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Title: Cursed to play golf
Developer: Chuhai Labs
Publishers: Thunderful Group, Thunderful Publishing
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 5
Publication date: August 18, 2022

Cursed to Golf may look like just a 2D platformer from the outside, but the Rouge-esque game puts together a great story that really puts a spin on the game of golf. Cursed to Golf is a unique “Golf-like” game that will keep you entertained for hours. Just like any other Rougelike game, you can expect something different every time you play a round of golf. It really does live up to the fact that the hole-in-one Chuhai Labs aspired to it.

In Cursed to Golf, your journey to become the world’s best golfer begins. You control a golfer called “The Champ”. You are on the 18th hole of the championship and all you have to do is reach the last hole to become the GOAT (the greatest golfer of all time). As you make your way through the last hole, a storm begins to brew. It is now a race against the storm. Just before you are able to complete your last hole and win the championship, lightning strikes and kills The Champ. The Champ is then in Golf Purgatory after he dies!

When you make your way to Golf Purgatory, you are not alone. You will be greeted by another golfer named The Scotsman. The Scotsman is basically your right-hand man as he begins to explain everything that just happened and why The Champ ended up in Golf Purgatory. The Scot also explains what Golf Purgatory has to offer and why golfing there is very different.

The main goal of Cursed to Golf is to ascend back to the real world and get out of Golf Purgatory. To do that, you’ll need to overcome 18 holes full of challenges, curses, traps and more to rise back to the top.

The dialogue in this game will make you become attached to each of the characters you encounter during the journey. Chuhai Labs does a great job of building that bond between each of the characters and it genuinely makes you curious about what new characters you’ll meet along the way.

Before embarking on your journey to ascension, spawn at the Eterni-Tee shop. Here you can buy ace cards, store ace cards in your card folder and even change your character’s outfit. As you progress through the game you will find yourself using this store a lot. There’s a lot of simplicity when it comes to the Eterni-Tee store, which is great. You never want to overcomplicate the smaller aspects of a video game.

Changing your outfit is another cool part of the game. Customization is king in today’s video game world. There are quite a few options to choose from. However, the only thing I was a little disappointed with was the fact that there was no option to buy additional outfits using your in-game currency. I think the ability to buy outfits for The Champ with money you earn during the game would be a nice feature to add for all the leftover money you end up never using.

Cursed to Golf also has traps and obstacles along each of their courses. At no point do they feel too much. This game has the right level of difficulty that will make you want to perfect your gameplay and conquer Golf Purgatory. Every mistake you end up making allows you to experiment with something else until you get it right. It’s not too hard and not too hard and after playing a few times you get the hang of it pretty quickly.

The music and visuals were also very well done. The main song that appears in the game is constantly finding its way to get stuck in my head. The visuals were also very well done and the old school style look is perfect for this kind of game.

The lengths of each hole can sometimes be very long. There are times when it feels like you’ve been standing on a hole forever. Every once in a while, length is a great thing to have in a video game. However, with 18 holes to try and conquer, the length of some holes sometimes feels like it drags on a bit. There’s nothing worse than failing on the 15th or 16th hole, after taking a few hours to get to that point, just the restart at the start.

As you would expect from a Roguelike genre video game, defeat only makes you want to play the game over and over again. Each round you play takes a fair amount of time to get through all 18 holes. If you fail, you go back to hole one and have to start over. The music, characters and just the right level of difficulty make it worth playing again.

All in all, I truly believe Chuhai Labs has done a fantastic job of not only putting a spin on golf, but also putting a spin on the Roguelike genre. Despite not having enough customization options and some holes being very long, Cursed to Golf really steps up to the Fairway and is a hole-in-one experience that everyone should try.

Cursed to Golf Score: 8.0/10

Cursed to Golf really takes golf to the next level. The wide variety of holes, traps and ace cards will make you want to play this game again and again. With a game of golf taking a risk to join the Roguelike genre, it swung and certainly didn’t miss. You will find yourself playing Cursed to Golf many times so you can finally see if you can conquer Golf Purgatory and rise back to the real world.

A copy of this game has been provided to App Trigger for this review. All scores are ranked on 10, in increments of 0.5. Click here to learn more about our rating policy.