Designing the Absurd Hole in Golftacular
Getting a hole in one is the ultimate goal in any mini-golf game, but what happens when you aim for the impossible? What if you could score without touching the ball? The team behind Golftacular! decided to explore the absurd. They wondered what would happen if you could swap balls with opponents, call in airstrikes, or let your ball grow legs. While these ideas sounded like pure cheating, they ultimately became the foundation for a game defined by chaos, precision, and hilarious game-breaking mechanics.
The creation of Golftacular! wasn’t just about throwing balls together; it was a deep dive into the psychology of mini-golf. The designers, Justin, Luca, and Pedro from Both Good Games, began by dissecting every mini-golf cliché, collecting every obstacle and trope they could find to build a toolbox of possibilities.
To establish a solid foundation, the team undertook an inspiration trip, exploring dozens of real and virtual mini-golf courses. They meticulously noted every obstacle and pattern, transforming these observations into a set of game-breaking components. These components eventually became the basis for the course design, giving the game a unique vocabulary.
These design elements were given names that captured the essence of the chaos. There were “Thread the Needle,” sections demanding precise aim for the most direct route; “Wall Rides,” ramps that tested a player’s understanding of strength and incline; and “The Mixers,” spinning obstacles that pushed the ball around, balancing skill and randomness.
With this new arsenal of tools, the design process unfolded in four dynamic phases. They started by sketching out 2D layouts to rapidly test ideas. Next, they built bare-bones models, stripping away unnecessary details to ensure the core gameplay was functional. Finally, intensive playtesting began, where the real fun—or the real frustration—of the courses came to light.
Playtesting revealed critical flaws. For instance, steep slopes that forced players to shoot upward often left them stuck, resulting in frustrating undershoots. The team realized that every obstacle posed a question to the player, and that answers could be items. This realization completely reframed the game: instead of relying only on power and angle, players could now use items to completely redesign their solutions.
This led to the creation of game-changing items. If a player was stuck on a steep slope, they could use an item like Early Stop to halt their ball mid-air. This iterative process—finding a frustration, naming it, and then building an item to resolve it—was central to the development of Golftacular!.
The design loop ran both ways. Items influenced the course, and the course, in turn, influenced the power of the items. This led to adding additional, non-essential obstacles that could selectively block powerful item skips, ensuring that the fun remained balanced and unpredictable.
This dynamic system was expanded further with the introduction of Puzzle Mode. By building levels dependent on the specific use-cases and combinations of items, the developers created new challenges. These puzzles serve as a tutorial, guiding players from basic golf mechanics to mastering item combinations and discovering secrets, like how to achieve a hole in zero.
From chaotic course design to intricate puzzle mechanics, Golftacular! proves that sometimes the best way to design a game is to embrace the absurd and let the players find their own way through the chaos.
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