoyed most of the experience, and would still recommend on sale, but the lack of any precision hampered gameplay, and the narrative, although interesting in places, felt too unstructured and was easily lost.

Quick Score: 4/5

Notes: Very simple gameplay, extremely strong overall style and aesthetic. Biggest complaints would be the lack of dynamic map elements, Inability to skip character animations/cutscenes, and a lack of quick reset.

This is an absolutely terrible game, but a great art project. Enough to overlook the game and just focus on what is beautiful about it.

The music was fantastic and fit the culture I would expect to come from collapse of our society. The art style is on point and fantastic and feels like a wasteland.

The game though. Oh god is it a terrible terrible game.

For one you will be failing a lot, but there is no quick reset like say holding down R.

There are limited ways to complete most of the courses (not all, there is some great diversity in there) and the issue is that you have to play precisely because your swing is so incredibly underpowered and the primary gimmic is "make your ball land in this small region and hope you make it closer to the edge so you dont have to waste a swing scooting it to the edge"

For a game that requires such precision there is little in the way of knowing your angle and power outside of the bars at the bottom for strength. In addition randomly between missions some missions will half your golf strength and so you can't even develop a decent muscle memory because a portion of the missions are done at one golf strength and the others are done at a different golf strength.

It's not fun to play. I'm suffering through the game to just enjoy the art and music. I understand there is a relaxed mode of play, but I bought a game and was hoping it would be good.

Still, for the $7.50 I paid Im enjoying the experience, while hating the game

Full disclosure, I got this on sale, and for what it's worth, I think there's a decently interesting or enjoyable story here. The problem, as has been voiced by others, is that the gameplay portion of this title is poorly thought out. Unlocking backstory is done by meeting certain stroke counts, but the process of meeting those stroke limits can require multiple resets of a level, each taking about 5 seconds of hitting pause, waiting for a pan transition up to space, selecting restart and loading back in to the level again. Same goes for readying up for your next swing. The ball comes to a stop, and then you wait as your character slowly jetpacks or waddles his way over to the ball. All the while the radio keeps playing and if an interview is playing, that keeps going too. The game offers no time to just absorb the wasteland around you, not even when difficulty options are presented or you're reading diary entries. What sets me off the most, however, is the developer's response to requests that an optional keybind to skip the delay between shots or instantly restart a level be added.

Rather than say "You know what, we respect that this would be a quality of life feature for our game", they instead say it was discussed several times, it could break a single, tedious as hell achievement (Iron Will, essentially permadeath where if you go over par or your ball goes into a hazard, that's it, you start from hole 1 again), and insist that they wanted to create a game that will help the player relax and wanted to avoid hurrying up and rapid UI, and to deliver a chill experience.

Which doesn't make a damn bit of sense. You want the player to relax and not feel a need to hurry up, but yet you've created an achievement and a game mode that makes the already finnicky and annoying golf gameplay more stressful, and also said no, you can't skip the slow bits, you're playing at our pace.

It's not surprising that the first guide listed for the achievement explains an exploit that allows you to reset to the start of a level in the event that you think you might not make it, just to save you the trouble of starting over from scratch every damn time.

I was interested in the sequel to this title, The Cub, but if this is how the developer's treat basic QoL requests from their consumer base, then I'm not going to be taking another trip to this particular apocalypse.

After hearing this game recommended on Triple Click, I was eager to dive in. I love golf games and I love atmospheric storytelling even more. That said, this game fails on both counts.

The golf mechanics are extremely finicky and don't even feel repeatable to me, and that is as a veteran of dozens of golf games (both serious ones and lighter ones). It feels impossible to tell where your ball will go, and even worse, the pseudo 3D scenery makes it difficult to tell what your ball will collide with. The game also feels like it simply baits you into hitting into locations that appear to be safe, only to troll you.

As for the atmospheric storytelling... it all feels extremely heavy handed and forced. It feels like I am reading someone's bad joke book about current western society. It's less a commentary on society and more trying to get cheap laughs. And I suspect waiting for your jetpack-wielding golfer to slowly fly to your ball is infuriatingly dull, even though I suspect they were attempting to create pacing between the "action".

I could easily request a refund at this time, but I'd rather warn others to save their money rather than liberate my own.

Golf Club Wasteland is a really unique experience, blending arcade golf and post-apocalyptical exploration into a tight package with lots of atmosphere.

+Amazing soundtrack
+The radio brings a lot of worldbuilding and story in a cool, organic way
+Levels are beautiful and some have cool "hidden" tricks

-The radio is not really paced for the lenght of the gameplay and you will be hearing repeats in the last third of the game
-The hard difficulty setting is extremely punishing (if you fail, by par or by destroying the ball, the game resets), and felt really dissapointing to me because I really wanted to play it again under a harder setting but iron mode feels cheap and underdeveloped