Puttsy by morrilet

~Puttsy~
Puttsy is a mini-golf tower defense game where you have to strategically place towers to get a hole-in-one! Don't go over par and be sure to bring your thinking cap for this charming mashup.
How to Play
- Click and drag towers onto the walls of the level.
- Right click a tower to rotate it.
- Move your mouse to swivel a cannon when the ball is in it.
- Click and hold to shoot the ball into your carefully laid towers





| Windows | https://morrilet.itch.io/puttsy |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/puttsy |
Ratings
| Overall | 216th | 3.84⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 204th | 3.778⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 199th | 3.79⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 270th | 3.975⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 790th | 3.116⭐ | 84🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 290th | 3.547⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 723th | 2.638⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 574th | 3.3⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 82🗳️ | 123🗨️ |
Your Golf engine is super nice, i love the control and the physic of it !
I had a good time playing your game : )
The only feedback I have is combining the tower placement and golf putt into one loop as opposed to separating them out. There could just be two buttons, retry and clear. I knew I had the correct solution but my putt was off -- it would have been nice to keep the tower placements without having to place them over and over when all I needed to do was get the putting angle and power right. When I'm ready to putt I could click on the ball and start the aim / power state.
Great entry!
I like the individual sound effects given to each towers function. It's more like a tower 'offense' game
Overall I love the polish of the game, with the art, music and puzzle design.
@HPMNK Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@makiyoshi Thanks! I'll pass that along the the modeler.
@swav_gav Yeah, agreed, clearing tower placements isn't ideal. Combining the two modes is an interesting idea, actually. And I'm super happy to hear you liked it!
@Justintime4u2bu Hah, tower-offense. I may just steal that. Thanks!
@Yetman Good note on the cannon controls. Maybe an arrow pointing out when the ball is in it?
@MrBreadMan Thanks! And good idea on the victory screen. And actually, firing over walls was the intended behaviour! It's not super obvious though. Maybe a shadow under the ball to show that it's flying? Ah well, 72 hours and all.
@NickMarcha Although I never considered taking this off-grid, there was definitely talk about putting things like drawbridges or honey traps on the green, so your suggestions aren't too far off from reality! Thanks for playing!
@jaredmercer Thanks so much! I'll have to keep that in mind ;)
The graphics, simple as they may be, actually work pretty well and the audio design is amazing - I love that song, really sets the right minigolfing mood!
Great job, have a fish <3 🐟
I'm so glad you liked it, though, and I'll cherish the fish forever!
You absolutely nailed the audio in this, the music is calm and relaxing, and hearing the satisfying tick of the golf ball being hit and the incredibly gratifying putting sound of the ball hitting the hole was perfect.
I'm not too sure about this actually being tower defense though, it's more of a... minigolf course puzzle game, I get they're towers, but it's sort of negligible especially since your goal is to putt the golf ball and not to prevent it from being putt.
If anything the thing I would change the most would be to have the towers stay on retry and to show their influence, this makes setting things up a lot clearer and I'll know where I need to make the ball go.
Aiming the cannon myself was also a bit.. easy, why not have it rotate on it's own? You could even mess around with the rotation speed if you want to make variants of it, timing becomes more of a thing then, which is perfect for a minigolf game (just think of those real minigolf courses with the windmills and such).
I absolutely wanted to play more after those 7 holes and I was kinda put down when I reached the end. It was immensely fun and really nice and quick as well, just some quick minigolf matches in between working.
If you are going to continue development on this game consider going a bit more towards actual minigolf part and have strokes in there as well, so that you can work with score! The hole in one mode (this current game) could be a game mode of the game itself! And definitely consider bringing this out on mobile devices, it would work amazing on there. I can already see myself playing this during my commute to uni!
All in all, a very fun, relaxing game with a lot of promise! Well done!

To give some more feedback, the background looks nice as a background but sometimes it does weird waves and take the attention of the game, and is a bit distracting, maybe make it softer to prevent it : )
Please, take a look at my game too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/confessional
@mrPenguin Yeah, I feel like minigolf needs to be crossed with laser tag and a dinosaur to really shine in real life ;) And good to know about the background! It was my first time playing with cloth physics and I got a little carried away... Thanks for the feedback!
@mmyhre Thanks! I'm glad you liked it.
@hankworx Yeah, leaving stuff in place didn't happen due to the time constraints, unfortunately, but I'm glad to hear the mouth-sounds were on point! Thanks for playing!
@tayl1r

