You tend to find a lot of stuff to do while you’re bored; maybe that involves scrolling on your phone down a Wikipedia rabbit hole or just watching videos to pass the time. You could also be someone who is waiting to get into a game, so to pass the time in the queue, you play another game on your phone that ended taking up so much of your attention that when you get past the queue, you turn off your system and went back to your phone. That’s the situation I found myself in this past weekend, stuck in the Diablo queue, I decided to download a game from Apple Arcade that I’ve heard many good things about to help pass the time so I don’t lose my mind staring at the hell gate timer on the TV, and I ended up getting very addicted to it, that being What the Golf.
What the Golf is a straightforward pitch; it’s a mini golf-like game for your phone where the only goal is to get the ball to the flagpole. It’s a simple setup that quickly throws any form of expectations out the window and goes into insanity. Mainly because on one course, you could be playing Golf usually and boring-like, on the next one, you could be putting a house down a mountain trying to avoid killer cars and exploding barrels that one touch will send you flying off the course, and surprisingly how much fun this is, and not knowing what is coming up next adds to that enjoyment. Also, when you think the game has thrown everything at you, something even more crazy shows ups, this game somehow manages to pay tribute to Portal and Superhot, and they don’t feel out of place.
Since this is a touch-based game, it does take a second to get a handle on the controls because, at times, they work like any other golf game on mobile, dragging behind the ball to launch it. Still, certain moments throughout the game take a lot more thinking to figure out how to get from A to B; I wouldn’t even call this a golf game; it’s more like a puzzle game at the end of the day.
I played this on my iPhone 14 Pro, and it ran perfectly. I even downloaded it to my Apple TV, and the game surprisingly works well with the Apple Remote, which shocked me a lot because these games on Apple TV tend to only work with a controller in mind. But it still felt at home on the iPhone that picking up and playing nature to this game is just perfection.
This is the rare type of game that came to me out of nowhere and ended up taking hold of my free time, and I had a giant grin on my face. The last time this happened was when I first played Untitled Goose Game, which, when making that comparison, you can see a lot of similarities in the limitations both games have and how they use it to their advantaged. So, in the end, if you are looking for something else to play on your iPhone that isn’t Candy Crush or whatever the game of the week is, then consider downloading this hidden gem, it took me only three hours to beat, and I went back and hundred presented it, and that is something I rarely do I didn’t want the experience to stop, all I can say this was the best outcome to be waiting to play Diablo all weekend long.
Score: 9 out of 10
Reviewed on iPhone 14 Pro