I stepped up to the tee and smacked my tiny white golf ball as hard as I could toward the red flag in the distance. But I forgot about the wind, and suddenly my ball veered left and landed in a sand trap. A big one. Right next to the green. What asshole built this course? Oh…right, I did.
Under Par Golf Architect is a new golf course management sim out now on PC and consoles. In Under Par, you’re tasked with creating profitable and popular golf courses. So you have to plan out each hole, making them properly difficult but still fun to play, while also managing customer needs like food and drink. And then you’ll need to hire some employees to help run snack stands and keep the place running while you’re busy expanding a hole or building a new restroom. If you’ve played any tycoon games, especially any from the late ’90s to mid-2000s, you’ll feel right at home with the level of nitty-gritty simulation you’ll need to worry about to make a thriving golf course. Sid Mier’s SimGolf fans, you are going to feel very much at home.
Under Par is clearly emulating that era of sim-management games. There are lots of colorful menus filled with rounded edges and comfy-looking icons. Clicking these will often result in a satisfying noise, too. But you’ll also notice wacky golfers walking about your course with exaggerated animations and big heads. Watching these dorks fail at a tricky hole is very fun. Watching them succeed, while less fun, is also nice and comes with a little pop of noise as well as a celebration animation. Of course, I was often too busy planning my next hole to watch the golfers have fun.
Making holes and hitting balls
Creating golf holes is the big focus of Under Par, and it thankfully nails this part of the game. You can dig in as much as you want on each course. Sure, you can slap down a few pieces of grass and a hole and call it a day. But golfers will give you a poor review, and that will hurt your overall rating. So you’re encouraged to get your hands dirty and place bushes, change elevation in certain spots, create traps, and make courses that will challenge without being completely impossible. Golfers hate that, too. So picky, these club-wielding bastards.
One of my favorite features of Under Par Golf Architect is the ability to play your own creation. At any point, with the simple click of a colorful button at the top of the screen, I was able to leave god mode and become a common golfer. I even walked around in a wacky manner, just like the little ants I usually lorded over. In this mode, you’re free to explore your course, interact with objects, and even play a few rounds on your own holes.
The golf simulation isn’t very deep, but it is just challenging enough that making a hole in one on a tricky course that you created feels great. Even better if you’ve watched a bunch of bozos fail at it earlier. Did I feel smug when I pulled it off? Yes. Yes, I did.
Under Par can be finicky at times. Placing fences, for example, drove me mad as they often erased sidewalks or grass. And I wish the financial part of Under Par was a bit more fleshed out and useful. Still, the game hooked me hard, and after what felt like just a few minutes, I had played for nearly two hours. In the middle of a workday. Whoops! If you are a fan of not-too-serious sim-management games like Two Point Museum or the aforementioned SimGolf, I think Under Par Golf Architect is worth a swing or two.
