Key visual from Golf Club: Wasteland, showing an astronaut swining a golf club in front of human ruins.

Who would have thought that lo-fi putts to chill to at the end of the world could be so cathartic?

Picture the scene: Earth is a toxic wasteland, an uninhabitable rock where nature is slowly mutating and only a single percentage of the population has managed to leg it to Mars. All that’s left are crumbling monuments to the hubris of our species, polluted rivers, and a few hardy animal species that have managed to adapt to this brave new world. With that in mind, who’s up for a spot of golf? That’s the idea behind Golf Club: Wasteland, in which the richest of the rich bastards living it up on Mars – sipping champagne made from recycled piss – are able to regularly pop down for 18 holes on an irradiated stretch of green.

Human ruins in Golf Club: Wasteland.

Developed by Demagog Studio, Golf Club: Wasteland takes players on a brisk journey across the planet, as one plucky astronaut has returned to humanity’s homeworld in a last-ditch attempt at closure. The exact opposite of Amazon boss Jeff Bezos gloating about using employee suffering to fund a 15-minute trip into the cosmos, while Elon Musk jealously watched on, Golf Club: Wasteland is instead a thoughtful look at the end of the world, consumerism, Silicon Valley culture, and ecological disaster.

Destroyed forest terrain in Golf Club: Wasteland.

Mechanically, there’s a golf game here that tees up for the 2D basics: you, a ball, your club, some trajectory-based maths, and a hole on the other side of the map. It’s a simple setup, enhanced by levels that have more than one path for landing your ball, and a few hazards that range from kleptomaniac squirrels to the apparently impassable ruins of Mankind. Frustratingly, Golf Club: Wasteland’s range for whacking a golf ball sits between rage-fueled slapshot or ineffectual nudging, and finding the sweet spot from which to swing your club is an exercise in trial and error.

Playing golf across the front of an abandoned apartment complex in Golf Club: Wasteland.

That’s not a problem really in the main mode of Golf Club: Wasteland, where you’re given infinite putts, and aren’t expected to come in under a certain number of strokes. However, for the game’s more challenging modes, the 2D-putting is rarely up to par.

The thing is, that gripe isn’t too much of a problem because where Golf Club: Wasteland falls into a sand trap, it easily escapes thanks to its narrative journey. It’s a short game and easily finished in a mere two hours, but it’s an experience held together by a phenomenally authentic radio station soundtrack, occasional ad breaks, and stories of a species that had multiple opportunities to save the world but chose to plunder it.

The astronaut golf player floating over a waterfall, with rocket launchers in the background, in Golf Club: Wasteland.

Golf Club: Wasteland is a melancholic experience, punctuated by visuals that capture an odyssey that can only be described as beautifully sad. The stories of German nightclubs that gave birth to poetic epiphanies, the songs of astronauts creating international incidents, and the reminder that Mars has a strict 30-second time limit for showering – all of this combines to create a game that finds solace in extinction and desolation…and maybe even hope.


Golf Club: Wasteland review

While Golf Club: Wasteland doesn’t pull any punches, each sobering blow it unloads is a subtle jab instead of a telegraphed uppercut. The golf mechanics may be so-so, but at an overarching level all game elements gel together well to paint a picture that feels honest but never brutally dismal. There’s golf to be played and extras to unlock, but, more importantly, there’s a story that feels like a poignant reminder that life always finds a way.

 8
Golf Club: Wasteland was reviewed on PC