Table Mini Golf was developed by Four Door Lemon for the PlayStation Vita and is available to download now from the Sony Entertainment Network for €1.99. It comes with two eighteen hole courses and three playable characters to choose from. Each course has a theme, one horror and the other pirate. At the beginning there are only three holes on the horror course available to play but as you progress through the game more are unlocked for you. There are two main modes in Table Mini Golf; free play and elimination tournament. There is also a tutorial that teaches you the basic controls. Don’t expect to learn any golfing rules though, I went through the game getting birdies, eagles, bogies and pars, never once having it explained to me what these are so you’ll either know this from your own golfing knowledge or be left to figure it out as you go along.
The elimination tournament lets you compete against other computer controlled characters; these tournaments become available once you unlock a full course in the free play section. There are additional objectives also available for each hole, for example the task of avoiding all objects. These add more challenge and playability, giving you a gold star whenever you complete a challenge and raising your golfing rank. There is a lot of variety between all the holes of each course which keeps things interesting. Courses can range from a simple slope to one that will have you avoiding biting skeleton heads or spiders. One particular feature of the game which detracts from the overall challenge somewhat, is that fact that your golfer always starts aiming directly at the hole, meaning that when you get near the hole or have no obstacle in front of you, the aiming is already done for you.
There is no online multiplayer in Table Mini Golf but you can view the global leader boards to see the highest scores for each course and try your hand at beating them. Local multiplayer is in the form of ‘pass and play’, with up to four players being able to take part. Table Mini Golf requires the use of at least one AR card to play and honestly I found this more of a hinderance than anything else. A game like this is one you would be inclined to pick up and play when you have some free time, but the requirement of the AR card detracts from the game’s portable nature, given that we don’t always have AR cards to hand when out and about. Making this an optional feature would have made the game more accessible. I also found myself instinctively leaning back into a more comfortable position when playing the game, one of the advantages of a portable system. However this would result in me being out of range of the card, requiring me to keep sitting back up in position which is unfortunately not the most comfortable way of playing for any extended period of time. The AR cards and camera do however allow you to change your view point of the course, giving you the ability to zoom in or get a top down view of the course in order to plan your next shot that bit better. However I found myself simply turning the AR cards rather than moving around the room, such is the overall inconvenience of using the AR card and camera combo. Having to move around the room, leaning in and out from the card, is more awkward than enjoyable.
The impractical nature of the AR cards really holds Table Mini Golf back. With its cheap price it could have been a simple game for players to casually pick up and play but this requirement stops it from being a game you can play on the move. There is fun to be had with Table Mini Golf, but you are restricted in where you can have it.