Desert Golfing

There is merit in understatedness. On the official Desert Golfing App Store page, this is all the developer had to say:

“To see a world in a bunker of sand
And a heaven in a wild cactus,
Hold infinity in the pocket of your shorts,
And eternity in Desert Golfing.”

Desert Golfing captures something no other minimalist, pick up and play, or meditative game had ever managed, which is the ability to truly feel like a reliable refuge, a brief relieving sigh, always there for you at a moment’s need. I have essentially been playing this since it was released in mostly 1-2 minute spurts for literal years. The first hole I ever putted was before I went to university!! And I really don’t think any of that time it has ever lost its affecting sway on me.

What this game does that not even its sequel Golf On Mars got right was the true sense of expanse. It’s a hard balance. You cannot overclutter, but what is there has to be fine tuned to a microscopic sheen. Its sheer minimalism, dreamy sense of physics, wonderful little environmental touches, packaged into an extremely manageable framework gives the earnest sense that the developer might have packed infinity into this £1 app, and frankly it’s magic to me.

Due to a dumb error on my part I lost about 4 years of progress once. I wasn’t even mad. Does it matter really? What’s hole 1 to hole 1001? I seriously don’t know if there is an actual end to this game and I don’t care to look it up. There simply is an eternity in Desert Golfing.