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GOLF STORY
review | SWITCH
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Publisher: Sidebar Games.
Developer: Sidebar Games. Released: September 2017. Genre: Golf; Adventure. Posted 23rd October 2025. By Tom Clare © 2025 |
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Sometimes, it falls to smaller, labour-of-love projects to pick up the baton for older ideas that, due to the rapid changes in gaming tastes, weren’t pursued fully first time around. Stardew Valley is perhaps the most successful example of this, born of a need to relive and expand on the qualities of Harvest Moon in its nineties guise. Golf Story adopts a similar ethos, albeit in relation to the portable Mario Golf outings, positioning itself as an evolution of the charming, top-down golf-RPG. The game’s Switch exclusivity is likely a tribute to this, as well as a nod to a legion of like-minded Nintendo fans harbouring fond memories.
Provided you like your golf fun, breezy and not at all serious, this is everything you could wish for. It’s a superb game, driven by simple yet solid play mechanics, pretty 16-bit presentation, and a storyline peppered with amusing scenarios, humorous scripting, and a range of pleasant locations that help bring its world to life. Playing as a twenty-something-year-old man who escapes a failing marriage for another shot at the golf tour, his first port of call is the ramshackle Wellworn Grove. Through a string of often-strange favours and quests, the aim is to get his unorthodox but effective swing appraised, gain tutelage, and work towards the dream of turning pro.
Golf Story provides a powerful dose of nostalgic gaming for fans of the portable Mario Golf outings
Golf Story’s narrative helps enrich its marvellous range of settings. Each course is packed with brilliant soundbites and dialogues, and in large part due to the gullibility of the main protagonist, you’ll end up being roped into a motley of obscure and circuitous tasks. These prove a neat way of teaching the player handy techniques, as well as setting unusual challenges, such as completing a hole using only the putter, firing beach balls onto the claw of a giant crab, or launching (fortunately very sturdy) Cheekybeak eggs back to the birds.
Each clubhouse hosts eight 9-hole courses, lending GS to a broader array of golfing themes than perhaps any other representative of the genre. Bermuda Isles is a lovely coastal course with ample water hazards and sand traps, and only small islets of safety. Cheekybeak Peak is played at altitude, and landing in specific spots will see your ball pilfered by the birds. Coldwind Wastes swaps sand for snow banks and features ice-sheets that, if landed properly, can propel your ball great distances. A haunted course, Oak Manor, is a thematic highlight, whilst Blue Moon Dunes proves the toughest challenge with its enormous lakes, dense woods, narrow fairways, and awkward bunkers. The best club by far, however, is Tidy Park. A traditional establishment run by geriatric golfers, players are made to compete with unwieldy antique clubs, and there are no greens for simple puts, meaning you’ll need to master the art of chip-ins. Additionally, a rap battle between the older folk and the Wellworn Grove youth marks a particular high point amongst the madness.
Each clubhouse hosts eight 9-hole courses, lending GS to a broader array of golfing themes than perhaps any other representative of the genre. Bermuda Isles is a lovely coastal course with ample water hazards and sand traps, and only small islets of safety. Cheekybeak Peak is played at altitude, and landing in specific spots will see your ball pilfered by the birds. Coldwind Wastes swaps sand for snow banks and features ice-sheets that, if landed properly, can propel your ball great distances. A haunted course, Oak Manor, is a thematic highlight, whilst Blue Moon Dunes proves the toughest challenge with its enormous lakes, dense woods, narrow fairways, and awkward bunkers. The best club by far, however, is Tidy Park. A traditional establishment run by geriatric golfers, players are made to compete with unwieldy antique clubs, and there are no greens for simple puts, meaning you’ll need to master the art of chip-ins. Additionally, a rap battle between the older folk and the Wellworn Grove youth marks a particular high point amongst the madness.
FOCAL POINT: A GOOD WALK ENHANCED
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There are so many great strands to Golf Story, they deserve their own section. A massive amount of work has gone into giving secondary and tertiary figures memorable personalities, and each clubhouse is awash with colourful encounters. You’ll find a pair of goths trying to raise an army of skeletal minions, a commercially driven Vlogger called Max Yards, and The Heinrich, a man who stands next to a wall where players practice drives, who claims he’s able to judge the distance, landing spot, and club-head rotation with unerring accuracy. You’ll come across a trio of Disc Golfers dismayed by the prevalence of ‘ball golf’ that they feel is a lesser sport tarnishing the clubs, and woe betide anyone who describes their sport as ‘Frisbee’.
There’s an endearing presence of pie vans and sausage roll references, a Greenkeeper paranoid about a mole invasion, and the spectacularly incongruous appearance of a forest fairy queen. Despite its oddness, Golf Story never fails to surprise. The Coach trying to woo Yvonne, a trainer from Cheekybeak Peak, is absolute gold, especially when he decides to cook her an impromptu roast dinner. Best of all, there’s a mystery sequence where the player isn’t allowed to leave the clubhouse, and must uncover what has befallen one of the members (largely by hiding under tables listening to private conversations). Rare moments of poignancy are handled just as skilfully, but by focusing on its leftfield elements, the game retains a bright, breezy, and daft vibe that’s entirely endearing.
