It's never too early in the week to play 4D minigolf

I didn't sleep last night for entirely self-inflicted reasons and my brain feels like that one accursed hoover bag you refuse to empty, because there is no way of doing so that won't turn the neighbourhood into Silent Hill. I need to avoid any complicated write-ups, or my brain will detonate similarly and paint north London grey. Ah, a minigolf game! I think I can just about hack the concept of minigolf, on this most desperate of Mondays.

It is golf but mini. Bonzai golf. Digestible! Intuitive! Why, I've managed to write 100 words without even looking at the Steam page.



Let's do so now. Wait a minute, this isn't minigolf. It's Mini Mini Golf Golf.

What is Mini Mini Golf Golf? "Destabilize the present and plunge into a neon psychohistory of a bizarre entity in distress," the Steam page explains . "This is not a game about minigolf." It is too late to flee.

Find a demo for Mini Mini Golf Golf on the Steam page. It's kind of great. I don't encourage you to play it if you're having trouble seeing straight.

There appear to be two halves to the game. On the one hand, you are a scientist of sorts operating snazzy retro gadgets aboard a space station in the distant, post-apocalyptic future. You've got a sexy, self-ticking digital clipboard, and a bank of signal displays redolent of Stories Untold , which need to be tuned to siphon cryptic footage from static.

On the other hand, you can use one of the displays to play isometric minigolf. It's pretty simple, at first: drag-click the mouse to aim and power up a shot. Classic Atari fodder.

But then Plot happens, and the minigolf game-within-the-game comes over all Pony Island . The courses evolve from cutesy dioramas into connectible grid fragments and chunks of abstract factory line. One level resembles a map of tectonic activity.

The ball starts to spell out words. "Nice to meet you," it says. Look ball, I am just trying to play regular minigolf.

Quantum, sentient minigolf is not within my operational capacity right now - I can barely count up to 10. The ball has no time for my immense fatigue and suffering. It wishes to tell me about its difficult childhood.

"The psychohistory of the entity you encounter is fragmented, tainted and biased," the Steam page continues. "It is incomplete, more than human, and tired." Mini Mini Golf Golf is out on 28th November.

It was the wrong game for me this morning, but it feels like the right game for me at some stage. I have never seen anybody deliver dialogue by means of a golf ball before, or use that golf ball to model earthquakes. Perhaps there's a level in What The Golf? that compares?.