I like everything about this game besides the gameplay, but it's a short enough experience I can let it slide.

Game looks and sounds fantastic, there's a surprising amount of lore and storytelling for a basic 2d mini golf.
Loved the radio station! It was haunting and chill, really uplifted the whole thing.

I played on Switch and got frosrated fairly quickly, even on low sensitivity it was hard to aim and it like the one mechanic the game have. Oddly there's no touch controls at all.
About half way through I switched to story mode and didn't look back.

The premise of this Golf Club Wasteland is so intriguing. Earth is no longer inhabitable, so the ultra-rich were flown to Mars leaving the rest of the population to die out. Now Earth has been turned into a golf course for the ultra-rich to visit at their leisure. This raises so many questions as to what went on and the developers have done a fantastic job of weaving a narrative into the experience. This is done primarily through a radio station that plays in the background throughout the game. It plays some fantastic diverse tracks, that all have a futuristic twist. Between these tracks, fascinating stories are told by the survivors, helping piece together an idea of what went so wrong on Earth and how the rich on Mars live now. Short cutscenes, text in between levels and diary entries add to this world building. These are really clever ways of spoon-feeding insights without being too direct with the player.

Unfortunately, the golf gameplay itself is pretty basic. All you can do is control the angle and power of your shots. I wish more layers had been added, either with different abilities and clubs or via more varied environmental factors such as weather conditions which impact your shots. There’s nothing wrong with the gameplay, it just feels like a lot more could have been done here. The actual courses you play on have a nice aesthetic, being quite varied and having lots of nice details that feed into the world building and atmosphere. Though these can all be finished within two hours. It would have been great to have a level select, more courses or even challenges to add a bit of replayability.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Golf Club Wasteland. The narrative and radio station were outstanding, completely immersing me in the world that the developers have created. There were some missed opportunities with the gameplay, but regardless if what I described sounds interesting to you, I’d definitely recommend checking this out.

2021 Ranked

Huh.

I was not having a great time while I played Golf Club: Wasteland. The game is slow in everything it does. Having to watch the player character physically move to the ball's location after every shot was mind-numbing. I was aware that all the downtime was meant to focus my attention on the radio station that plays throughout the game's runtime (which clearly received a ton of effort and care from the development team), but all the clever social commentary and worldbuilding was absolutely not enough to make up for the controls.

This is not a great golf game. It will definitely land somewhere near the bottom of my "Weird Golf Games RANKED" list simply because the golfing is not fun. Aiming and judging distance are both imprecise and felt like guesswork each time. Combine that with unclear terrain effects that seemed to alter surface friction and driving distance at random, and you've got yourself a frustrating time. It was never difficult, it just felt like slapping a ball around with a pool noodle, hoping it'd eventually go where i was aiming. The only thing that kept me from tapping out after ten holes was realizing there were only 35 of them in the entire game. Might as well finish it if it's that short, right?

Through the rest of the game, I found some interesting level design, some chuckle-worthy logos and graffiti messages, but the golf always felt bad. The stellar radio station recordings were carrying the whole game. Soon enough, the 35th hole was over, and there was a brief cutscene. It was pretty much what I had expected it would be based on what had transpired up until that point, and didn't really do anything for me. While the credits rolled, I debated whether to rate this 2 or 2.5 stars.

But after the credits, an epilogue titled "Charlie's Odyssey" appeared in the form of a storybook. About 50 illustrated pages detailing the character's story, including previously-unseen backstory that occurred before the game's beginning as well as an alternate angle on the game's events. Before reading that epilogue, I felt utterly and cynically nonplussed by Golf Club: Wasteland's story. Yet somehow, this final straightforward telling of the story I had just experienced completely recontextualized the whole thing for me. It retroactively made me appreciate what I had played.

Now, I have no idea if this epilogue was added out of necessity or simply because the devs liked the idea, but without Charlie's Odyssey, the whole package would not have landed for me. This is a completely unique experience for me, where a game is saved by its coda. I went from dislike to appreciation in just under 55 pages. What a weird thing!

🎮 Platform: PS5
⌚ Time to finish - 5h (90% complete - one trophy - finish without ever loosing the ball was not completed. There are ways to quit the game before ball fails but that sounds not fun at all and already mini golfing is not a precise art ).
🤬Difficulty - easy. Some shots were tricky and frustrating but nothing you can't figure out. Impossible if you go for the plat without quitting the game before failure and restarting.
🌄Graphics – Fitting and pleasant. Its mini golf levels.
🌦 Atmosphere – Great. I really enjoyed the soundtrack which added alot. I really did feel like i was golfing on a post-apocalyptical earth.
📚 Main Story / Characters – Simple and touching main story. Twist expected very early on but still enjoyed the simple premise.
🤺 Combat – None. Although when the ball didn't go where i wanted i wanted to blow it up :)
🧭 Side Activities / Exploration –These were fun to do. I enjoyed all the side exploration which often resulted in trophy. You will likely need a guide to discover them but they were fun and silly to do.
🚗 Movement/Physics – Mostly fine. You do have to play with the arcs and pressure each level. But in general i got use to it. I think there were 3-5/33 frustrating holes total.
📣 Voice acting – none.
🥇 Best thing about the game - Soundtrack
👎 Worst thing about the game - none, maybe the no ball loss trophy but its optional.
💡Final Thoughts:

Simple mini golf game with a great sound track and nothing more. If you don't enjoy mini golf you won't like this game. At least get the soundtrack and listen to it.

Bem provável que entre em um possível top 10 meu de fim de ano, por mais que ele apresente um loop simples de mecânica, é uma boa repetição, o jogo é bonito tem uma trilha sonora que talvez seja seu ponto mais alto, e ainda por cima é curtinho, só teria gostado mais se fosse um pouco mais curto, tem um momento que ele da a entender que vai terminar, mas continua, se terminasse ali, pessoalmente acharia melhor, mas enfim, o jogo é lindo e a trilha sonora é maravilhosa a ideia da radio é ótima e a historia por mais que pouco presente também não deixa a desejar.