Macenstein

Just thought I’d throw out a recommendation to iPhone-physics lovers of a game I’ve been playing the past few days – Melon Golf

As you play each round you can unlock Stars which will in turn unlock bonus rounds in the Nightmare Course.

I think the reason I like Melon Golf so much is that it really has very little to do with Golf – it’s actually much more similar to games like Cannon Challenge and Castle Smasher than golf. The object of the game is to launch your “melon” towards the “hole” in the recommended number of shots or less (like Golf) but the launching/aiming mechanism is more akin to launching type games with a “power” and “angle” setting for each shot. The video below will give a better idea of the overall game mechanics, as well as the eerily wonderful visuals, as the game really needs to be seen in motion to be appreciated.

The first level (easy) is fairly straight forward and just introduces you to the way the game is played, but as you go you unlock harder levels, and the obstacles between you and the hole become more creative (as do your solutions to overcoming them).

The holes actually become somewhat ridiculously difficult at times (I have gotten 33 over Par on some) but once you figure it out, you’ll have a “I can’t believe I didn’t see that” moment. In order to add a bit of replayability to the game, certain levels will give you a chance to unlock a “star” by getting a hole-in-one. If you succeed in unlocking the star, you must then replay the level in order to see the star. The goal on a star level is just to somehow launch your melon into the star. Each star you collect unlocks a new level in the hardest course – The Nightmare level – where the obstacles are their most insane.

Issues

I really love this game, especially for 99¢, but there are a couple minor issues I hope the developers fix in an upcoming update. The biggest issue is, you cannot restart a specific hole on a level, you must restart the entire level. So for instance, if you are on a “star” level, 5 holes into a course, and you NEED a hole-in-one to unlock the star, but screw up your first shot, you have to restart that whole level in order to get back to the 5th hole to try another hole-in-one shot. This is perhaps intentional, and adds to the difficulty of the game, but some holes are plenty difficult without this, and I could see this discouraging frustrated players more than bringing them back (Of course, if you wanted you COULD write down the exact “power” and “angle” setting for each hole as you figure them out and then breeze through the courses with holes-in-ones). [UPDATE: I have discovered that this is not necessarily true. While in standard “PLAY” mode this is the case, if you go into “Practice” mode, you can play any particular hole (that you have already beaten in standard play mode) and keep replaying until you either get a hole-in-one, thus unlocking a star, or if you already have a star, keep playing until you figure out how to collect it).

The second minor issue I have with the game is the camera can occasionally get stuck. You can zoom in and out and pan to see the whole course or specific areas, but I once got my camera stuck in a mysterious “black zone” and could not see the course at all, although I could launch the ball. I was able to fix it by selecting MENU and then setting the camera back to auto, but in the meantime, I had accidentally fired my melon. “Accidental melon firing” is my third issue, as I also a couple times found my melon was launched accidentally while I was trying to zoom in or out of a view. But this was probably more of “pilot error” than a glitch, but just be aware when zooming that a pinch can turn into a launch if you are not careful.

Finally on one or two courses, the melon can sometimes take a long time to come to rest. One of these course was called something like “Frozen”, so maybe the phsyics there were meant to mimic ice, but my melon took about 30 seconds of sliding back and forth on one surface before coming to a rest, and that really brought the game to a halt. Since the game did not change its look visually to indicate ice or anything, this may have been a glitch, but I am not sure. In any case, maybe a button you can tap to quickly move to the next shot would be a good idea.

The Tumbler gave me quite a bit of trouble...

Conclusion

Melon Golf does the impossible for me – it makes video game golfing fun. I love the look and feel of the game, and the obstacles are both inventive and maddening at times, but their difficulty only adds to the satisfaction you feel when you beat them. Anyone looking for a stylish casual game that will more than give them their 99¢ worth of play time should definitely pick this one up.