The weekly Playdate releases are an interesting bunch of games. Many of them are trying some really unique twists on typical ideas, but while some of those ideas work really well, others... not so much. Executive Golf DX is one of the ones that unfortunately fall into the latter category. It's a golf game, but instead of hitting a ball across a field, you are trying to ascend or descend an office building, complete with desks, chairs, bookshevles, etc. as obstacles. This sounds like a great idea on paper, but the combination of fighting gravity along with trying to navigate through gaps in furniture makes this a tedious affair. It doesn't help that this game has no tutorial of any sort. It took me quite a long time to figure out how the power gauge worked, and I still don't think it's a good system. The entire game is very short, only eight levels taking me about 30 minutes, but I don't think I beat any level in less than several dozen hits. Even trying to align the ball with the elevator at the end of the stage often took several tries, due to the lack of precision you have. While it's not my least favorite Playdate game, I do think it's well made with good graphics and some good ideas, the core concept just isn't a strong one.

I get the sense that it's not meant to be taken seriously as a golfing game (the par scores for each level are a massive hint towards this), and is more of a analogy on the tedium of being at the office, how you can get stuck doing the same thing over and over and constantly being knocked back on any attempt you make at climbing the corporate ladder.

But then the game also has seemingly random game-y power ups, and also tracks your score and time taken. It wants to be both a fun little golf game and a parable about the pointlessness of office life but doesn't really succeed at either thanks to its limited ambition with each course (it's just more bits of furniture in the way) and imprecise swing controls. It's also quite disappointing that the crank doesn't really get much of an outing here, relegated to an alternate method of aiming or shifting the camera (both of which are already mapped to the d-pad)

The metaphor for being knocked back down might get lost but I wonder it this could have been more successful at achieving both elements of what it sets out to be if it were a top down mini-golf style game. But I can't review it for what it isn't, only what it is, and Executive Golf DX is a time-waster in every sense of the word.