Golf With Your Friends brings me back big time to the late 80s. You see, the idea of having a miniature golf game is not new, far from it. Back in my early days I spent a lot of time on the infamous Zany Golf. And Golf With Your Friends is basically a modern version of Zany Golf in 3D with the bells and whistles that come with modern technologies.
Miniature golf has not changed. It’s still about landing your ball in the hole with the least amount of putts. If you are not familiar with the genre, it’s like golf, without the long distance walking and the boring trees: here you have to deal with obstacles designed to be there, and a properly designed track. Just like in older minigolf games, there is no club selection (you don’t even see your character), so as far as you can tell it’s just the golf ball in various environments.
Golf with Your Friends brings some twists to the well established genre, with jetpacks, teleporters, black holes, gravity pits and boosters on the different courses. In the forest course, some parts of it involve moving logs and saws emerging from the ground, requiring very timely moves. In the spaceship zone (and others too), mini black holes will drastically change the trajectory of your ball when you come too close – which is something you can use to your advantage as well.
In the Egyptian-themed zone, you sometimes have to bounce on pillars to do a proper ricochet to get to the right spot. There’s also Worms and Escapists zones. In the Worms zone, the land is filled with mines and other explosives: travelling too close to them cause explosions which send your ball flying in unexpected directions. Mayhem! Overall, if you like the more traditional minigolf game, Forest is probably the closest you can get.
Playing alone is not too much fun, so this is really the type of game where you want to play either online or in Hot Seat Mode (local multiplayer) with friends. When I tried to find some online games, I could not find any public lobbies, so your mileage may vary. In any case, Hot Seat Mode works well if you have anyone else at home to play with. As far as I know, it would probably NOT work with Steam Remote Local Multiplayer functions since Hot Seat should appear as a single-player game in which you take turns, not a simultaneous multiplayer experience. But feel free to correct me if that is not the case.
All in all, the game is fairly well designed. It works as you expect it, nothing strange with the physics. The controls are very intuitive, the right joystick is used to set the direction and camera, the left one for adjusting the strength of your shot; it could not be much simpler. In local multiplayer you share the same controller. If you are worried about COVID19 please rub your gamepad in alcohol regularly. Also note that it’s possible to use a mouse, probably more precise and accurate overall if you prefer playing on a desk.
In the provided courses, difficulty typically increases as you reach later stages. At some point, you will no longer see where the final destination is supposed to be, and the game could do a better job of highlighting where you should go next. It’s not always clear.
I did find a few more issues. For one, in Hot Seat Mode, when switching players at every round, the camera remains in the same direction as the last player’s, instead of resetting the view to the previous player’s angle. It’s mildly annoying after a while and I think they should probably fix that.
Hot Seat Mode has another problem: when you start at the beginning, every player’s ball is in the same spot, and the balls mix up together with different colors. It’s very confusing for the first shot to understand who is who unless you check out the player’s name. I guess this shows how Hot Seat Mode did not get much love during development compared to regular online modes.
Not an issue, but the environments are mostly decorations and it feels a little weird in the aquatic world to see the ball fall on the water surface and roll further instead of entering the water with a splash. In other areas the water is a gameplay element since the game lets you make the ball jump at the press of a button as long as it keeps moving.
When you do an 18 holes course, there’s a single soundtrack based on the theme playing in the background. Thankfully they are relatively pleasant and unobtrusive, yet not very remarkable.
Golf With Your Friends comes with a very complete level editor that you can use to create your own 18 hole courses. It allows for a lot of flexibility and very precise positionning of different elements. On Steam, this also means the game benefits from the community workshop: you can find dozens of user-created maps to download in order to expand on the base content. This is exactly the right approach to make the game last forever, as long as people keep playing and making stuff for it.
On Linux, GWYF has a native client so there’s no need to mess up with anything to get it running. However, using Proton does make sense if you actually care about… performance. On my GTX1060 machine with the native client I get 30 FPS in High settings while there’s nothing remotely impressive going on. This begged the question… can Proton do better? and the answer is a resounding YES. On the very same machine, with the Windows version running on Proton, I can go up to Ultra settings and stay at 60 FPS like it’s nothing. I’m sorry to say, but with this kind of performance it’s going to be hard to give native clients a good reputation.
