Developer: Atomicom
Publisher: Atomicom
Platform: Switch
Tested on: Switch
House of Golf – Review
Golf games have always been a hard genre to tackle so it attracts many gamers. It’s often the minigolf titles that tend to enamor the gaming community, as they are open for many different levels, different obstacles, and wacky themes to make them interesting. House of Golf is the newest Nintendo Switch title in which you’ll be playing minigolf in different parts of a house. You’ll be trying to get a hole-in-one in the kitchen, while trying to get past a lot of toys in the children’s bedroom. While the developers played it very safe in terms of different options, House of Golf was rather charming.
Story
As expected, there is no story to be found in House of Golf. You’ll be playing in different parts of a house, where several golf courses have been set up. You can make up a story as you go as to why these people are so bored to make all kinds of constructions in their house, but other than that, you’ll find no thicker plot to explore.
Graphics
House of Golf is a very colorful and bright golfing game. You’ll be treated to five different environments, each with their specific obstacles and clutter, but many parts of the actual golf courses have been reused throughout the game. The overall graphical prowess is somewhat on the simple side, but that’s no real issue for a game such as this.
The obstacles are clear, but it’s hard to get a proper overview of the course. You can zoom out, and zoom in, but you can never get a proper overview of the course, except if you keep waiting long enough, the entire course will be shown, where the camera hovers and rotates over the course. You can’t trigger this option yourself, which is a bit annoying. There are also issues when you actually hit the ball and the camera has to follow the moving ball. More than often you don’t properly see what is going on, or don’t get a proper overview.
Sound
The sound design is nothing all too special in House of Golf. The music is somewhat relaxing of nature but also a bit monotone as the game goes on. The sound effects are simple but they do the trick. The game is fully functional, but don’t expect any whistles and bells in the sound department to spruce things up.
Gameplay
House of Golf is, as the name states, a golf game in which you’ll have to play through many different (small) courses that are spread throughout a house. You’ll have five different areas to explore, namely the lounge, the kitchen, the garage, the attic, and the bedroom. These five rooms all have three difficulty levels and nine levels per difficulty. This means that the game has a whopping 135 levels to plow through. While you’ll quickly play through most of the levels, it’s quite challenging to get a gold star on each of the different courses.
The controls feel fairly okay for the game, but nailing precise movements can be a bit tricky as the sticks are really sensitive. That being said, as we mentioned in the graphics portion of the game, the camera angles are sometimes tedious to work with. It’s very hard to get a proper overview of the track and this makes it somewhat a case of trial and error in some scenarios to properly know where you’re going to end up, or what is behind a specific corner and so on. That being said, thanks to the short nature of the tracks, it’s simply a matter of trying a shot and restarting the course if you’re playing single matches. You can also opt to play a championship, which is a full course of nine tracks of a specific room and difficulty level.
The game creates an incentive to keep playing, as you can unlock different decals for the golf ball. You can also play with up to six players, by passing along the controller after you’ve set up the amount of participating players.
Conclusion
House of Golf is one of those rather simplistic games that hit the nail on the head. While this game will not be taking home any awards, the solid gameplay and the number of different courses make this game more than just a bite-sized snack. This is a great title to play in-between bigger titles or to play with friends. The incentive to unlock some extra content is nice, but won’t be the game’s selling point.
House of Golf - Review,
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