Really interesting game

[Polaris2013]

I really like the concept and the art style, and also enjoy roguelikes, but playing this game just isn't fun to me.

It's not so much the difficulty or the balance or anything like that, but rather it's the physical process of going thru the game's actions is so laborious and slow that it doesn't feel like it delivers on the promise of a good golfing game. It's more of a strategy game with a golf veneer. What I was hoping for was a golfing game with strategy elements. I hope that demonstrates the subtlety of the difference.

I'm going to use an analogy. This game feels like Diablo 1. If you've read the postmortem of Diablo 2, the developers said it only took a single day of programming to change the overall feel from what it was in Diablo 1 (slow paced strategy) to what it was in Diablo 2 (fast paced action, but still having the strategy), and that change was to remove the grid based movement system and to remove load screens (I have no idea how they accomplished all that in a single day, but that's what they said they did in the post mortem). They commented how surprised they were that changes which seemed so minor on paper made such a big difference to the "fun factor" of the game, and that once implemented, it ended up causing massive changes the course of design Diablo 2 ended up taking because they were simply trying to maintain the "fun factor" that moving around freely had added to the game.

I think that Cursed to Golf is like Diablo 1- it is a clunky strategy game with real time elements, that was just a few (seemingly minor) tweaks away from a sea change of greater enjoyability. The refinement from Diablo 1 to Diablo 2 was to fully deliver on the Action part of the ARPG promise, and I think Cursed to Golf failed to deliver on the Action aspect in the exact same way that Diablo 1 did. And that it would only take a few (seemingly minor) tweaks for Cursed to Golf 2 to deliver on that promise as well.

The big problem here is that each stroke is 4 sequential steps (card selection, club selection, power meter, angle meter), and the holes in this game take like 10+ strokes. That's like 40+ game pauses for player input per hole. Compared to a normal golf game which has 2.5 sequential steps (*automatic* club selection which is almost always the correct choice, angle, power meter) and 3-5 strokes so ~10 game pauses for player input per hole.

This game has more than 3x as many pauses per hole as a regular golf video game, and golf games are already a bit on the slow side so they don't have much slack to afford getting slower. I know this all sounds a bit technical, but I think it really bears out in the gameplay experience on a level that can't be expressed in words, which is why I made the analogy to the difference between Diablo 1 and 2.

Addressing hole length:
I get that it's cool to have branching paths and U-turning down a tunnel takes more strokes than anything in golf, but... there's using it, and there's over-using it. This game doesn't ease the player into its idiosyncrasies, it starts with them on full throttle right from the very first hole. Not only that, it's a real flavor fail to have absolutely no content in the game that feels like it's really connected to the real world sport of golf, neither thematically nor mechanically. At least the first 3-6 holes should be way shorter, both to ease the player into the game's unique style, and also to have some content that feels, well, "golf-like".

Also the tunnels could be widened in most cases. A 3x3 tile mouth may make sense in a Mario game where the player has precise moment-to-moment control over the character, but it's kind of ridiculous in a Golf game to have as a standard element. This is like a Ring Shot- which is normally considered a high skill precision challenge rather than an ordinary course feature. I know we get multiple tries on our power and angle meter to compensate for this, but that just slows the game down even more!

Addressing number of steps to execute a swing:
Not only is the 4 step process inefficient, but it also reduces the realm for skill differentiation because the player can easily select everything exactly as they want except the last step (angle)-- thus making the game feel like a strategy game rather than feel like a golf game.

I would like to see card selection be made implicit rather than explicit (f.ex. press B while the ball is in the air and if you have a time stop card then it is used, or press Y and if you have the U turn card then it is applied, etc.). It might require a few changes to some cards, but I think it would also guide the design of cards to give them clearer identities with more uniqueness. That's down to 3 steps, and technically its a bit of a power increase for players, but if you think about what kind of power it gives players it's mainly to avoid situations that feel frustrating because you chose the wrong card on the swing or forgot to activate the card or whatever.

Getting it down the last 0.5 steps like in a typical golf game is a bit trickier because we're down to the same choices and same mechanisms to make those choices as a typical golf game, EXCEPT that there is no way to algorithmically select an optimal club in this game. Thus, that half step can't be easily saved without taking some risks. However, since this game is a 2D side perspective rather than a 3D overhead perspective I think it may actually be possible to combine power and angle into a single action since there is 1 less spatial dimension. It could definitely could be done with a dual stick gamepad, at least. M+KB might be a bit kludgey, but a similar principle could be applied, and the game does already recommend a gamepad.

Conclusion:
This game has a great art style, unique premise, and interesting level design. Unfortunately it's just a chore to play. I'm getting 10 free games per month now from various services, and it's a real shame to see something with so much potential not be worth my time because it plays so poorly. Looking forward to Cursed for Golf 2 (or else I wouldn't have gone over how to fix all these issues), but this game is cooked.

[VintenDio]

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