Starlight Games, the studio behind House of Golf 2 (2024), announced they’re releasing a new mixed reality-supported entry into the mini golf series in October, this time using your own humble abode as a putt-putt course.
The News
Called HOUSE OF GOLF VR, the game is slated to launch on Quest on October 30th, bringing both MR and VR modes.
In MR, users can fill their physical space with custom-built mini golf courses, letting you choose from a variety of obstacles, ramps, and colorful contraptions like mini-cranes, cannons, hot air balloons, and more.
House of Golf VR is slated to launch with “hundreds of course pieces, hazards, and whimsical items,” the studio says.
And all of that whimsy is coming in the game’s VR mode too, albeit immersing you in “vibrant VR locations filled with interactive puzzles and competitive championships,” Starlight Games says.
Initially founded in 2010 as Atomicon, the Liverpool, UK-based studio rebranded in early 2024 as Starlight Games to focus on new IP. In addition to House of Golf VR, the studio has also teased a futuristic sports game and sci-fi rogue-lite action experience currently in development—neither of which have been confirmed as XR titles at the time of this writing.
You can wishlist House of Golf VR on the Horizon Store, which supports Quest 2 and above.
My Take
On the face of it, you might be surprised that some of the bigger names in VR mini golf haven’t pursued the sort of mixed reality mode House of Golf VR is banking on, considering Meta made a big push with full-color mixed reality passthrough when it released Quest 3 in 2023.
While there are some great VR golf games ones out there—my favorite being Walkabout Mini Golf (2020) (more course DLCs to count)—not many include mixed reality modes, and I think that’s probably for good reason. Games with proper MR modes need a high degree modularity at their core to work with the wide variety of physical room spaces.
Admittedly, Quest has gotten better at scanning rooms and automatically creating boundaries (walls, furniture, etc), but MR games that actually use that data and incorporate it into gameplay are still a rarity. Many games with MR modes rely on nifty passthrough ‘windows’ to fully-realized VR environments, or have to rely on super modular object placement so you create the fun, like Gadgeteer—and by extension, the MR mode in House of Golf VR.
As an aside, there are even fewer games, like Starship Home (amazing), that manage to split the difference, requiring users to setup their room with a few key anchor points, and then let the game figure out the fun. I want to see more of those.
Still, I would consider House of Golf VR’s MR mode a good compromise, since it essentially taps into the vestigial ‘LEGO’ section of my brain. Whatever the case, I’m just hoping they’ve managed to copy Walkabout Mini Golf’s putting mechanics, because developer Mighty Coconut has definitely hit on the gold standard there.
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