Loft Links

How to play

Mini golf, three dimensions, four clubs. Ninety seconds of reading.

1. Aim, load, swing. Three separate things, in that order. Drag anywhere on the course to turn: sideways swings the aim and the camera with it, all the way round, and up and down raises and drops the camera so you can look along the shot or down onto it. Nothing you do out there plays a stroke. Then set the power on the meter at the bottom — drag it, or nudge it with ↑↓ — and the ring round the ball fills as it winds on, turning red when there is nothing left to give. Swing plays the shot, and so does space. The ‹ and › buttons beside it nudge the aim a hair, for the putts that need it.
2. Pick a club. Click the bag in the bottom corner: the clubs come out, line up and turn slowly so you can look at them, and the one under your pointer is explained above. Click a head to take it, or swipe across the bag to step to the next one without opening it. The heads are set at their real lofts, so the wedge lying right back is the one that goes up. Keys 1–4 take a club directly, C steps to the next one, and B opens the bag. The putter rolls flat and stops where you tell it, the driver is the reach club, the chipper hops a rail and keeps running, and the wedge goes up and over water and sand. Each one has its own ceiling on power, so a full swing means something different in every hand.
3. Read the hole first. V lifts the camera above the whole hole; scroll or pinch to zoom. The dotted lines in front of the ball are where the shot is headed — real physics, not a guess, so they tell you the truth about rails and ramps. There are three of them rather than one: a lane of a bit less power, a bit more, and what is loaded right now, because touch is too coarse to load an exact number and the game should not pretend otherwise. Aim the lane at a rail and it carries on through the bounce, fainter, on the way it comes off.
4. Read the flag. The pin stands in the cup, and it is the only thing on the course telling you what the wind is doing: the flag streams away downwind, snaps in a gust, and hangs limp when the air goes still. The wind does not push the ball — a hole plays the same in a squall as it does at noon — but every hole has a sky of its own, and it is the same sky every time you come back to it. W changes it if you would rather see the hole in something else.
5. Mind the water. A splash or a fall off the edge costs one stroke and you play again from where you hit. Sand is heavy going, boards are quick, and a tilted green breaks the ball downhill the whole way.

←→ aim · ↑↓ power · space swing · shift fine control · V overview · F fullscreen · R restart hole · M sound

Pick a course

Six holes each. Records are kept per course.

Scorecard