This is not the game of the year, but as far as party games go, it is definitely part of the Team17 catalogue next to Overcooked 2, Worms, and others. It’s got that casual, well-made vibe to it. Time to retire Zany Golf for good!
One very last comment. If you are cheap and not interested in purchasing something like GWYF, you should be aware there is a FOSS alternative called NeverPutt which is a decent introduction to the genre. Chances are it’s included in the repositories of your distro.
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A great example of how to not do performance testing. You left vsync on, it’s clear as day that you’re being locked to it. Idiotic.
I am aware of that. It still goes to show that the game cannot reach 60 fps at the same settings as native. I am on purpose not trying to do a performance benchmark with % improvement because nobody fucking cares about that. They want to know if they can reach 60 FPS. With the native version, it’s way harder than with Proton. Nothing hard to interpret here.
Yeah, really, that’s why it’s not mentioned and you acted like it was something really weird.
No, it shows that you have a vsync issue. I tested it, no issues here.
Clearly you do, as that’s what you tried to do here and did so badly.
And they can, quite easily.
So you can read minds? If I said I was aware of this, I WAS aware of this. Most people never play with Vsync Off anwyay, and this was not a benchmark as I mentioned in my above comment, simply a fact that Proton exhibits better performance.
Oh and by the way, I am not alone in reporting that: https://www.protondb.com/app/431240\
Having cognitive dissonance much?
So you can read minds? If I said I was aware of this, I WAS aware of this. Wow, that’s a really poor way to discuss it with people. I’m pointing out a clear flaw in your reporting, how it’s not even mentioned and now you’re talking like that. This is pretty shameful. Most people never play with Vsync Off anwyay No, they don’t. For an examples of people say they play with it on, there’s plenty more playing with it off. I always have it off. Oh and by the way, I am not alone in reporting that: https://www.protondb.com/app/431240\… Read more »
Which flaw in reporting? You have the exact settings pointed out on screen in both versions I tested, nothing is hidden and Vsync is clearly visible. You also claim I have issued with Vsync as if you knew exactly the details of my configuration better than myself. For your information, I can get 60 FPS no problem on the native version if I go to Medium/Low settings so there’s no Vsync issue other that poor performance on the native version. Oh, and sorry for being “hostile” when your first comment ends with “Idiotic”. You know, you could be asking questions… Read more »
You also claim I have issued with Vsync as if you knew exactly the details of my configuration better than myself. Since you failed to talk about it in the article, it was needed to be pointed out. I can get 60 FPS no problem on the native version if I go to Medium/Low settings so there’s no Vsync issue other that poor performance on the native version If you get 60fps and then suddenly 30fps with High, it’s still a vsync issue as it’s locking you to it. Jeez, it’s like you’re intentionally trying to misrepresent things because you… Read more »
> Since you failed to talk about it in the article, it was needed to be pointed out. Do I need to spell out that when I mention discrete values like 30 FPS and 60 FPS which happen to be magically aligned to regular monitor refresh rates, it’s with Vsync on? Otherwise I would have mentioned 47.34343 FPS vs 65.23232 FPS in the article. It’s pretty obvious for anyone reading this. > If you get 60fps and then suddenly 30fps with High, it’s still a vsync issue as it’s locking you to it. Sorry I don’t understand your point here.… Read more »
Since you wanted so much to see the data without Vsync, here it is:
You can see for yourself on the left, Proton on ultra settings gets 123 fps and on the right at the very same settings, I get with the native port only 63 fps.
Proton has TWICE better performance. And that’s just on 1980p, on ultrawide you get below 60FPS as I demonstrated in my video if you use native client only.
Now I believe the discussion is over?
So you’ve now done what you should have done originally, and yes if you’re using vsync when testing – it absolutely should be noted. It’s a basic level of detail.
Well, again, with that kind of attitude don’t ever expect people to support your work.
My apologies, from now on we will be more considerate as to how we approach benchmarks/performance comparisons.
Thank you cow_killer, that is the expected response. “you didn’t include vital details and explanations” -> “okay, we will do better”.
Ekianjo is a joke, who clearly has a chip on their shoulder.