(Also thanks for playing!)
@alxander Thanks so much!
But you've made a good job!
@funisfun8 Puzzle x Golf is a good way to describe it, you're right. And I may consider revisiting this project, acutally, so I'll keep those notes in mind! Thanks!
@hermeses Yeah, I agree. Time constraints and all. Thanks for the feedback!
@fenderbate Thanks!
@roidz Thanks so much!
I was quite bummed about the reset not persisting tower placements, but I'm not sure whether or not I like the fact that ball physics don't really work like in normal minigolf games. I feel it made for rather unforeseeable outcomes since you still needed to aim but did not have the control as is expected (cannot do trickshots or much anything else than just launch the ball at a turret). Having that control makes for harder puzzle designs, but it's my two cents in any case.
It is a solid entry none the less. Well done!
@cool-summit Yeah, the towers not resetting is my biggest regret this time around. Good note about the more direct control, though. When I was testing levels (near the end, unfortunately) I felt a similar way. It's a little more intuitive to click and drag, methinks. Thanks for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Gameplay is well balanced. This game would deserve some great arts and FX and it will become great.
The potential of your idea is really big, you can image whatever you want - would be great to have a complete version of this game :smiley:
@DeepTerror Thanks! I'm actually pretty happy with the possibilities this entry presents me with for the future. So many unexplored ideas...
@Gonz0 I'll look into it! Unity makes it pretty simple but in my experience it takes a little tweaking to make it work right. Thanks for the feedback!

This puzzle game is an incredible mash up of well known genres. Solid for most of the part and very intuitive (it was my own fault not seeing that the cannon tower had an entry spot. I thought it'd fire a bomb or something to make the ball jump). It looks and plays great, although sometimes, I felt that the ball wouldn't trigger the towers or go as far as expected.
I overall had a great experience with this game, although I did have a lot of problems on the first level with the cannon, and that's aside from my oversight. At times, the ball would not trigger the spring trap, or would be hit but not go far enough. There was even one time where the putter trap pushed it out of the stage. It wasn't much of a problem, but resetting the tower placement after every failure - specially those that occurred before I could test if the rest of the towers were going to work - was an annoyance.
Still, this is one of the most polished and fun games I've played on the jam. Excellent work! [My team](twitter.com/whalesandgames) really would like to see more games like these. Keep up the good work!
I wouldn't really call this game tower defense, but it does make a compelling and satisfying puzzle game.
The 7 levels I played were quite good, but easy. I haven't seen a level yet that proves this concept can be challenging. But I believe it can be. More complex tower types might do it for you.
Putter towers not triggering is what made me retry the most. Giving them a slightly bigger trigger area would probably fix that.
I'm not sure how well it fits the "incompatible genres" theme, but I could see this being made into a commercial game in the $5-20 range. Nice job.
@fox-in-sox Yeah, totally agreed. The tower reset was more of a shortcut in development than any meaningful design decision, and it's my most regrettable choice yet. Thanks for playing!
@mza Yeah, agreed on the towers point. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
@alans-antics Yeah, I think it could maybe use some re-branding in the future. As for difficulty, I think the levels here were definitely on the easier side. I'd toyed with the idea of things like drawbridges and honeytraps to add a level of timing to the game, and I think that (along with a more diverse set of towers and grid-pieces) would really help make the levels harder. Plus, of course, more rigorous level testing than can be done in 72 hours. Also, good note on the putter towers. Thanks for playing!
@mektidas Thanks! And we'll have to wait and see if it pans out ;)
@caleblewis I think we already gave your game a go, actually! @caterein left some feedback. As for the final levels... Yeah. I think it was a mix of me (stupidly) assuming people wouldn't be so quick to grasp the cannon and not having enough time to test the levels as much as I would've liked. Thanks for the feedback!
@lemonbalmgames I get that. I've played my fair share of jam games in genres that didn't work for me ;) Glad to hear it held up anyway! Thanks for playing!
Great job!
Plus, it was pretty clear and previsible how the game will go, and I luckily experience no bug, wich is pretty rare in a game jam.
In general, I really enjoyed playing this game !
Excellent, clever entry! congratulations!
@hilvon Yeah, the starting push can really be a killer. Agreed on the turrets. Thanks!
@csanyk Yeah, a bit of polish goes a long way, methinks. The little things like towers not resetting tend to bite you in the end ;) Thanks for playing!
@mr-chocolatesalmon I'm glad the mashup was more palatable. Better than the sum of the parts or something, I suppose. Thanks for playing!
@miroky Thanks! I'm glad you liked it, and I'll pass the good word to the audio/graphics folks.