House of Golf 2 Preview

I enjoy a bit of mini-golf, and I like games that take place inside houses, so I had high hopes for House of Golf 2 from Starlight Games as it combines both of those things.

As you might expect from that opening paragraph, this is a mini-golf game that takes place inside a house. Living room, bedroom, attic — you know what a house is. Each hole allows for nine strokes before failing you completely, and there are usually multiple routes to the hole as one route will take you to a giant coin. Right now I’m not sure what the coins do, so I assumed that wasn’t yet included in the version I played; however, if you decide to go for the coins in each hole, it’s much more difficult to reach the green in under par.

Thankfully, collected coins remain collected when you inevitably have to retry the entire championship. There is a practice mode so that you can get a better hang of courses that you’re having trouble with, but if you want to improve your score in the championship you’ll have to replay the entire thing.

House of Golf 2 may take place in a house, but that doesn’t mean it’s lacking in hazards. Some of them move, others you need to get in range of, and a few actually help you out. For instance, there’s a crane that will relocate the ball if you’re lucky enough to stop within its area, and there are trucks that will just push your ball around (usually out of bounds) if you don’t avoid them. There are also portals which will transport your ball somewhere else, though be careful with them as they conserve your momentum!

The early build that I got to play with consisted of three championships and a tutorial championship. To progress to the next stage, you have to at least get a bronze trophy by scoring the equivalent of par strokes for all of the holes. The controls are simple enough, though sometimes you will think the ball has stopped moving and begin a swing… only for it to not work. Then one of three things can happen: you get hit by a hazard, it detects a tiny swing wasting a turn and moving the ball slightly, or nothing.

There are also live tournaments that are around for a limited time, so you can try to get to the top of the leaderboard. The one that I got to play was a mish mash of courses from the championships, so it seems like everyone has a chance to practise before attempting a tournament.

From what I’ve seen, the game shows promise with plenty of varied courses on show even in just the four championships. I was a bit confused by the music choices as there are only a handful of tracks, and it seems as if Starlight Games couldn’t decide on a genre to go with? The golf physics are solid at least.

House of Golf 2 is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC on 25th of July.