I hate to give this game a bad rating because the visuals of an abandoned planet is great and the slow burn story is interesting enough to distract you from the gameplay. I enjoyed picking up on subtle pieces of the story and putting it all together. The soundtrack is varied and has some songs that I'll be adding to my playlist but that's where my praise for this game ends. The gameplay is horrendously tedious by the later stages of the game, the way you have to wait 5-10 seconds each time for your character to float over to the ball is frustrating beyond means and how when you want to pause the game it slowly goes to a pause screen instead of instantly pausing. Its small things but I would definitely not recommend playing the game more than once if you value your sanity. The game is nice on the first playthrough for the atmosphere and world building alone but if you're looking for a golf game then you wont find it here.

Sights & Sounds
- Surprisingly beautiful for a golf game. I highly recommend zooming out and looking at the level to appreciate the sweeping vistas of the post-apocalyptic world
- The music is stellar. I'm going to have "Two Astronauts" stuck in my head for a while

Story & Vibes
- The game contains some surprisingly deep lore about your golfer. Be sure to read the journal entries, pay attention to the blurbs at the beginning of each level, and read the post-credits comic to get a better idea of the story
- As you might expect, capitalism bringing out the end of the world results in some somber, reflective moments
- The political commentary is not subtle. That said, it is pretty amusing

Playability & Replayability
- The gameplay is somewhere in between a frustration game and a golf game. Some of the "platforming" can be tricky at times
- The game isn't all that hard. I only had to retry 7 of the game's 35 holes in order to make at least par on each
- I'll be back to clear out the rest of the achievements someday

Overall Impressions & Performance
- Great game for the Steam Deck
- Unless you're a trashcoin-munching Musk fanboy, you'll probably find the game's overall message poignant and its jokes pretty funny

Final Verdict
- 7/10. It's a fun little experience, but it is short (2-3 hours). Worth it on sale if you enjoy golf games, though

Brilliant world design, storytelling, music, and visuals trapped in a middling golf game weighed down by a bevy of terrible design choices.

Just hitting the ball around the wasteland that was Earth with the incredible radio playing is a rad experience. Listening to the radio and enjoying the visuals of the post-apocalyptic wasteland is amazing. It’s hard to talk about the radio without giving too much away, but it’s honestly one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a game like this. Fully voice-acted with great music and stories that give you so much flavor into the state of the world you’re in. I loved every second of it. I could honestly just listen to the radio without playing the actual game and I think I would’ve had a better experience. But sadly the game requires you to golf to see more of the game and actually perform well in golf at that.

Every level has a diary entry associated with it that gives you context for the level and insight into what your character is thinking and feeling while going through these environments. However, these diary entries that actually tell you more of the story behind the game are locked behind getting par on every level which turns this from a chill vibey experience to a stressful, frustrating game of trying to perform well in an OK golf game so you can actually experience more of the story the game is telling. Additionally, diary entries unlock once you finish a level, so in order to read it you have to wait until the next level, pause the game, sit through the way-too-long “opening the menu” animation, scroll down to “diary”, and flip back a page to the prior level, all so you can then read the guy’s thoughts on the level you finished and hope you remember the previous level well enough to understand the details he’s referencing.

Also worth noting that the “Retry Level” option is in the pause menu, so every time you want to restart the level on your journey for par you must pause the game and sit through that long, unskippable animation. Every single time. Any game that has levels designed around trying to beat a score or a time but doesn’t give you an easy way to retry the level is straight-up bad game design.

Eventually I just gave up on trying to get par on all the levels to organically experience the diary stories in the game and just looked them up online so I could read them as I go. Which, honestly, is a better experience anyway so you can actually read the relevant comments for the level while you’re still on that level.

It’s honestly a shame that the actual act of playing this game is such a mixed experience because the world they’ve created is so incredibly fascinating (and often eerily real) that I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of it. It’s too bad the game ends up getting in its own way at every hole.