There’s an endearing presence of pie vans and sausage roll references, a Greenkeeper paranoid about a mole invasion, and the spectacularly incongruous appearance of a forest fairy queen. Despite its oddness, Golf Story never fails to surprise. The Coach trying to woo Yvonne, a trainer from Cheekybeak Peak, is absolute gold, especially when he decides to cook her an impromptu roast dinner. Best of all, there’s a mystery sequence where the player isn’t allowed to leave the clubhouse, and must uncover what has befallen one of the members (largely by hiding under tables listening to private conversations). Rare moments of poignancy are handled just as skilfully, but by focusing on its leftfield elements, the game retains a bright, breezy, and daft vibe that’s entirely endearing.
It’s all well and good showing a bit of personality, but how does it handle a round of golf? Happily, very well. The up-and-down, power-then-strike gauge will be instantly familiar to anyone who has encountered a Mario Golf or Everybody’s Golf game, and it plays smoothly and predictably: exactly what you want. Wind, spin, and lie affect the shot, and the odd quirk, like moles moving your balls, and the ability to traverse water by skimming shots along the backs of helpful turtles, add a fun twist to these accessible greens. Helping matters is a neat precision feature, allowing players to create a shadow pointer on the power gauge to offer guidance to a landing spot.
My main gripe with Golf Story is that it prioritises its adventure elements at the expense of its golf. This is evidenced by a simplistic, slightly weak putting system that sees players given a single, catch-all arrow for slope direction. It isn’t a massive hindrance, but it does take away a sense of jeopardy and skill that Mario Golf thrived on. By contrast, chip-ins are a little easier than they should be, and there isn’t a big enough deterrent to driving straight for a bunker or the rough in proximity to the hole, as these are normally preferable to laying up on the green for a mid-range putt. You’ll see several Match Play CPU opponents adopt this route-one approach, accentuating raw power stats by driving straight into rough or bunkers, if it means being close to the pin. Whilst it’s lovely to see disc golf, lawn bowls, and mini-golf all represented, their cursory involvement feels a bit jack-of-all-trades.
My main gripe with Golf Story is that it prioritises its adventure elements at the expense of its golf. This is evidenced by a simplistic, slightly weak putting system that sees players given a single, catch-all arrow for slope direction. It isn’t a massive hindrance, but it does take away a sense of jeopardy and skill that Mario Golf thrived on. By contrast, chip-ins are a little easier than they should be, and there isn’t a big enough deterrent to driving straight for a bunker or the rough in proximity to the hole, as these are normally preferable to laying up on the green for a mid-range putt. You’ll see several Match Play CPU opponents adopt this route-one approach, accentuating raw power stats by driving straight into rough or bunkers, if it means being close to the pin. Whilst it’s lovely to see disc golf, lawn bowls, and mini-golf all represented, their cursory involvement feels a bit jack-of-all-trades.
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Other than this, a little more attention to detail might have added longevity. The ability to replay tournaments and not just isolated rounds would have been nice, as would the chance to challenge more competitors in Match Play. There’s no reward or acknowledgement for setting good round scores, to the point where the game doesn’t appear to even record your best rounds, only the lowest outs for individual holes.
Nevertheless, most will find themselves so absorbed in its engrossing story, and enchanting setting, that you’ll be hooked until completion. There’s also a smattering of two-player options that are very welcome, and on the whole, Golf Story proves a charming, skilfully crafted golf adventure that does justice to the games that inspired it. If you love Mario Golf, this represents many of its finest traits, even building on Nintendo’s efforts in areas such as course design and story scripting. It’s a shame the gameplay skews toward fetch quests and pottering, when just a little more attention paid to the gameplay and structuring might have seen it lauded as a classic. As it is, it still comes heartily recommended.
Nevertheless, most will find themselves so absorbed in its engrossing story, and enchanting setting, that you’ll be hooked until completion. There’s also a smattering of two-player options that are very welcome, and on the whole, Golf Story proves a charming, skilfully crafted golf adventure that does justice to the games that inspired it. If you love Mario Golf, this represents many of its finest traits, even building on Nintendo’s efforts in areas such as course design and story scripting. It’s a shame the gameplay skews toward fetch quests and pottering, when just a little more attention paid to the gameplay and structuring might have seen it lauded as a classic. As it is, it still comes heartily recommended.
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VERDICT"A great ode to Mario Golf, offering a plethora of colourful courses, as well as a humorous, absorbing storyline. Whilst some aspects of the gameplay lack refinement, it still plays a mean game of golf, and is heartily recommended." OVERALL: 8/10 |
OTHER TOP-DOWN GOLF GAMES REVIEWED
Winning Shot (1989, PC Engine)
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Mario Golf (1999, Game Boy Color)
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