Netflix has announced its latest video game, and it brings together a number of the streaming giant’s popular franchises into a crossover minigolf experience.
Netflix Minigolf, as it’s called, is a couch co-op party game releasing on July 28 for all subscribers. The game combines elements of minigolf and pinball, with its 60+ levels taking place in settings from Netflix shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, and Squid Game (via Variety). It’s developed by Next Games, which is one of multiple gaming studios owned by Netflix. Next Games also developed Netflix Puzzled, Boggle Party, and Party Crashers, among others.
You play as characters from the TV shows, and one of the twists is that you can collect “Pranks” that can be used to disrupt opponents. Like other Netflix games, your phone is the controller, and the game supports up to four players locally.
The launch of Netflix Minigolf on July 28 is likely by design to help ride the golf wave on Netflix, as the streamer just launched a new golf show starring Will Ferrell called The Hawk on July 16.
Netflix Minigolf is just the latest big game release from Netflix this year, following a World Cup game and the horror game Unhinged from Fight Club director David Fincher and Weapons director Zach Cregger.
“Play a story”
Netflix Games has endured a rocky road in recent years as it set out to set a strategy. At one point, Netflix was invested in AAA games, and hired big names, but those plans fell apart. Today, Netflix is more focused on social and party games that people can play quickly and easily. Netflix Games’ narrative executive Sean Krankel told The Game Business that, in the next couple of years, he wants people to see Netflix as “natural” destination to play games, as opposed to it being perceived like it is today, as “experimental.”
“I would love, in a year or two, for people to be going: ‘This is naturally the place that I would go to play a story’. And that ‘playing a story’ doesn’t sound weird,” he said. “The ambitious thing here is that we create a new way of interacting with story and character that doesn’t feel like you have to be trepidatious or worried about trying it, or, ‘Am I going to be good at this?’”
“The same way that somebody’ll go to Disneyland and jump on a ride or go into an escape room, and it just becomes a new form of entertainment. That’s where I’d love to see this go,” he added.