Sokoban + Golf = A Match That Just About Works
When two genres get mixed together for a game, you can normally step back and imagine it. Roguelike + deckbuilder is easy to visualise, and even combinations like platformer + soulslike feel possible if I really squint. But there’s something about golf + sokoban that causes my brain to malfunction. If you had given me thirty minutes to come up with a game pitch, I’m not sure I could have done it.
Credit to Afil Games for first coming up with it, and then making it work. While I wouldn’t say that the splicing is completely successful – you can definitely see the seam on occasion – Hole in Many is an attempt at doing something new in the crowded and stale sokoban genre.
A Sokoban-Fusion That’s Full Of Holes
Hole in Many is about 75% sokoban, and 25% golf. It looks and plays like a sokoban: the crates that you would normally push are golf balls, and the goals are replaced by holes. Instead of shunting the golf balls with your hands, you are thematically tonking them with a golf club. Everything is viewed from the top down, and the putting-greens are overlaid with a grid of squares.
You can even get behind a golf ball and move it (hit it) one square at a time with your club. You could, theoretically, play it like a simple sokoban. But there’s a problem: on the flag, attached to the hole, is a number. This is the ‘par’, and you need to get your ball to the hole within the set number of moves. If the hole is a par-four and you take five moves to reach it, then the level is over. You haven’t just bogeyed the hole, you’ve failed it completely.
So far, so sokoban. But here comes the 25% golf. Step up to a golf ball, and you will be given the opportunity to select your ‘Potency’. This is a fancy term for how hard you thwack the ball. You can hit it lightly, moving it one square; medium, hitting it two squares; or hard, sliding it from one end of the green to the other. A hard hit will only stop once it comes up against an obstacle.
Hitting Things Hard Doesn’t Always Work
Now the par on the hole makes sense. You need to be thinking about which combination of shots is optimal for sinking your ball in the hole. With each level, that problem becomes more complex. It soon becomes clear that medium and hard shots will loft the ball over water, but not rocks. Quite unlike a sokoban, you can ignore blockages with a well-placed ball. Very much like a sokoban, you can’t move the ball if it’s in a corner or wedged against a wall.
It’s at this point that golf enthusiasts need to suspend their disbelief. Because Hole in Many plays loose with golf’s rules so that it can create more elaborate puzzles. Multiple golf balls and multiple holes, each with their own par, can appear on a course at once. Hit one of the golf balls and each par will reduce by one. Which ball you hit becomes an important factor in solving a puzzle.
You will need to keep suspending your disbeliefs. Because you can also hit one golf ball into another golf ball. At the point of impact, the hitting ball will stop, and the hit ball will move to where the hitting ball would have gone. You can effectively shunt balls about, which is vital as it moves two balls for the price of one. Your ‘par’ is within reach.
On The Hunt For A Birdie Or Two
These are all the tools you need to complete a level. As with most of Afil Games’ recent titles, it really could have done with a tutorial, or a text card at the very least. Afil Games have become more risky and innovative lately, which is lovely to see, but they rarely explain how the innovations work. It’s something they need to look at if they keep down this path.
But once you come to an understanding with Hole in Many, things click and it’s rather good fun. Hole in Many is reminiscent of sokoban or sliding puzzles that have a move-counter attached, but with some welcome extra rules. It got me wondering whether pool or snooker might have been the more suitable sport to align with, since the latter levels really need you to master hitting balls into each other. Hole in Many is often a game of efficiency: working out how to cover the most ground with your balls in the smallest number of moves.
I also really like the lobbing feature. Walls and obstacles become less of a downer when you can pull out the sand-wedge and dink the ball over them. Again, it adds another layer to the sokoban. You’re almost thinking in three-dimensions, rather than two.
I just wish the rules of Hole in Many were a little more predictable. You’re not going to spend long with Hole in Many, so it really needed to introduce itself well, quickly, and with rules you could understand. But it took me an age to really get to grips with its quirks, and by then it was all over. I feel like the solutions are, too often, tinged with a bit of trial and error. What happens when you hit three balls into each other? Do all shots loop over water? Does a hard shot go over or into the hole?
The Rules Don’t Quite Mesh, But They’re Still Fun
I don’t necessarily think that all of these needed to be tutorialised. It’s more that the inner workings of Hole in Many are unnecessarily fiddly, and combine in confusing ways. In a sokoban, you can often sit for a moment and work out the solution. In Hole in Many, you have to sort of tinker with things, find out what happens when A interacts with B, and go from there. I found it a little inelegant as a result.
I’m also confused by a few of the puzzles. For a large proportion of them, you can basically bypass all the complex bits – the multi-hits and the lobs – and just solve them with basic hits. I even finished one level by being five under par. I’m not sure what happened here: did Afil Games overcomplicate things and fail to spot the easy solution? Or were these intentional? If they were intentional, then highscore tables or achievements (like those in Puzzledorf) would have given me more confidence that they were intentional.
I feel like Afil Games took a big swing with Hole in Many, and they covered a great distance but landed in the rough. I was a big fan of the ambition, but the execution was a little loose. With a tutorial, usability improvements and some relaxing of its rules, I could see Hole in Many tightening up nicely.
Important Links
Hole In Many Tees Off On Xbox And PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/hole-in-many-tees-off-on-xbox-and-pc/
Buy from the Xbox Store, optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/hole-in-many-xbox-series/9n9z98k5l0k8
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/hole-in-many-xbox-one/9nnkfs4lznjb
Buy for Windows PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/hole-in-many-windows/9nqfzkdx8gvt
