AppReviewToday- AppReviews

There have been quite a few attempts to develop games that double as a sort of daily ritual in the wake of Wordle, but I'm not sure many have had all the requisite components to compete at this level. After spending a few weeks with Coffee Golf, though, I am prepared to say that this daily golfer is probably the closest I've seen anything come to recreating such a winning formula.

Golf club

Coffee Golf is a casual golf game that serves up a unique landscape with five different holes on it every day. With three clubs at your disposal, you can chart your own path through the course in an effort to take as few strokes as possible. Once you've completed the course, your score is tallied, you can get some limited information on how you measured up against other players, and share your score easily by copying your scorecard to post an emoji-laden readout of your performance.

Outside of the nonlinear structure, Coffee Golf doesn't get too off-kilter with its brand of golfing. Course obstacles are standard sand traps and trees, and your clubs are the familiar basic tools of a driver, wedge, and putter. You control your strokes through dragging and releasing on the screen, with longer shots typically being less accurate than short-game strokes.

Routine exercise

If you spend even a small amount of time with Coffee Golf, its similarity to Wordle is easy to see. Each time you boot the app, you see the day's course and start, with no other menu options or alternate modes around to distract you. Also, each course just takes a few minutes to complete and your shareable scorecard is just as colorful, clever, and fun to share as Wordle's.

Where it departs–obviously–is in the actual activity, but I have to say I quite like the feel of Coffee Golf's swing mechanics and it feels more immediately like a game of skill than Wordle. Where the latter always starts as a pure guessing game, the way you decide to approach holes from your first tee-off in Coffee Golf has an impact on the rest of your performance on the day's challenge.

Free swinging

Coffee Golf is a completely free game, but it does offer a single, odd in-app purchase. For $ 3.99, players can unlock “unlimited play” which allows you to replay the day's challenge as many times as you want. This means that paying players can try to change their score after already playing the course, which feels somewhat antithetical to the kind of “once per day” design principle of the game and ones like it.

I can see why someone might want this feature, as Coffee Golf does have an element of randomness to its shot accuracy that can occasionally really throw off a day's score. That said, managing swing variability feels like a core “risk vs. reward” system that creates the challenge of the game in the first place. Personally, I couldn't see using unlimited play as all that rewarding as I'd know that my first attempt is really my true score, but if someone wants to pay for that option who am I to say otherwise?

The bottom line

This is all to say that Coffee Golf is a high quality, fun, and free daily golfer. It is just frictionless enough to making daily play incredibly easy while also maintaining a sense of challenge to drive you to improve. Because of this, I plan to keep golfing over my morning coffee for a good long time.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/coffee-golf-review/

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I am a big fan of sports games, but often avoid titles that lean into simulating real life sports. This is for a whole number of reasons, but the main two are that typically no simulation of real sports ever actually feels like the real thing and that I find most games like that are way more concerned with fidelity than actually being fun to play. In any case, Hoop Land doesn't have this problem. This retro-styled basketball game is a super arcade-y take on hoops and–despite being in beta–is perfectly enjoyable as is and is completely free to boot.

Balling in bursts

Hoop Land resembles sports titles from the 8-bit era, featuring simplistic sprite players running around a top-down view of a basketball court. In its current form, only exhibition games are available, so you just pick a team and opponent and get to hooping.

The controls are simple virtual buttons for passing, shooting, crossing up, etc. and offers some modern features by default, including an defense assistant that automatically has your character follow their man. You can, of course, take manual control at any time to attempt a steal, block a shot, or any other number of defensive maneuvers you'd like to do. With these tools, you just play basketball and try to outscore the opposing team before time runs out.

Champion of charm

In case you were wondering,Hoop Land is not a NBA licensed game, so all of its teams and players are made up. Although this might be a letdown to anyone who might want to play as their favorite teams or players, I actually find the work put into the team and character design for this game to be remarkably charming. There are definitely some teams that are clearly inspired by real NBA teams (like the “Boston Charms” and their four-leaf clover logo) but there are also a good number of original team concepts like the 80s neon-styled Miami Tides or my personal favorite team, the New Orleans Airmen. It's also worth noting the game has a “load league” option that lets you import data and make a league the way you see fit.

Similarly on the character front, there's a lot of identity put into each team's roster. Not only does every player have their own unique stats, but every player also has their own look. This not only makes Hoop Land a lot more visually interesting than it might otherwise be, but it also lets you put faces to names so you can identify your key playmakers and use them to your advantage without having to pause or call timeouts to look up player stats.

Team spirit

In its retro mold, Hoop Land obviously doesn't feel like a simulation of basketball, but the core game definitely feels true to the nature of the sport. Capitalizing on possessions and playing good defense typically make the difference between a win and a loss, and there's no apparent way to just kind of cheese your way around the game's AI opponents.

That said, there are definitely things I'd like to see added to Hoop Land as it gets out of beta. Something like a career mode would be nice, but even more than that some additional teaching tools, multiplayer capabilities, or just some better ways to look at team rosters and stats could go a really long way.

The bottom line

Hoop Land as a beta is not much more than a core of what looks to be a fuller experience. That said, what is already in the game is quite enjoyable and charming. Especially considering that it is free (with no ads or monetization, mind you), I highly recommend this retro sports game to just about anyone.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/hoop-land-review/