Golftacular! is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and Xbox on PC, bringing mini golf together with airstrikes, portals, item combos, and balls that can grow legs. The game starts with familiar putting, then gleefully tosses the rulebook into a nearby hazard.
Players can take turns across dozens of handcrafted courses, with support for up to 4 players. The cast includes Tortillo, Chuck, Fin, Poop, Papa, Mama, Claude, and Frend. Each round mixes careful aiming with items that can help you reach the cup, disrupt another player, or turn the course into something that barely resembles golf.
Justin, Luca, and Pedro from Both Good Games explained the game’s design process in a launch-day Xbox Wire breakdown. Mini golf became the foundation because its basic controls are easy to understand, while its obstacles leave plenty of room for strange ideas.
Familiar obstacles gave the team a starting point
The developers played through dozens of real and virtual mini golf courses, even visiting physical courses for ideas. They gathered the recurring ramps, narrow paths, spinning hazards, and other course tricks into a design toolbox.
Some of those building blocks received names such as Thread the Needle, a precision route for players who want the most direct shot, and Wall Rides, which depend on understanding slopes, strength, and distance. The Mixers add spinning obstacles that combine timing, skill, and a little randomness.
Course creation moved from quick 2D sketches to bare-bones playable models before reaching playtesting. Those early tests revealed which ideas were fun and which ones created problems. Steep slopes, for example, could send a ball rolling all the way back to the bottom after a missed shot. In a turn-based party game, that could leave someone waiting through an entire round just to try the same frustrating climb again.
Items let players answer each course’s question
That frustration became the starting point for many of Golftacular!‘s items. Instead of relying only on power and angle, players can use tools that provide entirely different ways through a hole.
Early Stop halts the ball whenever the player chooses, even in mid-air. Other items let players place portals, call in airstrikes, swap balls with opponents, give the ball wings, or control it directly. Run and Jump turns the ball into a tiny character for 5 seconds, allowing it to walk and jump around the course.
The items also forced the developers to rethink their maps. Extra walls and obstacles were added where certain skips became too powerful. One early course placed its starting platform close enough to the cup that the Portal item could bypass the hole almost completely, so the platform had to be moved.
Puzzle Mode turns item combos into challenges
The back-and-forth between course design and item design led to Puzzle Mode. These single-player levels are built around specific item uses and combinations instead of only asking players to reach the cup with a standard shot.
The early puzzles teach the system step by step. Players begin with traditional golf mechanics, then learn how to use items, find skips and secrets, score a hole in zero, and combine tools in more flexible ways. The mode gives the game’s strangest mechanics room to breathe without throwing every trick at players at once.
Outside Puzzle Mode, the game supports local pass-and-play, keyboard and mouse controls, and controllers. The store description also promises thousands of possible item combinations, so even a familiar course can turn into a very different problem when the right piece of nonsense lands in your hands.
Would you try to score a hole in zero with a Portal, an airstrike, or a ball with legs? Tell us what you think in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram, Steam, and Telegram.
