Under Par Golf Architect

Having played golf hole design games for 20 years, this is the best one since Sid Meier's SimGolf. Very fun game, you can design relatively complex holes with very little. I would like slightly more variety, in the greens and the edges of the traps (bunkers and water). I think with a few small developments, this would go from a 7/10 to a 9/10 easily. I hope they continue to develop.

This game has some wonderful things going for it, the map and unlocks make for a good story and the golfer requests on each level bring a fun twist, though I found them too often in line with the same goals. This game scratches an itch similar to Age of Mythology and Pharaoh-style tile-based games with sim, plus those 2010 mobile games like GameDevStory or MallTycoonStory. The freedom and creativity combined with the game mechanics lead to some pretty cool things you can do. Even playing the game is entertaining, though I find the mechanics a little too boring. This game could be even better, and with updates still coming I hope those lead to more revenue for the developer and more opportunities to potentially develop a sequel with more capabilities. What more capabilities would you ask for, you may ask? Here's my wishlist of changes/additions/improvements whatever they are: 1. We need events happening to us. The build-playtest-adjust-repeat game mechanics are fundamentally great, but we need more things... happening. The best way to put it is it feels like every day is the same. Days are a great opportunity to trigger events that happen to the player. What kind of events? They could change the course (think wildlife, meteorological events, nature activists, etc). These events could impact the course and require you to rebuild things at cost (minor scale, major scale things, 1x1-5x5 area course changes). Water also should not necessarily be static. Every day is an ample trigger opportunity with randomization. Would be amazing if these things could be turned on/off in settings per map save. 2. Greens design granularity. We need to go deeper. the only limiting factor to green design is this: I am limited to the same terraforming mechanics as every other surface. Greens need to be even more controllable in terms of vertical adjustments. Think adding a waypoint halfway between the current levels. If you could get 3 nodes for every current 1 node adjustment, you could have flat enough surfaces to let greens be on non-flat surfaces. This would be extreme. I also wonder how the engine would handle that extra node, and how each green tile would need to be able to store that extra granularity, what happens to the height when green is erased that has been adjusted, etc, are all complicated questions I don't have great answers to, but I would like to see it. 3. Building-specific gameplay mechanics relevant to unlocks. Say I get a new shirt or hat, why can't I stock it in my shop? It should have a cost and have a sale price I can control, etc. Let customers spend more money based on membership level, tolerate your higher pricing, etc. Having these buildings for style, the monetary benefit, etc, is great but having them do something would be cool, even if it's only 1 building. I'd love to see similar customization for food trucks/restaurant. 4. I want to be able to build custom practice putting greens, or ranges. You've already got the perfect tall-net-fence asset already to do some cool stuff! 5. Golfers arriving should check in at the pro-shop, loiter around the shop, or use the bathroom sometimes before playing. There should be a better way to handle arrivals so queues don't stack up immediately. Getting the course going and building plenty of holes fixes it, but that should scale nicer. 6. Rules of golf. I want stakes/ability to determine if it's a drop zone, nearest point of relief with a proper distance away applied in the away-from-the-hole direction, and better handling of lost balls (retee instead of always playing from where the ball went out. If I land on the green and the ball slopes off into the water, I shouldn't be putting on the green if I was hitting onto the green. 7. Finally, for playing the game, there are plenty of changes I could suggest. I think it would be much better if the shot preview stuff was inaccurate until you got your accuracy stat up. Putting is not my favorite but I can live with it, mostly be…

I have really enjoyed my time in this game, it has provided what I was looking for. It lacks a fair bit of depth and polish of the big games of the genre, such as those about hospitals or museums. It ranks squarely in the lower middle for depth. Where this game shines is that it is easy to play, easy to have fun and very relaxing to build what you want. What it misses is the challenge, completing it is very easy and you have to choose to play the game or just "sandbox" it with side quests like I do. Do buy if you want a relaxed and laid back sandbox type experience, avoid if you want a deep challenging architect type game.