Golftacular! Launches on Xbox with Absurd Golf Mechanics

The core premise of Golftacular! challenges the fundamental constraint of mini-golf: the requirement to physically strike the ball into the hole. The development team at Both Good Games, consisting of Justin, Luca, and Pedro, set out to create a party game that felt instantly familiar yet offered deep mechanical variety. They identified mini-golf as an ideal foundation because its rules are universally understood, allowing players to pick up the controls in seconds while leaving ample room for experimental design elements. The result is a game where scoring a "hole in zero"—completing a hole without touching the ball—is not only possible but encouraged through the use of specific items.

Designing the Course Toolbox

To build the game’s foundation, the team conducted extensive research into both virtual and physical mini-golf courses. They visited real-world locations to observe common tropes and obstacles, cataloging elements that could be translated into digital mechanics. This research resulted in a standardized set of course components, each with a specific design intent. For example, "Thread the Needle" sections require precise aiming for the most direct route, while "Wall Rides" are ramps that test a player’s understanding of strength, incline, and distance. Other components, such as "The Mixers," are spinning obstacles designed to balance skill, timing, and randomness.

The course design process followed a four-phase workflow. The first phase involved 2D prototyping to quickly test layout ideas and identify which configurations worked. Once a layout was deemed viable, the team moved to phase two, creating a bare-bones 3D model without textures or non-essential walls. This allowed for immediate playtesting, which the developers identified as essential for finding the "fun" or identifying problems in a course. Playtesting revealed that certain traditional obstacles, such as steep slopes that require shooting up, could become frustrating in a turn-based party context. If a player undershot, the ball would roll back down, wasting their turn. In a multiplayer setting, this created a "Sisyphean task" where players might wait a full round to try again, only to be knocked down by an opponent.

Items as Mechanical Solutions

The frustration identified during playtesting led to a pivotal design realization: every obstacle type asks a specific question that the player must answer with their shot. The team decided that some of these answers could take the form of items. This reframed the game’s mechanics, moving beyond the traditional binary of power and angle. Items provided entirely new solutions to course problems. For instance, to address the issue of steep slopes, the team created the "Early Stop" item, which allows a player to halt their ball at will, including mid-air. This established a design loop: find the trope, name the frustration, and build the item that resolves it.

However, the relationship between items and courses proved to be bidirectional. Items began to redesign the courses themselves. To maintain balance, the developers added additional walls and obstacles that had no effect on regular play but specifically blocked certain item skips that were too powerful. One notable example involved an early course where the starting platform was placed too close to the cup. This allowed players using the "Portal" item to skip directly to the hole with no effort. The team corrected this by moving the platform, but the incident highlighted how players were increasingly exploring the limits of what items could achieve.

Puzzle Mode and Experimental Mechanics

The interplay between item design and course design eventually led to the creation of a distinct single-player mode: Puzzle Mode. Already well into development, the team began reworking courses into levels that depended on specific item use-cases and combinations. This mode serves a dual purpose: it teaches players the full power of the item system and provides a space for more experimental mechanics. The early levels function as a tutorial, starting with traditional golf mechanics before introducing items, skips, and secrets, such as how to score a hole in zero. The mode ultimately teaches the flexibility of combining items to solve complex puzzles.

Puzzle Mode also allowed the developers to experiment with building blocks that might not fit into the party game structure. One such experiment was the "Run and Jump" item, which allows a player to take direct control of their ball, walking and jumping for five seconds. The developers noted that if this duration were extended to 60 seconds, it could effectively create a 3D platforming level within the mini-golf framework. This level of mechanical flexibility is central to the game’s identity, offering thousands of possible item combinations and endless replayability.

Golftacular! supports up to four players in local multiplayer, featuring a cast of characters including Tortillo, Chuck, Fin, Poop, Papa, Mama, Claude, and Frend. The game includes dozens of handcrafted courses and emphasizes chaotic fun over strict precision. Players can use items to turn the course into a parkour playground or an obstacle-filled nightmare for opponents, with abilities ranging from calling in airstrikes to playing rock-paper-scissors. The title is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox on PC for $9.99, supporting both keyboard and mouse and controller inputs, with a pass-and-play mode for shared controllers.