Mini Touch Golf

The transition between childhood and becoming an adult has been described in various ways: toys to work, leaving home, standing on your own two feet. More prosaically, for me, the transition was marked by a switch from the revulsion of to a passion for that most unloved of vegetable: the brussel sprout. A reverse change of attitude concerning Crazy Golf, Pitch and Putt and all other forms of turf and small, white, dimpled ball occurred at a similar time.

Yes, it was a case of put down your mini-club and go out get a life instead. But while I'm waiting on the latter, it's time to head back to the crazy world of miniature putting in the touchscreen form of Mini Touch Golf.

Let's get something straight from the off, however: this is an archetypal bargain App Store game. Developed by bedroom coders, one music track plays over the 18 holes, which are rendered in a fairly mundane top-down form. This is functional entertainment at its most functional, and priced at the £1/$2-mark, why should we expect anything different?

Ladies and gentlemen, or girls and boys if you will, there is entertainment to be had.

The control method is straightforward, if basic. Whenever the ball is static and surrounded by a halo of light, you can touch it to bring up a variable length white power and direction line. The directional pressure of your finger, plus subtle sliding movement, putts the ball. It's not sophisticated by any means, but the odd mishit aside, it works. You can also zoom in and out from the green using multi-touch, too: obviously you want to be out for your early shots and then in as you get closer to the hole. It's worth noting, though, the holes do attract the ball more than real physics would suggest so you'll rarely miss near putts.

Mini Touch Golf demonstrates its lack of ambition not in its controls, but in the design of its sole 18-hole course. It's certainly not crazy – perhaps, at best, a little depressed. Regular obstacles include water features, which take you back to where you attempted your shot, sand bunkers, ramps, pipes and moving items. There's the occasional themed location, too – a haunted house, a space invader, a dinosaur – but they're not imaginatively designed.

Not that you may even see the latter half of the course due to the sticky situation on hole 13. Like threading a needle, you have to get your ball through the narrow gap past two large water features, while avoiding the swinging tail of a beaver. Experience shows this takes anything from one to 30 shots. It's effectively a lottery, but considering the ease of the other 17 holes, not one that was likely designed to be a such a song and dance along a razor's edge.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with difficulty in games, but randomness is generally frowned upon and overall that's what Mini Touch Golf reeks of. For example, my highest and lowest recorded scores varied by the huge margin of 52 shots, on a course par of 53.

Just a little bit hit and miss then.