Games of the Year 2019: What the Golf? is a jubillant middle finger to games that waste your time

Over the festive break we'll be running through our top 20 picks of the year's best games, leading up to the reveal of Eurogamer's game of the year on New Year's Eve. You can find all the pieces published to date here - and thanks for joining us throughout the year!

What the Golf? (yes, there is a question mark in the title and I'm going to stick with it, sorry) is a simple game about nothing, and that is more than enough. It is, I think, the game that captures the big bang arrival of Apple Arcade better than any other. That moment was an explosion of creativity, a sudden, off-guard and off-beat arrival of fun. It was the best thing to happen to video games in the last year, I think, and at the core of it all was this silly, simple, endlessly enjoyable game about pinging things around for a laugh.

In What the Golf? you are a golf ball plonking around some zany science lab of an overworld, unlocking a path by completing the odd little golf courses that are really science experiments, or something, and occasionally getting told off by a big computer. Honestly it really doesn't matter. The brilliance is the simplicity of its fun and the basic, fundamental pleasure of playing it.

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