4D Golf is an indie minigolf game created by CodeParade and released in 2024. It continues the theme of alien-geometry gameplay from their previous game, Hyperbolica, this time using More than Three Dimensions.
This game provides examples of:
- Alien Geometries: Due to existing in four-dimensional space, the world naturally seems to warp as the camera rotates or moves ana and kata, and "flat" terrain has three-dimensional volume. Later worlds augment this with Gravity Screw and a fifth spatial dimension.
- Another Dimension: Literally. The game is set in a multiverse of worlds with different numbers of spatial and temporal dimensions, and involves the Player Character going to one for training. Cosmodeus mentions other such worlds, one of which has two time dimensions.
- Anti-Frustration Features: 4D Golf includes and invents various visualization features that can be toggled on and off, as well as buttons to quickly find the ball or hole, in an effort to make the hyperspace world more accessible.
- Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: Downplayed to avoid being too overwhelming, but there is an absurdity in the golf ball literally getting bounced into the fourth dimension, and some of the holes are in improbable settings like an art museum or outer space.
- Depth Perplexion: Both of the main views necessarily include this. In the main view, the ghost images of objects may make them appear closer than they are, when really this indicates that they are off to the side along the unshown axis. Volume View makes height the unshown dimension, rendering elevation impossible to measure, and showing slopes and drops as walls or empty space that should be thought of more as contours. Both views must often be used to understand the full shape of the course.
- Energy Beings: Cosmodeus self-describes as a being of Pure Energy.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's minigolf in higher-dimensional space. There's not much more to it.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: There is an active effort to avoid this, as the goal of the game—both out-of-universe and through the In-Universe Multidimensional Exchange Program—is to ease the player into hyperdimensional space. The trope is implied once:Cosmodeus: But you must demonstrate full mastery of your mind before receiving more cosmic knowledge. I’ve seen unfathomable horrors fall upon those who were not ready.
- Gravity Screw: The Nebula world introduces surfaces (or rather, volumes) that change and invert the direction of gravity when touched, comparable to those in Marble It Up.
- Interface Spoiler: There is an option to color-code the ghost projections. When they turn a new color in the already otherwise grayscale "Beyond?" hole, it might help give away that a new dimension has been added.
- Level Editor: The editor used to design the courses was deemed so intuitive that one was included with the game. The developer credits RollerCoaster Tycoon as inspiration, as it uses a similar method of extending the course by picking connective track pieces.
- Mad Marble Maze: There is an unlockable Marble Mode where the player directly controls the ball.
- Magic Mushroom: The final world has giant mushrooms in the background, reflecting that the game is at its trippiest.
- Monochrome to Color: One hole starts out in monochrome. When Cosmodeus reveals that the world is five-dimensional, it becomes brightly rainbow-colored.
- More than Three Dimensions: The game is played in hyperdimensional space. Like earlier 4D video game projects, such as Miegakure and 4D Miner, only one three-dimensional "slice" of the world is visible at a time. Unlike them, there's 5D.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Cosmodeus introduces miniature golf as a "sacred and ancient tradition".
- Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The Mezzanine world is a museum of four-dimensional art objects, including volumetric canvases and sculptures of 4D solids.
- Neologism: The game uses "anth/kenth" for the cardinal directions (equivalent to "north/south", "east/west", and "up/down"), and introduces "sursum/deorsum" for the fifth-dimensional directions, derived similarly to "ana/kata" but from Latin rather than Greek.
- Only the Worthy May Pass: The game is a test to see whether the Player Character is worthy of further hyperdimensional knowledge and the title of Watcher.
- Pinball Zone: Several holes feature four-dimensional pinball bumpers.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Arctic world is complete with ice that reduces the golf ball's friction.
- Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Several of the worlds are stock Video Game Settings in the standard order, such as a Green Hill Zone, Shifting Sand Land, Slippy-Slidey Ice World, and Lethal Lava Land, before moving onto the abstract.
- Springs, Springs Everywhere: Bouncy terrain is marked with caution stripes.
- Superior Species: Cosmodeus postures as such due to being used to higher-dimensional space.Cosmodeus: Your primitive universe is very charming, but I’m sure you're excited to learn from us 'higher dimensional' beings.
- Super-Senses: The player is granted a "sixth sense" that lets them see ghost-image projections of objects that are ana or kata (off to the side in 4D).
- Third Eye: The game uses this as shorthand for understanding the fourth dimension. Who knows if it's literal since the player character isn't rendered.
- Top-Down View: Volume View is the 4D equivalent to a top-down view, showing the shape of the volumetric green at the same height as the player.
- Variable Mix: Different channels of the background music fade in and out depending on the camera's rotation, ideally helping the player orient themself better in 4D.
- Wham Line: "My universe does not really have four dimensions… It has five."
- X-Ray Vision: Cosmodeus is able to see inside the Player Character in the same way that a three-dimensional being could see the innards of a two-dimensional organism, commenting on the "organ sacks rattling around in there" before apologizing for the intrusion. The player also has a sort of x-ray vision through the wireframe view.
