So I clicked around and landed on this one – the screen shots made it look like maybe a puzzle game, so I was excited. Give me some nice simple physics problems portal style, please!
The game opens with no storyline, just a basic intro page telling you the controls (WASD move, space bar jump, mouse camera angle) and that’s it. I jump in and the opening list suggests a pretty deep lineup of maps. Nice.
Hopping in, I am presented with a polygon world where I’m a golf ball that appears to be trying to smack a bunch of piles of white garbage in an open world and then speed off to the exit.
It controls about how you’d expect – you’re an awkward, slow turning ball. You can hop to slow yourself down or settle on a target. You can stop, you can turn around. You’re basically in a link/mario 3d universe of green to explore, except you’re on an impossibly tight timer and you’re racing to a finish line.
I found a person at a camp fire for some reason. I was expecting a giant exclamation point on his head and a long speech about how I have to cleanse the forest of these killer squares. But nope, he just stands there, keeping warm as a giant sentient golf ball warbles by.
In the top left you can see a counter for the number of targets you have to hit. There are also gold, silver and bronze medal completion times.
Except 1) There are zero indicators anywhere about where the targets are.
This game has a golf/race car game schizophrenia. It wants you to race through in some linear path from one end to the other, but the world is completely open with few path clues. Sometimes I fell off gigantic cliffs, only to be presented with a green valley I could continue to durdle around in. Is there something down here? I didn’t die? Wtf is happening?
2) The targets are extremely hard to hit. Fine, I didn’t play long to practice, but the controls are basic. Get going at any speed and you either have to be perfectly aligned or you swerve right past them. Some targets are in the air off wide jumps, and lining up with them in any meaningful way while gaining speed is a pain in the ass.
3) There are no real requirements? I hit like 2/12 targets on one run and then walked into the finish line and it accepted me. Okay.
It seems like they put a lot of effort into making big, interesting landscapes. But the actual game is basic and not very well polished. The players are left with little direction and the worlds are too open to get any of the kind of rhythm you get with a tight racing map. It feels more like a programming exercise than a completed game.
D+ and I aint finishin’ this clunker sry.