With the first stroke, you have 10 seconds to line up your angles and set your power level. But it gets better – with each stroke, you have less and less time to set up your shot. At the start of each stoke, a timer appears and once that timer hits zero, the shots are taken. Each of the 1 to 4 players are in the action at all times. The kicker with Putt Panic Party is that you’ve got 10 stokes in order to sink your ball and every player takes their shot at the same time. The winner is the person who manages to complete the 9 holes with the fewest strokes. In order to whack your ball to the hole, a reticule and guide line appears around the ball during each stroke which you can rotate to indicate direction with a power gauge you can increase and decrease to measure power in each corner. There’s ramps over bodies of water, there’s tricky tunnels to navigate, there’s sand traps that slow down you ball, corner bouncers to give you that 45 degree ricochet and missing barriers that’ll land you in the drink if you’re a bit power heavy with your stroke. Each set of 9 has its own theme, from the simple course to the crazy course, the former a collection of simple courses to introduce you easily while the latter of which has a tonne of pipes that’ll suck up your balls and spit them out the other end. Presented in an isometric view, Putt Panic Party is a collection of 4 very distinct 9-hole courses that can be played in both normal and reversed (the tee off and hole are switched). Yes, there’s often too much handholding in video games, but this strays just a bit too far in the other direction for my liking.While it’s not without its flaws, Barry Bradford’s Putt Panic Party divorces itself from the status quo in some quite ingenious ways and puts some fun twists on the mini-golf formula. It’s rather sparse and mission destinations are not shown, so you have to rely on your knowledge of the area and remember exactly where an NPC or quest destination is. You will experience brief moments of panic, racing for a port as the sun set rather than jump scares and gory imagery. While some of the text is quite graphic, including some quite disgusting descriptions of a character eating raw fish, the game as a whole remains family friendly. By day they are normal fish, but by night you may haul out deformed creatures with three heads and six eyes. The characters you meet are all drawn in a very specific style and reminded me of the Quentin Blake art that accompanies Roald Dahl books – still recognisably human but with a twisted, almost grotesque look. Each location and character deepens the story and draws you further in to the game.ĭredge contrasts the normal with the freakishly disturbed. The outlying islands all have their own graphical style including a rather gorgeous lava filled landscape with a mysterious temple and accompanying priest. Side quests offer hints at what lurks in the deep and characters you meet seem to be constantly nervous, wary of something out in the mists. However, it’s still a lovely experience and just the sort of thing you want to play after a long day at work.Īs you continue to play and venture further and further from your home island then then things start to get rather more spooky. Certain fish can only be caught with certain rods, and your boat is very slow, pootling around the sea without any urgency.
The first few hours of the game are rather sedate, and it takes a while to get your boat kitted out with new equipment. All is not what it seems on this archipelago with mysterious lights, blinking eyes, and slithering things jumping on board to try and destroy your catch. Sleep is important because if you don’t make it back before nightfall, things start to go bump in the night – or splash in the night, to be more specific. You will spend a lot of time on this screen optimising your boat’s load, but the video game logic where a fishing rod takes up more space than a Mackerel, is a little annoying.įish caught and it’s time to head back to the shore to sell you catch, upgrade, buy new rods, nets, and motors, and sleep.
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