Cursed to Golf

I went into Cursed to Golf expecting a quirky sports novelty, and came out the other side having lost an entire evening to its purgatorial fairways. What Chuhai Labs built here sits somewhere between a 2D precision platformer, a roguelike, and a golf game with a genuinely funny script, and the combination clicks more often than it has any right to. The core loop is tight and legible even for players who have never touched a golf sim. You get five shots per hole to sink the ball, and you top up your stroke count by smashing gold and silver Shot Idols scattered around each side-scrolling course. Gold idols hand you four shots, silver two, so route planning through each hole is a real decision, not busywork. Your bag holds just three clubs: a driver for distance, an iron for mid-range, and a wedge for short scrambles. Shots are timed with two button presses, one for power and one for direction, and a visible flight arc tells you exactly where the ball is heading before you commit. That last bit matters a lot: the game rewards skill, not luck, so when you botch a shot it is entirely on you. Adding spin after the ball is airborne, tapping and steering with the stick, lets you coax shots around corners in ways that feel genuinely satisfying once it clicks. The Ace Cards are where the game opens up properly. Over 20 of them in the base game, plus Golf Pins added in a post-launch update as passive run starters, cover everything from mulligans and U-Turns to Rocketball, portals, and a card that lets the ball phase through solid walls. Stringing two or three cards together to thread a ball through an obstacle course you previously spent ten shots on is the kind of moment that makes you pump a fist at a screen alone at midnight. Four biomes divide the roughly 70-plus predesigned holes, drawn randomly each run so the order shifts constantly. Grassy countryside, desert, caverns, and a fiery endgame area each bring their own hazards, including teleporters, TNT blocks, spike pits, and fans that redirect the ball mid-flight. Boss battles at the end of each biome are a standout addition: you race a ghost caddie to the hole, managing your stroke count while trying to stun your opponent using special idols. Beating a boss permanently removes them from future runs, which is one of the few pieces of soft meta-progression on offer. That stinginess with progression is the game's clearest design fault. Die on hole 14 and you restart from hole 1. There is a checkpoint flag system that gives you a limited safety net, but it feels like a footnote rather than a proper difficulty slider. Players who expect the modern roguelite rhythm of gradual unlocks and persistent buffs between runs will find it cold here. The lack of camera zoom when a driver sends the ball rocketing off-screen is a real annoyance too, and some runs can feel decided more by card luck than skill in the early holes. None of that changes the fact that the shot-to-shot gameplay is genuinely excellent. The chiptune soundtrack from Mark Sparling, who also scored A Short Hike, fits the slightly spooky pixel art aesthetic perfectly without becoming grating over long sessions. Controller support is solid and this is a gamepad-first experience all the way. Arcade stick? Fine in a pinch. Racing wheel? Please do not. There is no local co-op or split-screen to speak of, so the "four friends on the couch" crowd will need to pass the pad and take turns, which honestly works fine given the run-based structure. Accessibility-wise the timing windows are forgiving enough that casual players can get a foothold, but the permadeath difficulty spike is real and will shed a chunk of newcomers before they hit the back nine.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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