Golf Kingdoms Review

Can the world of side-scrolling two-dimensional golf games have a new king? Well, Golf Kingdoms certainly tries. It plays fast and loose with some golf rules: first off, there’s no penalty for hitting the ball into a bottomless pit, which will happen a lot. Second, the courses are hardly regulation, with vertical layouts and occasional large swinging obstacles to get in the way. So, it’s hardly golf the way the Scots intended for the game to be played. However, it’s otherwise played kind of straight, as there’s no powerups or anything of the sort to use to get the ball in the hole, it’s all about setting up the shots perfectly.

While I’m often not a fan of games where pulling forward is used to aim, Golf Kingdoms actually works quite well. This is because the game not only provides a visual indicator of power and angle, but also indicators that show the exact power and angle that are being shot at. Especially being able to show the angle makes it possible to do some advanced shots. However, the game needs to lock the angle to the ground when on the green, or at least provide the option to do so.

However, the game is also extremely challenging. The game seems to realize this, as the score to unlock the next level is usually some high number over par. It’s a sign of how absurdly challenging the game is. I left the wind off, because having randomly, rapidly-shifting wind to also deal with? That’s just unfair! The game has 3 courses of 9 holes each, which isn’t particularly a lot when compared to a game like Super Stickman Golf, the current top banana of side-scrolling golf games, but the challenge level makes them potentially last longer.

Golf Kingdoms is amusing for a while; I love to see some experimentation in 2D golf games, though there could be some more variety and quantity in the courses, and having some easier ones to start off with could make the game easier to get into. Let’s see what if anything comes next.