Mini Mini Golf Golf 

Mini Mini Golf Golf is only a mini golf game at first glance. Through audiovisual collage, retro-futuristic aesthetics and puzzle-like mini golf games, a narrative unfolds that is not easy to understand, but must be uncovered and pieced together by the players themselves. Mini Mini Golf Golf wants to be distinctly different – and it is. The game surprises with its creative use of storytelling principles that transcend genre and even media boundaries.
The entire experience takes place in a space station, where players switch back and forth between two tube screens and a clipboard, with the mini golf courses through which the story unfolds being controlled on one of the two screens. While we initially learn how to use the various displays that house the individual game components, it quickly becomes clear that the game is more than meets the eye. With each stroke, players uncover story and text modules, and the game ‘breaks’ apart before our eyes, revealing a story about climate change, time travel, love, friendship, capitalism and the end of the world as we know it. In between, we see short video sequences that deal partly with video games themselves and the illusion of freedom of choice, and partly with civil disobedience.

Mini Mini Golf Golf is a prime example of cryptographic (or enigmatic) narratives and the way in which only video games can tell stories when they combine interactivity and narration. The plot is only revealed through the active participation of the players and is not simply passively received, and this in an aesthetic form that can actually be called ‘mixed media’ thanks to the skilful use of VHS-style video and vector graphics.