From itching to Switch: The Evolution of Cursed to Golf's Story

When I first watched Cursed to Golf, it took me by surprise. Director of the game Liam Edwards gave a humorous video about it and used the word "golflike" a lot. It's excellent.

That being said, my first idea had nothing to do with the game. I thought, "I recognize that voice! Who is that? It turns out that I've spent many hours listening to Liam speak on his podcast, Final Games. He's had conversations with some of my favorite devs, like Derek Yu, Bennet Foddy, and Lucas Pope. Additionally, I had heard him say that he intended to create his own game in the future.

Going back to the announcement moment, my little head was completely blown. A guy who used to be my old self was now pursuing his passion, and the game also seemed to be very attractive. Though the premise, which appeared to be "what if golf... but Castlevania?" was the most appealing aspect for me, the stunning pixel graphics and catchy soundtrack created a solid first impression. Of course, it was before I had ever played it, and there is much more to it than that.

I then tried it out at the WASD event in London, where I also had the opportunity to speak with Liam briefly. The information that the game began as a itch.io demo was the major thing that stayed in the back of my mind. I had a terrible idea, so everything else he said may as well have been nonsense. What if I published an essay titled "From Itch to Switch"? All I needed was that ridiculous name. I had to write it now. But if I had recalled anything else he said, it would have been beneficial.

I thus set up a phone conversation with Liam, who is developing the game at Chuhai Labs and resides in Japan. For him, what I had for breakfast was supper. I'll start by asking how things are doing. "Never, ever come to an end. There's always something, like a PS4 patch that has to be updated, a problem that you thought you solved, an event that's coming up next week for which you need to prepare a special demo build, or information regarding the Steam Deck review procedure that we're attempting to gather, etc.Something is always there. God, I hope he's OK.

The primary challenge is that the game will be available on all platforms. "Trying to ship on every platform is the most stressful thing I've ever done in my life, and I never want to do it again, ever, ever. It's happening, although it seemed improbable at first. We thought we would have to postpone as we were caught in PlayStation submission purgatory for a month. It was a nightmare come true. It was like a dance, a tango with PlayStation.

However, I suppose it's a pleasant nightmare to have. Stress may arise from the challenge of delivering on all platforms while receiving assistance from a publisher (Thunderful) and having trailers appear at events like a Nintendo Direct, but it is nothing compared to idly playing about and creating tutorials for game development to make small prototypes. Following his departure from Rockstar Games, where he worked on titles like Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption II, Liam was doing just that.

He relocated to Japan, took up English teaching, contributed to the Final Games podcast, and gained additional knowledge about game development. "Everyone at Rockstar is a small cog in a big machine, working in these enormous teams." Subsequently, I saw other independent artists and numerous developers that operate in smaller teams, and their environments were vastly unlike from mine. They contributed in an innovative way, in fact.

"I became aware of an increasing number of individuals here who created video games on their own. Here in Japan, we have BitSummit, a massive celebration of independent gaming. After that, it was abundantly evident to me that the video game business had a darker side. Liam was motivated by this to begin creating his own prototypes by combining these instructions on game-making with his existing expertise.

Because it was simple to make, I created a game that was similar to an infinite runner. Japan was a major inspiration for it. It was named Salaryman Suzuki-san, and it was this awful thing that resembled a Flash game. However, it was my first creation that I produced all by myself. People took pleasure in playing about with it or doing other things with it. One scenario involving Ojiro Fumoto, the creator of Downwell and Poinpy, resulted from this game.

"I recall attending to an Indie event in Tokyo at the time with Salary Suzuki-san. Furthermore, since my Japanese was not very excellent, he had to interpret for me. I was sitting there with my embarrassing Flash game and the Downwell creator. He's also speaking. He's translating this game for me, you know? I couldn't believe I got to do this type of stuff, I thought to myself.

Liam went from being a cog at Rockstar to an English teacher and podcaster with a side interest, and then he started receiving job offers. Building this network of other developers was crucial for him. Q Games, the creators of the PixelJunk franchise, gave him one. Starfox programmer Dylan Cuthbert is in charge of the studio.

"They are a large studio in Kyoto with fifty employees. Having been a Rockstar, I was a little nervous, but [Dylan] gave me some comfort. "No, you are going to come on as a game planner and you will help co-lead this team," he said. After I joined Q, everything kind of fell into place and I ended up where I am today.

After that, Liam continued to develop his skills and was able to co-direct the Apple Arcade game Scrappers, which was released just before the Covid-19 epidemic. "It's kind of a bummer that after working together the entire time, we had to ship our game in the most subdued, negative way possible." The bright side was that Liam found himself with a lot more free time.

I recently resumed prototyping. Podcasts and video games go hand in hand for me. I was playing with everything while I was developing, but I was also listening to a podcast. I was listening to a podcast that used to be centered on Spelunky, called Eggplant. These days, roguelikes are the main focus, and some very smart folks co-host it.

"I struggle a lot with roguelikes. However, they are rather fascinating. Furthermore, I never considered creating one. However, I find myself questioning why no one has created a roguelike game based on physics. I'm not sure, but the only thing that sprang to me was probably Yoku's Island Express.

"So I just started creating a dungeon that looked like Metroid." However, you would use a ball that bounced about to strike foes, dodge traps, and make it to the dungeon's conclusion without losing all of your life. And I thought, "This is similar to golf," while I was working on it.

For Liam, who has played golf for a long time, this realization was very helpful. With the urging of his parents, he played golf for a lot of his childhood when all he wanted to do was "stay home and play Zelda." Although he won't be winning The Masters anytime soon, this experience was quite helpful for prototypes.

