Getting a hole in one is the pinnacle of every mini golf game, but what would a hole in zero look like? How would you even score without touching the ball? The answers we came up with sound like cheating: swapping balls with opponents, calling in airstrikes, letting your ball grow legs. They were absurd for a golf game… But we built them all anyway in Golftacular! And we’re thrilled to announce that it’s coming to Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One today!

The Golf Blueprint

We’re Justin, Luca, and Pedro from Both Good Games, and we want to share how we studied every mini-golf cliché just to allow you to cheat your way past all of them. When we decided to make a party game, mini golf kept coming back up in brainstorm sessions. As a foundation, it felt simple and familiar enough that anyone could pick it up in seconds, while having plenty of room to build new ideas onto. And the more we actually designed mini-golf courses, the more we discovered just how many different approaches we could weave into our courses.

So, once we settled on an idea, we did what every game designer has to do: we played a ton of games. We even took a field trip to actual mini golf courses for inspiration! As we trekked our way through dozens of courses, both real and virtual, we took note of every trope and obstacle that seemed of potential use.

The result was a toolbox of components that eventually defined the basis of our maps. We gave them names like “Thread the Needle”: which described sections that required precise aim for the most direct route. Or “Wall Rides”, which were ramps that required a good understanding of strength and the relationship between inclines and distance. Or simply “The Mixers”: spinning obstacles that push the ball around and strike a good balance between skill, timing, and randomness.

With our new set of tools handy, we designed our maps in four phases. First, we drew them out in 2D. These prototypes allowed us to explore ideas quickly, testing what layouts worked or not, while also creating the groundwork for phase two. Once a course layout was deemed worthy, we would quickly model a bare bones version lacking textures, nonessential walls, and even a few collisions. As soon as these maps were playable, we moved straight to playtesting.

Playtesting was essential for finding the fun, or problems, of any given course. For example, we soon found out that steep slopes you need to shoot up should be used sparingly as they often kept players stuck: undershoot and your ball rolls all the way back down, taking your turn with it. In a turn-based party game, however, we saw it become a Sisyphean task, where players had to wait a full round just to push the boulder again, possibly just to get knocked down again by another player. Every obstacle type in our toolbox, we noticed, had a “question” that it asked players to answer with their shot. And it turned out some of these possible answers could take the form of items.

That realization reframed the whole game for us. In traditional mini golf your only solutions are power and angle. Items let us hand players entirely new solutions. Rolling back down those slopes? We made Early Stop, an item that halts your ball whenever you want (Hint: your ball can stop mid-air!). We started running this loop on purpose: find the trope, name the frustration, build the item that resolves it.

Then we discovered the loop runs both ways, because items redesign your courses right back. To keep things balanced, we added some additional walls and obstacles that had no effect on regular play, but blocked some specific item skips that were just too powerful. On one early course, we placed the starting platform a little too close to the cup…. as a result anyone using the Portal item could skip straight to the cup with no thought at all (we moved the platform). Still, players were having more and more fun exploring the limits that each item could take them to.

Puzzle Mode

Through this process of designing items influenced by course design, and courses influenced by item design, we expanded Golftacular! to include an entirely different mode. Already well into development, we started building and reworking courses into levels that were dependent on the specific use-cases and combinations of items. The result is Puzzle Mode.

The puzzles help teach you the full power of items. The early levels double as a tutorial, starting simple with traditional golf mechanics, then introducing items, skips/ secrets (such as how to score a hole in zero using items) and finally teaching you the flexibility of item combinations.

As developers, puzzle mode also gave us even more room to experiment with some of the building blocks of the game. One of our first items was Run and Jump, which allows you to take direct control of your ball, walking around and jumping for five seconds. Does this mean that if we made it last 60 seconds instead, we could quietly put a 3D platforming level inside our mini golf game? You might just have to play for yourself to find out…

Golftacular!

Both Good

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

$9.99

Golftacular! is mini-golf… barely. Mix party game chaos and dumb fun with precision and strategy.

Up to 4 players take turns as Tortillo, Chuck, Fin, Poop, Papa, Mama, Claude, and Frend, each one aiming for the hole while unleashing chaos on anyone foolish enough to stand in the way.

Enjoy endless replayability with dozens of handcrafted courses and thousands of possible item combos. Items shake up everything: turn the course into your personal parkour playground or an obstacle-filled nightmare for your opponents. Call in airstrikes, play rock-paper-scissors, give your ball wings, place portals… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

FEATURES

– Items, Items, Items – Use items for game breaking abilities and combos
– Ear Candy Radio – Bumping original sound track
– Express yourself – Pick from a cast of whackos… which one are you?
– Play it your way – Play with keyboard & mouse or controllers
– Not enough controllers? No Problem! – Pass and play mode lets you share
– No friends? No problem! – Tackle challenging courses alone in single player puzzles