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