+ Notalgia Radio rules
+ The world, lore, and storytelling are all incredible
+ The music owns
+ Fantastic visuals. A post-apocalyptic world never looked so good

- The golf part of this golf game is not great
- Story diaries only unlock if you perform well even on “Story Mode” difficulty
- No easy retry button
- Bad UI choices like long pause animations
- Radio/dialogue doesn’t pause when you pause the game

Relajante juego que consigue crearte nostalgia de algo que no has vivido, sobre todo al principio. Creo que según avance se pierde un poco en otros temas que la duración del juego no le da tiempo a desarrollar. Quitando eso la parte de gameplay es relajante, aunque te la puedes complicar a ti mismo muy rápido si eliges el modo de golpes contados. Los niveles son interesantes y aunque el escenario se repite en poco a lo largo de los 35 niveles, la curva de dificultad es agradable, pero constante. Como otro pequeño detalle negativo a destacar es que a pesar de lo bien que está todo el sonido y las canciones, el efecto de apuntar es un poco molesto. En general lo recomiendo si buscas un juego de relax, pero no sencillo.

A bit bummed out because by just looking at this game it seems like such a good idea. Golf in a Post apocalyptic setting is something that should be fun since the courses would be able to have a lot of variety.

Well sadly this game is more of a story teller with golf as the way to tell the story before you. Okay cool I do not mind that but the issue shows very very deeply as the golfing just isn't that good and in later levels becomes downright unfun and unfair due to how the golfing works. The physics of the ball is terrible and it makes no sense how it flies around and stops in it place there seems to be no motion with the ball but in some holes going for a soft hit will smack the ball ???

Its very hit or miss but since some of the courses will require precise shots it will make for a very unfun time as you consistently hit the ball out of bounds and never really understand where you should aim and how hard you should hit.

All in all bummer and I won't get into the story for obvious reasons and honestly the story is cool I liked it and it if you understand that this is more of a story game with terrible golfing attached you may enjoy this game more then me. I bring this up because if you are okay you can skip levels after you hit the ball a certain amount of times so you can in theory skip most of this game to just get the story.

TLDR: Buy on a deep deep sale I would not recommend at full price.

Lovely aesthetic, interesting story, golf sucks.

God damn this game actually made me more frustrated than Getting Over It or Jump King. The golfing felt so wrong. The ball would either fly way too far, or barely move at all - it didn't feel like I had control. And yeah you have to wait ages after each shot for your guy to fly over to the ball. Oh, I also switched to story mode early on because I was playing this for a video. Gameplay was still super annoying though.

I liked the idea of the radio and thought it was implemented pretty well. But at times the storytelling could be a bit overwhelming. There were fragments of the story told under each level name (which were in the same font, making things extra confusing), there were also the diary entries, and then there was the radio which played constantly over the top of these other things, which made it really hard to focus on reading anything.

Yeah idk the golfing just made me wanna rip out my hair

I'm probably especially bad at this because of my admittedly bad spatial intelligence but I missed some glaring features that would've made the gameplay more tolerable, mainly a way to see the trajectory/arc of your previous swing to adjust a new one and the ability to undo your last move, probably limited to one or two times per level. Without these, I had to switch to story mode and it let me enjoy the atmosphere and, especially, the radio - an amazing idea greatly executed, with top notch sound design and music.

It's a clever premise that seems like it would be fun but is more frustrating than anything. The gameplay doesn't feel fine-tuned and it's too simplistic. You only use the analog stick and a single button, and it feels like wasted real estate when there are so many functions that it would be nice to have, like an undo button, a power selection that's separate from the angle selection, or hell even just a button to restart a level so you don't need to pause, wait for the slow animation to play out that brings up the menu, then navigate over to the restart button. It's also tedious just how slowly your character jet-packs over to the ball after hitting it. It's a JET PACK, move FASTER. The art looks decent but isn't super readable and it's tough to tell which parts of the environment are collision objects and which ones your ball will go straight through. Had potential, a bit of a letdown. Weird that they changed the title post-release from Golf Club Wasteland to Golf Club Nostalgia. That's obviously a much worse title.