#IndieSelect: Nicky The Home Alone Golf Ball (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Nicky The Home Alone Golf Ball by MiniMal Lab on the Nintendo Switch from QUByte Interactive through Xinthus' #IndieSelect event earlier in the week.  The game was given and received without expectation or promise of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared through social media channels.  All of the words and pictures in this article unless otherwise noted, are my own and form my own experience playing the game.

Based on the trailer for Nicky The Home Alone Golf Ball (hereafter referred to as Nicky), you get was is advertised, but only to a certain extent.  Before even starting the game, you can customize your playable golf ball, Nicky, with hair including facial hair, glasses, hats, and bling, and you are thankfully told that these cosmetic effects have no effect on the actual gameplay.  This is good because I obviously put the Viking hat on my Nicky and we all know from games like Katamari Damacy that pokey-things on rolling objects is a real hindrance.  Once you do start, you are greeted by a digital voice that sounds like it was compiled of audio from British comedian Matt Berry (The IT Crowd, Worms Revolution) and you start off on your adventure, leaving the box of golf balls in a house and headed back home to the local golf course.

Nicky takes a mechanic similar to Angry Birds and Midnight Deluxe, where you slingshot/golf-shot an object towards a goal.  The difference though in Nicky is that you cannot see the end goal, and are instead following arrow signs pointing you in the right direction to shoot as you make your way through obstacles.  There is a bit of platforming going on, trying to shoot Nicky onto bookshelves, lights, telephone poles, windmills, and through car windows.  As is the case with slingshot and golf games, you can direct the shot as well as the amount of power you want to use, but I genuinely found that I would either use full power or some amount between 1/2 and 3/4.  I found that when I used less than half power, the ball would hardly travel in the direction I had intended.  The game can be played with the controller or with the touchscreen, but I found the controller to be comfortable and easier to track Nicky, especially when the ball was rolling on the screen and I wanted to take another shot immediately before stopping.  Also, any chance to not obscure the viewable area, I will usually take.

If I had to look at this for the entirety of the game, you
have to look at it for the entirety of the article.

Like golf, Nicky keeps track of the number of strokes you have made with the goal being to have the fewest number of strokes by the end of the game.  The game constantly reminds you of this fact by having a worldwide leader board permanently plastered in the upper right portion of the screen.  To remind you that that stroke you just took, now totaling 186 is still too high to beat Sarah who is sitting firmly at 147.  I found this a bit distracting because, on my first playthrough, I had a general sense of what I was doing and the direction I was going, but I definitely hit a wall where I got frustrated and just started taking shots haphazardly and probably wracked up 20 plus strokes out of frustration.  Plus learning the mechanics of the game, how much power actually affects the ball, how to best shoot at/around the birds, how fast the ball travels towards a car window that keeps opening and closing.  Maybe have the option to turn off the leaderboard or be able to view it in the pause screen?

As far as content goes, the game is comprised of just one level/world/stage that is actually pretty large.  The areas consist of a house, the roof, telephone poles, a street with cars, trees, windmills, a stealth area involving a stressed-out dog, and a mini-golf course.  In all honesty, I felt that the playable area was too big, especially since more often than not, I would shoot at a 45° angle at full power since most of the game was about distance and less about chipping and putting technique.  There were moments when full power played a hindrance, but with the   But there are more feelings about this than, "Woah, big world," and I am going to be jumping around a bit so try to keep up.

Wait, what!?

One final criticism is that I often found myself shooting into an area that I could not see.  You are able to move the camera a little bit, but you cannot see the entire playable area, or at least, the area where your ball could land.  Have the viewable area somewhat limited I could understand otherwise the player could just look at the entire world to see what was up ahead.  Combined with not always being able to see where you are shooting, often times the camera is unable to keep the ball in frame long enough to see what happened to you.  Maybe this was an attempt to be similar to the camera operators in real golf games who have to track the tee shots, but that might be giving too much credit.  In the picture here, I shot off a telephone pole then bounced off of something, possibly one of the birds that littered this area because there was a tell-tale squawk right before the bounce.

The game sells for $0.99 and is currently (as of 01/16/2020) on sale for $0.49, which is a decent price for what the game is.  Had the game been broken up into say, nine individual areas, even if the developers used the exact same world as it stands in the game, it could add to the perceived value of the game.  With there being just the one world/map/area, it feels like there is not a lot of game here.  And with there being only one world, it makes practicing on certain obstacles like the backyard stealth area or the windmills very difficult to improve upon.  Had there been individual levels (unlockable as being able to play them individually after completing the whole game), it would allow players to practice stages before attempting to make a run for the leaderboard, which would only tabulate scores when you play the entire course (as opposed to jumping around).  Using this format, I could see the game selling for $4.99, or do the frequent sale thing for 75% off at $1.25.

As it stands, Nicky The Home Alone Golf Ball does feel a lot like a proof of concept, something that the developers would show around to publishers as a sampling, that there could be more on the way, but alas, this is the entire game.  Even though the game encourages you to replay multiple times to challenge the top scorers on the leaderboard, I do not see myself replaying the game much at all after this first playthrough.  It was a decent experience that lasted just over an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half at the longest, but even then, I might be more inclined had the world been broken up into more easily to digest chunks.  You know, like the front nine of a golf course, rather than playing a single obstacle-laden course stretching some 3,138 yards to a single hole at the end.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Oh Let Me Make Sure The Camera Doesn't Quite Get It


P.S.  I realized pretty early on in my playthrough that I would not be able to make a run at the leaderboard, and a final score of 410 I was semi-happy with despite getting frustrated with the windmills and just shooting without a specific care.

Final-final critique about the leaderboard is that it obscures the in-game congratulatory text.  Maybe it's just bad UI when the game was in development, not taking into account a full list of 10 players, but that's just me.