Stick Golf review

Stick Golf for iPhone is a 2D golf platformer from noodlecake games that combines simple colorful graphics with insane multi-level golf courses of the future. You don’t need a tutorial to figure out how to play this game. You just tap on “Go!” twice after you’ve adjusted your aim with the arrows. There are a total of 8 courses in Stick Golf that you can unlock each with 9 holes. I have to admit I’m no golfer and have as much knowledge about the game as Happy Gilmore, but the minute I started this game and hit my first ball I was hooked. It’s not complex at first so you the get a hang of it fast. The platform style gameplay is exciting in terms of the creative layouts, but also in terms of the physics.

The hole is marked with a flag, and the camera pans to show it to you in relation to where you are on the course at the start of each hole. From that point you’re back at your starting point, but you can drag up/down/left/right to browse the course and your destination. If you get lost there’s a little person button that takes you back to where you are.

Besides being able to control the power of your shot and its angle there is’t much more in terms of controls. Each level can be played in either easy more hard mode. The hard mode throws in a wind factor. The first course is a night time course with black and blue hints called Loftstrom Links. After that you’ll unlock Dapper Dunes: a desert land with water and sand. The following courses, which I’ve yet to reach are Moon Base, The Slew, Funky Town, The Cliffs, Crazy Cactus, and Handicap Forrest. Noodlecake has a note saying 4 new levels are coming too. Can’t wait!

Minimalistic sound effects match the rest of the game and provide some feedback when you hit the ball and navigate through the app. Options let you turn off sound and vibration which happens when you sink a ball. I love that there is no cheesy soundtrack music. OpenFeint profile/leaderboard is built into Stick Golf.

Few things I would love to have added to Stick Golf:
Level checkpoints would be cool. Right now if you’re on hole 5 say, and you quit the game you’ll start from hole 1 again on that level.
Zooming please? It would be nice to be able to zoom in and out of the course and see the entire playing field in one shot, even if its super tiny. Maybe its just my control freak self because I hate not seeing the entire picture. Although it does keep things a little dramatic and mysterious.
Finally I’de love to see a little bit more in terms of physics based obstacles. I haven’t gone through the entire game yet but I’m hoping to have some level of chained domino effect action like you might see in a miniature golf course.

Overall, Stick Golf gets a flat out 5 from me. It’s good old fashioned put this ball in that hole puzzle based action that never gets boring. It reminds me a lot of Angry Birds for some odd reason, maybe for its pureness. Not many games come by that are no brainers, and this is one of them. They also have an iPad version which I hope to check out next.

Here is a video demo of the Stick Golf app on the iPhone

AppSafari Rating: 5/5

AppSafari review of Stick Golf was written by Joe Seifi on July 26th, 2010 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Fun, Games, Platformer, Puzzler. Page viewed 6590 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.