In an endless search to find fun co-op games to serve as a medium for social interaction, I’ve come across my fair share of good ones. I even wrote an article about some of them! While I’ve predominately turned to recently released games, recently a somewhat older game caught my attention. Golf With Your Friends, developed by Team17 and Blacklight Interactive was released in 2016 but continues to be the premier mini-golf simulator for those who crave zany experiences and aren’t quite sticklers when it comes to laws of physics.
Despite it being great fun from a casual standpoint, this game might not appeal to tried and true golf enthusiasts. As someone who would consider a double bogey a success, I found the game to be great fun, even if it has some technical inaccuracies The controls are incredibly simple and can be picked up easily within the first minute of playing, which makes the game fantastic for those who want something quick and easy to play with others.
In Golf With Your Friends, there are 11 themed levels with 18 holes each, and a level editor to tweak them in a seemingly endless variety of ways, with free updates occasionally adding more courses. You aren’t bound to only using a traditional golf ball either! You can change the entire way a course feels through simply changing to one of the other game modes. My personal favorite is the “dunk” mode, which changes the holes into hoops and lets you bounce around the courses using a basketball in lieu of a golf ball.
Golf With Your Friends can be played alone, and is still delightfully fun, but the most joy truly comes from playing the game as intended, with up to 12 friends. It can get pretty chaotic pretty quickly, especially if you opt to play the game with its default timers which make for pretty fast-paced rounds. Although Golf With Your Friends has a scoreboard, games can really be as lax or competitive as you want. You can extend the amount of time allotted to each hole, or give your friends more leeway and adjust the maximum strike limit. Alternatively, you could adjust the gravity of your course or introduce other challenges to make the game a bit more competitive and frustrating.
Much of the joy Golf With Your Friends brings to the table is found in its sheer irreverent and quirky details. Each of the courses has a unique theme with special features ranging from black holes to ghosts that impact how your golfing experience pans out. You can also customize your golf ball with accessories to differentiate it from your friends. I thought this feature was a little silly, but I began to see the merits when I unlocked a T. Rex skull to adorn my golf ball.
Golf With Your Friends is, overall, a fun game to play even without friends. I can easily see it becoming a fast favorite. With the potential to be as competitive or casual as you’d like, it satisfies a number of potential interests for you and your friends.
Golf With Your Friends is currently available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It can be purchased for $14.99 on Steam and the Playstation Store, and $19.99 on the Microsoft Store and Nintendo eShop.
