Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch!

With Let's Golf 3D already proving a decent channel for your Nintendo 3DS golfing needs, subsequent golfing releases really need to up their game if they want to break par.

Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! comes at it from a different angle, taking the action to the crazy golf course instead of the wide open plains.

While we have no qualms with the content provided, the way it's presented turns a potentially great eShop release into a frustrating one.

Windmilling around

With over 80 courses to play through, set across three areas of the world, Minigolf Touch gets off to a great start.

The first levels are easy enough, and allow you to get into the controls steadily. But it becomes apparent early on that the touch controls are hopeless, failing to provide the necessary precision in a game about perfect aiming. Fortunately, you can use button controls, and these work swimmingly.

The level design is definitely a stand-out, with all the different course layouts you'd imagine from a game of mini-golf, and then some really crazy ones later into the game.

There's plenty of content to play through, too, as a series of 'Trick Shot' modes join the main campaign, and a shop allows you to buy more courses and better clubs with your coins.

Putt off

However, for some reason developer Shin'en Multimedia has tried at every available moment to restrict the way you play, leaving the entire affair feeling pointlessly grindy.

The biggest hindrance is the game's insistence that if you don't get the ball close enough to the hole you're 'out of bounds' and must start again all the way from the tee, no matter where the ball stopped.

This is especially frustrating if you manage to get the ball all the way to the hole, miss it by a centimetre, then watch as it bounces off a wall and back up the path it came from - again, labelling it 'out of bounds'. It's simply not in the spirit of mini-golf.

Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! is also incredibly stingy with coins, and you'll have to play through old courses several times over to unlock further courses. There's no doubt in our minds that the majority of players won't even see the last few courses as they'll be so bored of playing the few courses over and over again.

The lack of any sort of multiplayer is the final blow, rendering Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! one of the lesser experiences currently found in the eShop.

It's shame, as it has so much potential, and technically the content on show is formidable. If only it hadn't been butchered to death by silly rules and ridiculous methods for elongating play time.

Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch!

With care and attention, Fun! Fun! Minigolf Touch! could have been great, but instead it feels restricted and poorly implemented
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.