F**k You, Desert Golfing, aka The Worst Best Game In The World

Desert Golfing is what happens when someone captures the very best in mobile gaming and twists it into something terrible. That’s also incredible. And awful.

There’s not much to Desert Golfing, and that’s part of the appeal. It’s a 2D golf game that you control using a direction/inertia system like that found in Worms or Angry Birds.

Only, there are no “courses”. Just a single course that goes on forever. And that single course has no pars, no birdies, no eagles, it just slowly adds up every shot you take and then, at the end of the hole, adds it to your overall tally. A tally that doesn’t really do much of anything, since the game has no leaderboards (I couldn’t find any on Android, but there are some on iOS). It doesn’t even have a menu button.

It’s like trapping you in the high score equivalent of “I have no mouth but I must scream”. The only metrics you have in the entire game (aside from changes to the colour palette) are a score and a hole counter.

And if you think you can just close the game and start again to somehow “improve” a score that means nothing, nope. You’re locked in. There is no escape from the record of mistakes you’ve made that only you know you’ve made.

Here’s what a design decision like that does to people.

You don’t, Chris. You don’t

Probably the best thing about Desert Golfing, though, which in keeping with the theme is also the worst thing, is the game’s physics. Since you’re in the desert, the ground is made up of sand. Sand is your mortal enemy in “normal” golf games for a reason. It’s so cruel. It subverts your instincts on how you think a ball will travel at a certain speed or elevation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7M4uAHpc-8

By giving you nothing but sand, your progress through Desert Golfing is torture. And yet…the sand modelling is so good, getting the stickiness of it just right, that every time you feel like throwing your phone down and spitting on it, you remember that because the sand is consistent, it can work with you, not just against you. You can learn it, no matter how many shots it will take.

Desert Golfing is $1.99 on iOSand $0.99 on Android. It’s awesome/the worst. Don’t believe me? Ask Ian, he gets it. He’s been through Desert Golfing hell, like you undoubtedly will, and come out the other side.