"It turned into something where my golf expertise could be transformed, meaning that your par represents your health and the number of shots you have left to make to reach the hole at the end of the dungeon. Then you're just throwing this ball around. You have to time the force and angle, much as in a golf swing. And then, well, things just kind of spiraled into this game I never really gave much thought to called Cursed to Golf.

Fortunately for us, this new community Liam had joined since arriving to Japan was a bit more enthusiastic, even if he didn't think much of it. Discord gatherings are taking the place of actual ones at COVID, and Bannon Rudis, the director of River City Girls by WayForward, invited him to one after seeing a prototype on Twitter. Initially hesitant since it was incomplete, Liam made the choice to seize the chance.

"I sort of took advantage of the fact that we could work from home at the time, and I may have spent a lot more time not doing my work. I said to myself, "I'm going to see what I can do by finishing a nine-hole demo." I thus went through a two-week period of self-imposed crunch, during which I created levels, power-ups, and attempted to complete the demo almost every day. After the event, everyone is saying, "This is really cool."

Many others agreed with the remark. Jirard Khalil, popularly known as The Completionist, was one of them and he pushed Liam to publish it. "I hadn't given publishing the demo any attention. It's so fantastic that I simply had to share it. I then reasoned, "Well, I might as well just finish it since I'll be moving on to the next project soon." The title screen for the demo is seen below.

It was more like, "I just want things out of my life," for me. in order for me to go to the next experiment, concept, or object. I decided to upload it to itch.io, the website where other game prototype buckets are kept, and went ahead and did so. And indeed, a lot of people did play it after that. The prototype was played by more individuals thanks to Twitter and Discord. As more individuals played with the prototype, more reviews were written about it. Additionally, as more people wrote about the prototype, publishers contacted us.

Although there was interest from a number of individuals, Ed Valiente of Thunderful, a former employee of Nintendo of Europe, made contact. "It's a little rough, but this could be a really amazing thing if we give you a team and everything," he remarked. The best part was when he remarked that Cursed to Golf is like a Nintendo game, calling Liam and around a million other developers "magic words."

However, how in the world would Liam assemble a team? The issue at hand is that I reside in Japan. I would have to launch a business, complete a slew of really difficult regulatory tasks, and accomplish all of these things in order to get finance. I thus find it really difficult to take the exam by myself.

Fortunately, this is the point when community ties come into play once again, helping to get Cursed to Golf beyond this obstacle. Liam's "closest colleagues and greatest friends" is Mark Lentz, the head of communications at Chuhai Labs, who he previously worked with at Q Games. Mark promised to help organize the team, handle the Thunderful contract issues, and assist with the game's development. That's what took place, then.

Alright, no. It was not a random event. Any videogame's development narrative is the path it's taken since development really got underway. Even though Liam made it apparent that everyone worked hard but not unhealthily, their time creating it is nevertheless filled with stories and mishaps that resulted in important components that helped shape the game into what it is today.

The spin mechanism is one of the game's main features. I had fun playing the game while seated at WASD, thinking it was cool, and enjoying myself. Then Liam approaches me, enthusiastic to the point of nearly exasperation, and explains the spin mechanism. I'm overconfident, so I bypassed the lesson and didn't even realize it was there.

Liam gave me a more thorough explanation of the mechanic—namely, how you may set goals for yourself or execute trick shots—after we sat down and had a longer conversation. I intentionally overhit the ball in an attempt to backspin it into the hole. After landing and bouncing one or twice, it falls into the hole. We both gave a little shout that amounted to a silent "heck yeah."

Though it nearly wasn't included in the game at all, that's very great. "It's funny how games are made and how things that I think players obsess about end up just being a little decision [because I know they just come out of nowhere], because having been on the other side of the curtain now, it just makes me laugh."

Although the exact source of Liam's little choice is unclear, it seems that playing an outdated PGA Tour game served as the catalyst. "I just thought, 'We should add spin,'" when I first arrived. We lacked any spin whatsoever. It was quite challenging since the ball would just bounce off of the platforms. And as a result, we foolishly experimented with things like invisible bumpers that would attempt to roll the ball out on their own. That was really strange since it appeared to be moving on its own.

Entering the room, he asked Sean Fisher, the game's chief programmer, whether spin could be included. "A test version was ready in five minutes. And I thought, "Holy shit, this really alters everything." This discovery was made early enough to allow for level adjustments and more exploration. It also brought out fresh insights.

I discovered that I could do wall jumps literally only yesterday [n.b. we spoke about three weeks ago]. I could strike the ball on one wall, use all of the spins and bounces to propel it forward, repeat the process on the other wall, and essentially climb up it. Not indefinitely because it deteriorates. However, if the tunnel is sufficiently tiny, you would return the same way.

This is what Liam refers to as the "secret sauce." The difficulty curve becomes more variable with the inclusion of the spin mechanism; there is no one correct solution. "I can hit the ball with spin in addition to just hitting it." I strike the ball now and spin to get onto a platform. I now strike the ball and spin to leap off walls. This important detail "completely defined the entire experience" and appeared out of nowhere. Although I am aware that's a quotation, I wholeheartedly concur.

Thus, with all of his experiences, what is Liam most proud of? "I take pride in the fact that every part of the game, including the art, music, programming, Mark Sparling, art, and Sean Fisher, can be attributed to a specific person. You could nearly accuse everyone and say, "You're responsible for that." After then, they are free to claim credit for it.

And after Cursed to Golf, what comes next? Liam, however, doesn't want to lose the unrestricted creativity that went into creating the first prototype. Yes, I believe the plan is to spend a month alone in a secluded area of Japan to just unwind and consider what other genres they may experiment with. What should I do now that I've broken roguelikes and golf, like walking sims and cricket? I would participate.