Neon Mini Golf

Aim, bank, and finesse your way through an eighteen-hole neon course.

Neon Mini Golf

A top-down mini golf round of 18 holes. There is a single course, and everyone plays the same holes in the same order. Nothing is random: hit from the same spot with the same direction and power and the ball stops in the same place every time. Only on holes with moving blocks does your timing enter into it. Rankings go by fewest total strokes, and par for the round is 60.

Par runs from 2 to 5. The first hole, OPENER, is a straight par 2. After that the course introduces a dogleg, a gate, sand, an island ringed by water, a sliding block and a slope, one at a time, and the last hole, FINALE, throws water, sand, a slope and a moving block at you together. FINALE is the only par 5.

Taking a shot

Press anywhere on the screen, drag and release. The ball flies opposite to the way you dragged, like a slingshot. Drag length is power, and about 190 pixels gives full power; an aiming line and a power bar show what you are about to hit. A drag shorter than 12 pixels counts as a whiff and costs no stroke. You cannot line up the next shot while the ball is still rolling.

What is on the course

Walls return the ball with a little speed lost, so bank shots off a wall are the short way round on several holes. Sand stops the ball more than four times faster than the green. Slopes keep pushing the ball in the direction of their arrows, and moving blocks travel back and forth over a fixed range at a steady speed.

Water costs a one-stroke penalty and puts the ball back where you last hit from. A ball crossing the cup too fast skips over it instead of dropping. Rimming out on a hard long putt happens more often than you would think, so take some pace off near the hole.

Stroke limits and records

Reach 10 strokes on a hole and the hole is scored as 10 and you move on. If the round total reaches 90, the round ends on the spot and does not count as finished, even on the 18th. Only rounds that complete all 18 holes post a total to the leaderboard; a round that ends early or that you quit submits nothing.

After each hole you see how you did against par: hole in one, birdie for one under, eagle for two under, bogey for one over and double bogey for two over. The start screen shows your best round on this device along with how far it was from par, and your best score on each hole is saved separately.

Controls

Mouse and touch both use the same press, drag and release. Esc pauses, Q while paused leaves to the menu without a result, and M toggles sound. Scores drop as you learn the course, so the surest practice is remembering where you started a shot that worked and how far you dragged.