This mini-golf game is one of the most creative games I've ever played

Mini golf is a lot of fun. I'd wager that most people enjoy a round with friends or family, and I know I have plenty of fun memories and experiences over the years that I still cherish. But there's only so much that can be done with a club and a ball in real life without going over budget and making the experience too expensive.

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That's where Walkabout Minigolf comes in. Walkabout has been one of the best Meta Quest games for years, and thanks to a regular cadence of new courses and updates, the game is celebrating its 28th new course with the release of Mars Gardens, a course that takes you to the not-so-distant future where we've colonized Mars and need to find ways to entertain ourselves while surviving.

It's yet another course in a slew of incredibly creative releases for the game, which previously tapped into well-known IPs like Wallace and Gromit, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and even one featuring a surrealist course based on the trippy Meow Wolf art museum. I'm talking about hitting the ball and watching it go up a waterfall, herding sheep into the golf hole, launching golf balls out of model train sets, hitting balls in low gravity, and more.

Like most courses, Mars Gardens is just $4 and lets you play with friends even if they didn't buy the course. Plus, you can soon play on iOS devices with the upcoming release of Walkabout Minigolf: Pocket Edition, which translates the VR experience into a smaller screen, all while letting you seamlessly play with your VR friends, all while on the go.

Heading to Mars

As a society, we've had an obsession with colonizing Mars for a few decades now, and while that dream is still a way off, Walkabout's new Mars Gardens course gave me an idea of what it might feel like to live on the Red Planet for a while. It's a sneak peak of sorts to what life there might be like 50 years after the first colony breaks ground.

As with all courses in Walkabout, Mars Gardens is a 36-hole course divided into a regular-difficulty 18-hole round and a hard-difficulty 18-hole round with different courses. All of them take place in a bio-dome on Mars, which houses several different levels of gorgeous, automated gardens filled with edible plants from all around the Earth.

Each hole is lovingly crafted to tell some kind of story, whether it's harvesting wheat on a space threshing floor, pretending a space suit is a scarecrow for non-existent Martian pests, sitting on the steps of the kids' area and admiring their precious drawings, or reading about how a giant gourd was hollowed out and turned into a surprisingly cozy reading nook that you can go in and experience for yourself.

Every Walkabout course—including Mars Gardens—features 18 collectible balls hidden in the regular course, each with a unique design and one collectible commemorative putter that can be earned after solving a "foxhunt" on the hard course.

Playing Walkabout with friends is one of my favorite monthly activities. I get together with a group of folks from the Ruff Talk VR podcast Discord and the experience perfectly mirrors the way it feels to be on a real mini-golf course alongside friends. As with anything VR, it's hard to describe the feeling adequately without experiencing it for yourself. Putting on the headset and stepping onto the course feels like you're there, and that's what I'm looking for in a social mini-golf experience.

I'd go so far as to say that Walkabout Minigolf might be the ultimate social VR game simply because it's so tightly focused on a specific social experience and is effortless to jump into. Sure, you could probably golf or do other activities in Resonite or VRChat, but then you have to have a PC to experience everything—and Resonite isn't available on Quest yet, anyway.

Since each Walkabout course is themed so differently, it's always a good time to jump into one with friends and experience it together for the first time. Mars Gardens, as you would imagine, gives you the option to play with Earth's gravity or Mars's low gravity with a custom toggle that'll switch things up for everyone. It takes the already beautiful and incredibly creative course design to an entirely new level.

Because Walkabout is a VR game, it's easy to run around (or even fly around) and explore to your heart's content. That's particularly great given how intricate each course's design and environments are, including fun hidden areas—like finding the skeleton hidden in each course—as well as finding the hidden balls together and solving the foxhunt riddles together.

It's more than just a "let's hang out at the bar" kind of social experience. It's an activity that you can have fun doing and feel good about, and it's dirt cheap!

It's time for a crossover

Walkabout Minigolf Pocket Edition will launch on iOS soon—there is no word on an Android version yet, unfortunately—and that means even more friends can join the action even if they don't own a VR headset. You won't get the immersion factor of the VR version, but early previews have me feeling positive about it being a decent alternative for those nights when you might be out of town and don't have your headset with you but don't want to miss out on hanging out with friends.

I particularly love the idea of being able to take the game on the go when you need, but being able to come back home and experience the full thing later on. I said as much in a previous column on virtual pets where the same phenomenon is causing a resurgence in virtual pets.

While Mars Gardens is one of the many original concepts from the Walkabout Minigolf development team at Mighty Coconut, my all-time favorite courses are the crossovers made with popular IPs. The course released before this one was Wallace and Gromit -themed, taking place in the iconic home of the dynamic man-and-dog duo.

I'm already a big fan of this fantastic British stop-motion animated series that's been running for decades so it was practically a shoe-in as a new favorite course, but it's not just nostalgia that got me to love it. Every hole in this course features some unique feature that only makes sense in the confines of a video game, made to feel real thanks to the immersive power of VR.

For example, one hole arranged around the dining room table sees players trying to hit their ball around pockets of jam spilled on the ground from tea time. Landing in the jam will cover your ball in the gooey stuff, making it extraordinarily difficult to land it in the hole with a good score. The next hole takes place in the bathroom, where an automated machine at the end picks up your ball, washes it off in the tub, and then gracefully places it into the cup for a top-notch shot.

It's a truly brilliant way to add even more fun to the usual madness of mini-golf course design and a hilarious centerpiece to the conversation with friends.

When I play Walkabout Minigolf, I always use a golf club attachment. My personal favorite is the YOGES adjustable club, which fits both Quest 2 and Quest 3 controllers. The club is nicely crafted of metal and has proper golf club grips, and its adjustable length helps make it feel like a real club for everyone, no matter their height.

It's easy to adjust the club length in Walkabout, as well, making it feel as authentic as possible when swinging the club in VR. This one's also good for other sports games, too, including Golf+ and tennis games.

Walkabout Minigolf already makes it feel like you're in a surreal minigolf course with friends, so why not add a golf club controller attachment that'll complete the experience? Get the real weight and grip of a club with this YOGES controller club.