You may not know the name Luke Muscat, but you’ve almost definitely played his games before. He was a team lead and designer on Fruit Ninja – you know, the one where you swipe at various fruits on the screen for hours on end – and he designed Jetpack Joyride, among other zany releases. His latest is a solo venture, and it’s a completely ridiculous spin on golf.
It’s called Normal Golf Game, because, well, it’s a normal golf game, right? You hop onto the course for a nice, relaxing 18 holes. The birds are singing, there’s a gentle breeze, it’s all very quaint.
So long as you don’t try to leave. The rules are pretty lax – you can tee from anywhere and it doesn’t really matter where you send your ball. But you shouldn’t try to go home. That’s bad.
It’s only been out two days, and reviews are already 98% Very Positive on Steam.
To accompany the release, Muscat put up a YouTube video called “My game is out and I have to stop doing this,” where he discusses making Normal Golf Game and why it marks a change for how he approaches his creative endeavors.
“This is working myself into oblivion until I’m burning myself on every single project,” he says.
“That’s what needs to stop,” he continues. “That’s what I can’t keep doing on every release. And I feel like I say that on every release, and I would still do it. And I would say on this game, this is undoubtedly the hardest I’ve ever worked on any game in the last 20 years of my career.”
He admits a little bit of him is “proud of that,” because he enjoys burning the midnight oil. “I care about my games, but I know it’s unsustainable,” he comments.
I imagine a great many developers across the medium can relate to what he’s saying. You want the thing to be great, and you wind up sacrificing a little too much of yourself to get it there. Elsewhere, he says outright that he thought releasing this was “putting this game out to die.” That’s a very relatable kind of anxiety
Normal Golf Game has a bunch of bundles with other, equally milquetoast golfing sims on Steam. Give them a look if you’d like Muscat to know he’s scored an eagle here.