After tallying 1 million in sales, the indie arcade golf game Super Battle Golf’s first expansion, Frozen Fairway, is releasing today, April 9. The free expansion adds slippery new conditions, more items–including the mega-powerful Rocket Driver–as well as a bevy of quality-of-life improvements fans had been asking for since the game launched in February. GameSpot recently caught up with Cal Rehnqvist, the co-founder of developer Brimstone, who told us more about the Frozen Fairway update and the response to the game in general thus far. He also teased a little more about what’s to come.
For anyone just catching up, Super Battle Golf is an arcade-style golf game where up to eight players compete to finish a hole–the twist is that everyone is playing together at the same time. And unlike in real golf, you can utilize all sorts of offensive and defensive items to help get to the hole fastest.
The game, which is published by Oro Interactive, launched in February this year and sells for $8–though you can get it right now on Steam for only $5.60–the discount runs through April 14. You can also grab the game bundled with a competitor title, Golf With Friends, through the “Golf With Your Enemies” bundle for $20.
Rehnqvist told GameSpot that he’s been a huge fan of party games his whole life, singling out games like Uno and Ultimate Chicken Horse. Part of the appeal of a party game is that they’re easy to pick up and understand, and the social component compounds the fun. That’s also true with Super Battle Golf, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
“It’s fast paced, quick to jump in and out of, and just super goofy! Personally, it really just reminds me of the old days of playing all these different party games with my friends, and I think that might be something that may be resonating with folks. Sometimes you just want a quick and silly little game with some buddies,” he said.
The Frozen Fairway update is releasing on the same day, April 9, that the Masters tournament–the pinnacle of professional golf–gets underway in Augusta, Georgia. Rehnqvist said the timing was pure coincidence and not some type of effort to capitalize on the hype surrounding golf in general this week. He said he doesn’t follow golf in real life, so the timing just happened to be that way.
Drilling down into the specifics of the Frozen Fairway update, Rehnqvist said the new Rocket Driver item–which you can see in action in the trailer above–can be used to smash the ball farther than previously possible. Of course, it can also be used for chaos and mayhem.
“If you power it up to 200% you can send yourself flying across the map. Or send someone else flying across the map,” he said. “It’ll also do a neat little spin, smacking everything around it if you’re hitting your ball, so a well-timed shot can knock down everyone around you.”
Another new item in the Frozen Fairway update is the Freeze Bomb. Players can chuck it at opponents, their golf balls, or even carts to freeze them in space. Players can also lob a Freeze Bomb into open water to create a temporary ice platform that can be strategically used to get places others cannot.
“It’s been a lot of fun freezing folks at an incline though and then watching them slowly slide off the map and into the abyss,” Rehnqvist said.
The Frozen Fairway update also adds a new wind system, so players will need to factor in the blustery conditions to send the ball flying where they want it to go. There are also nine new holes for the frosty conditions and nine more for the game’s coastal biome, so players are getting a lot of new content. There are also more cosmetics and achievements in the update, along with bug fixes and numerous quality-of-life updates. The game has also been localized into more languages, including Ukrainian, Italian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian, among others.
Super Battle Golf has a “Very Positive” aggregate review rating on Steam, but Brimstone is staying active in monitoring fan feedback to help improve the game as much as possible. In addition to internal testing work that remains ongoing, Brimstone’s developers hop into public matches with the community to get a sense for “what folks are finding frustrating.”
“I think being able to play the game together with the public and not just watching them play through streams has been super valuable in that regard,” Rehnqvist said. “A lot of issues are currently being addressed in the next update such as more anti-hard griefing measures, bug fixes, being able to see who is chatting–and then just generally adding in more maps.”
Finally, Rehnqvist said the team at Brimstone would “love” to release Super Battle Golf on Steam one day, but there is nothing to share on that front for now. The team is, however, confirming that Frozen Fairway won’t be the end of Super Battle Golf’s ongoing updates, as more are coming this year.
