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I don’t have many nice things to say about 4D Golf, despite being a positive review, because its a pretty bare bones game that does exactly as it says on the title. It is a unique, well polished experience that is worth its asking price at $20. The mouse/keyboard and gamepad controls are both serviceable, though the game does feel nicer on keyboard. I bring up gamepads because the game plays just fine with on Steam Deck or other handheld devices, and hot seat gameplay is “ok”. One of those setups where all controllers act as “player one”, so you can use it with a single controller you pass around, or can have multiple controllers plugged in for convenience. The game is extremely forgiving; while you must play through the content in order to unlock it, you do not have to meet any score goals to see everything the game has to offer. Achievement hunting can be done on a single hole practice run basis. There are some more challenging courses in the game, but nothing I have seen that comes to “hair pulling out” difficulty.

As someone who isn’t particularly a math geek or otherwise a fan of geometry, the tutorial levels seemed a bit misdirected about what they are trying to teach the player. But by the end of the first 8 courses, I feel like I could stumble my way around the game and overall enjoyed my time.

Ironically, I feel some people may be put off by a feature in the game that is not shown in the trailer but makes the gameplay significantly easier. The volume view, which to my(ignorant and probably wrong) understanding swaps the Z axis with the new 4D axis, gives a new perspective that makes it easier to see and navigate the additional dimension. The other way of perceiving objects on this axis is with the “ghost images”, which Ill be honest, I never got the hang of/never found to be that helpful. I ended up playing through the majority of the game like it was a zero gravity 3D golf game instead, combining the volume view with the wireframe view so I could see the courses in their entirety. I have to mention this as it may legitimately disappoint people who are expecting a major brain twister of a game; I would not have breezed through this game so easily without this feature. Nor would I have bothered to learn the ghost images, cause quite frankly they are a mess to look a..

I will not be commenting on the planned VR update after its added, as I have no interest in VR unfortunately. I have yet to get over my motion sickness with the technology. I also don’t have much to say about the level creator; I am not a very creative person, and there wasn’t much content at the time of writing this review. Might go back and mess with it later.

4/5 Impress your friends with your (supposed, self taught) mastery of the 4th dimension.

Fun minigolf game that really helps you understand 4D intuitively! All the visualization tools do their absolute best to make sure you never struggle because of the 4D geometry (you only struggle because it's still minigolf).

Who needs to walk OVER the ground when I can walk UP it?