Available for: PC, iOS, Android
Playing golf in the desert exactly what it says on the tin and nothing more. In between there is a ball, a hole and procedurally generated desert land. That's it. No denomination, no club selection, no music, no items, no pause menu, no restart, not even an avatar. Just dragging the cursor back to determine the angle and power of the next shot, and trying to get from A to B. Once you do that, a new hole will appear and you will continue indefinitely. (Game technically has “ending”, but God bless everyone who plays long enough to see it.)
Playing golf in the desert On paper it reads as too simple, and it makes sense as a sly critique of time-wasting and player-degrading mobile games. However, in reality the game borders on meditativeness. The game's radical minimalism makes everything and nothing important at the same time. There's a roll counter at the top, but it's functionally meaningless and just shows how long you've been playing. You can spend 60 shots on one hole, but the invisible eye will not judge you. Instead, you're allowed to focus entirely on the simple pleasure of sending a ball flying in an arc, watching it kick up sand and, ultimately, slap in the hole. It's more about the process of the game than the rules of the game: golfingnot golf. And when something new appears – a well of water, a setting sun, a cactus – it seems important.