Hole In Zero?! Designing For The Absurd In Golftacular!

Developers Justin, Luca, and Pedro from Both Good Games have announced the release of their chaotic mini-golf party game, Golftacular!, which is now available for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. Priced at $9.99, the title supports up to four players in a turn-based format where participants can choose from a cast of eccentric characters, including Tortillo, Chuck, Fin, Poop, Papa, Mama, Claude, and Frend. The game features local pass-and-play functionality for those sharing controllers, alongside a dedicated single-player experience.

The core design philosophy behind Golftacular! began with a desire to build a accessible party game. The developers settled on mini-golf as a foundation because its rules are universally understood, yet it offers a flexible canvas for mechanical experimentation. To gather inspiration, the design team analyzed numerous digital golf titles and even conducted field trips to real-world miniature golf courses. This research allowed them to catalog common obstacles and tropes, which they translated into a foundational mapping toolkit.

This toolkit featured specific obstacle archetypes designed to test different player skills. Among these were "Thread the Needle" segments, which demanded highly precise aiming for direct paths, and "Wall Rides," which required players to calculate the relationship between shot power, distance, and ramp inclines. Additionally, the team implemented "The Mixers," which are spinning hazards designed to inject a blend of timing, skill, and unpredictable physics into each round.

The developers utilized a four-phase pipeline to construct their maps, starting with 2D paper prototypes to quickly evaluate layouts. Once a concept was approved, they built bare-bones 3D models that lacked textures, non-essential walls, and complete collision detection to transition immediately into playtesting. This testing phase revealed critical design flaws; for instance, the team realized that steep hills often created frustrating, repetitive loops where players would repeatedly roll back to the start of a slope, wasting their turns in a manner reminiscent of Sisyphus.

To resolve these frustrations, the developers realized they could offer players tools beyond the traditional variables of angle and power. They began designing specific items to counteract course difficulties, such as the "Early Stop" item, which allows players to halt their ball's momentum at any time, even mid-air. This established a reciprocal design loop where course frustrations inspired new items, and those items in turn forced the developers to redesign the courses to prevent players from easily bypassing entire challenges.

This balancing act led to the addition of preventative obstacles and walls that only exist to block overpowered item shortcuts. In one early map design, the starting platform was positioned too close to the hole, allowing players to use a "Portal" item to instantly teleport to the cup without effort, forcing the team to relocate the starting platform. Despite these adjustments, observing playtesters push the boundaries of these items inspired the developers to create an entirely separate gameplay option.

The resulting Puzzle Mode serves as a single-player campaign that teaches players how to master item combinations and discover hidden shortcuts, such as achieving a "hole in zero" without ever striking the ball normally. The mode transitions from basic tutorials on traditional golf mechanics to complex challenges requiring creative item usage. It also allowed the developers to experiment with genre-bending ideas, such as extending the duration of the controllable "Run and Jump" ball item to essentially hide a 3D platformer inside a golf course.