Golf with Your Friends is a 3D multiplayer mini-golf game developed by Blacklight Interactive and published by Team17.
The game is primarily played with a mouse, and controls are simple: wiggle the mouse to look around the course and aim, and click the left mouse button to hit the ball.
The game was released through Steam Early Access in January 2016, with the full release (including console versions) in May 2020. It offers seven levels with 18 holes each, a Level Editor, private rooms, and more. A host can open a public server, with or without password protection, or invite their friends to their room.
Golf with Your Friends contains examples of the following tropes:
- Anti Idling: Actually playing a round of golf is required to get a cosmetic item, to prevent players from earning them through inaction.
- Bioluminescence Is Cool: The aesthetic of the Twilight course: it's set during twilight, and colorful glowing obstacles and decor abound (mostly mushrooms).
- Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game:
- Some courses feature structures and hazards that would never be allowed on a real mini golf course, such as forcing you to bounce the ball against pillars to reach the next area of the hole, or are impossible to include, such as the Space theme's portals. However, the game doesn't force you to play from an out-of-bounds area, instead teleporting the ball back to its earlier spot. Even on realistically built courses, some would be really difficult to traverse if the course were played in real life.
- You can modify your ball so every level, one of a pool of different shapes replaces the ball, such as an acorn or bauble. Some levels are impossible to complete with certain shapes due to the different physics involved; for example, most of them will not ricochet as a ball would and thus wouldn't be able to reach certain areas of a level.
- Jumping can be turned on, and the action is performed using the left mouse button. Oftentimes, a well-timed jump helps bring the ball closer to the flag.
- Build Like an Egyptian: The "Oasis" course is set in a desert, with a pyramid, sphinx statue, and other stereotypical ancient Egyptian structures and decor.
- Cave Behind the Falls: One of the later levels of the Twilight course has the flag placed behind a waterfall. It's easy to notice right from the beginning that you should send the ball that way; the challenge is in actually having the ball land and stay in the area.
- Character Customization: Rather, golf ball customization. The color of the ball can be changed using an RGB slider (useful for differentiating between yours and your opponents'), and you can also give the ball a hat and trail, which are earned by playing the game.
- Context-Sensitive Button: When the ball is still, clicking the mouse button will hit it in the direction the line is aimed. When the ball is in motion, clicking will cause it to jump, assuming the jump option is turned on.
- Cosmetic Award: Playing for a certain amount of time and completing an 18-hole course awards a random hat or colored trail.
- Dungeon Bypass: While the idea of each level is to follow a certain path, there's no reason you can't take advantage of structures and physics to skip parts of it, especially if jumping is enabled. In fact, such moves are shown in the game's trailer.
- Gangplank Galleon: There's a pirate-themed course where most of the gameplay takes place on levels that evoke a large wooden sailing ship. There are also cannons, giant wheels, "sharks", and a kraken.
- Gravity Screw: The game features a gravity modifier, allowing balls on a course more air time.
- Green Hill Zone: The Forest theme is green and wooded, and it has the most straightforward holes of all the themes, i.e. they have the fewest gimmicks, and most can be built in a real course.
- Hammerspace: On levels featuring water as part of the hole (and not a hazard), as soon as it hits water, the ball gains an inner tube, so it doesn't sink.
- Haunted House: The "Haunted" course takes place in a haunted mansion, with levels featuring brewing cauldrons, floating books, body parts in jars, rooms that glow sickly green, ghosts, ghosts pushing trolleys, ghosts swinging axes, and more.
- The Hilarity of Hats: Cosmetic hats are awarded for playing the game for a while. They include many, many things that aren't strictly hats, such as a cake, a rotating radar dish, a hamburger, and a nest with eggs.
- Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: One level in Forest contains several conveyor belts running parallel to each other in different directions, with the hole in a strip of land in the middle. While it's possible to get a hole in one, it's more likely the ball will be pushed to the edge of the field by one of the conveyor belts.
- Kraken and Leviathan: A giant blue tentacled creature with red eyes and sharp teeth features in the Pirate Cove course. Its presence is hinted in an early level with the appearance of a tentacle. On the final level, you must hit the ball past its waving arms and onto a platform in its mouth.
- Lumber Mill Mayhem: One of the levels in the otherwise safe-to-build-in-real-life Forest course involves hitting the ball through a lumber mill while avoiding the saws.
- Prehistoria: The Ancient course appears to be set in a rainforest temple with lots of colorful dinosaur eggs. None of the dinosaurs present a hazard.
- Space Zone: The Space course. There are lots of vents, black hole-like things, clear tubes, and windows providing a view of space.
- Unwinnable Joke Game: Rather, Unwinnable Joke Level. Customizing your next round with random ball shapes turned on will cause some levels to be impossible to win using certain shapes. For example, if a level contains a ramp and large gap and you need to hit the ball hard to cross the gap, you'll be unable to complete the level with an acorn.
- Vent Physics: Some levels in the Space theme feature vents which blow the ball in the direction the wind is moving.
- Wreaking Havok: This is a 3D mini-golf game with physics. The ball collides with nearly every solid hazard and obstacle and rolls and bounces realistically. The different ball shapes such as the acorn and cube also move as expected of them (i.e. erratically).
