This Golf RPG Sends You Back to the Club Where You Learned the Game

Golf Story is a 2017 video game from the Australian studio Sidebar Games, and it does something no golf game before it bothered to try. It treats the sport as the backbone of a full role-playing adventure. The game was released on 28 September 2017 for the Nintendo Switch. It was originally designed as a Wii U release before Sidebar sought help from Nintendo to finish it and move it to the Switch.

Trailer, via SideBarGames.

A Golfer Who Quit for 20 Years

The setup is plain and a little sad. Golf Story follows a down-on-his-luck golfer who has not played the game in 20 years. He is trying to reclaim a childhood love of golf that his father passed down to him. He also wants to impress his estranged wife and earn a place on the professional tour.

That is the whole emotional engine. No apocalypse, no chosen one. A man, a bag of clubs, and a marriage that needs saving.

Eight Areas, Nine Holes Each

Golf Story is a top-down adventure game with role-playing elements. The player character gains skills in power and accuracy as the story moves. The game features eight unique areas, each packed with side quests and minigames that pay out experience and money. That money develops the player’s skills and buys new equipment.

Each area holds a nine-hole golf course, unlocked after certain missions are completed. The structure is clean. Talk, quest, earn, play nine, move on. It never lets the golf feel like a break from the game. The golf is the game.

Three Clicks and a Lie

The swing uses a three-click system. The player clicks once to aim, once to set power, and once to set accuracy. That is it. Simple to learn, punishing to master.

The bigger idea is that the player can hit a shot from any location. That freedom turns every area into a scavenger hunt. Collectables and secrets sit off the fairway, and the only way to reach them is to aim somewhere stupid and commit. It is the smartest design decision in the game, and it is the reason the courses stay interesting after the story runs dry.

Disc Golf, Bowls and an Atari Course

Golf Story does not stop at golf. It throws in cousin sports. There is disc golf, miniature golf, a driving range, bowls, and an Atari-like golfing mini game. Each one is a small detour, not a full mode, but they break up the rhythm of the nine-hole rounds.

The tone carries all of it. The game is tagged as comedy and drama, and it earns both. The jokes land because the characters are not winking at the camera. The drama lands because the game never mocks the golfer for wanting his life back.

Mario Golf on Game Boy Color

Sidebar built Golf Story on a specific foundation. The game was primarily inspired by the Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf, released in 1999. That lineage shows in the top-down view, the three-click swing, and the way the world is laid out like a map rather than a menu.

The development was long. Sidebar started on Wii U and needed Nintendo’s assistance to finish and ship on the Switch. That history explains the game’s shape. It is a small studio’s passion project that arrived on a console nobody expected it on, at a moment when the Switch had almost nothing like it.

A Sequel Arrived in December 2022

Golf Story was nominated for several awards. It won the best original sports game at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards. A sequel, Sports Story, was released for the Nintendo Switch in December 2022.

That award is the right one for this game. Golf Story is not the most original thing ever made. It borrows its swing, its structure and its sense of humor from older games. What it does with those parts is the achievement.

What Golf Story Gets Wrong

The role-playing mechanics are the weak point. Skills in power and accuracy are a thin progression system. They nudge numbers and open shots, but they never change how the game feels. The side quests carry more weight than the stat screen does.

The lack of originality is the other complaint, and it is fair. If you have played Mario Golf on the Game Boy Color, you will recognize the bones immediately. Golf Story dresses them up and gives them a story, but it does not reinvent them.

Where Golf Story Sits

Here is the case for Golf Story. It takes a sport that games usually treat as a physics demo and gives it a character arc. The eight areas, the three-click swing, the shot-from-anywhere rule, the disc golf and bowls detours — all of it serves one idea. Golf is worth coming back to.

The case against it is smaller. The RPG mechanics do not pull their weight, and the game owes more to 1999 than it admits. Neither flaw sinks it.

The score is 8.3 of 10. Golf Story is the rare sports game that understands the sport is not the point. The man holding the club is.

golf games · Golf Story · Indie Games · Nintendo Switch · Sidebar Games · Sports Story