Golf Club Nostalgia is a terrifyingly cozy game
From the very first gameplay moment of Golf Club Nostalgia, a kinda hit videogame from developers Demagog Studio released in June of 2021, the game presents itself as yet another of your average “cozy games”. Much like your Stardew Valleys and Animal Crossings, the stages are cute pastels and round shapes: colourful, though not too in-your-face. The golfing is fun and responsive enough - though ultimately nothing to write home about - and the game’s leisurely pace makes it perfect for a lazy evening after an exhausting day.
From its very first moments, Golf Club Nostalgia’s narrative refuses to place it in that camp of cozy games that the gameplay so effortlessly evokes. Instead of being informed about your new farm in the countryside or your indefinite vacation, the first lines of GCN tell of an ecological catastrophe, one in which only a small group of people escaped by fleeing to Mars. The ultra-rich, obviously, who now take charter flights back to earth to play golf in the world they left to rot.
This is you, the player. You are one of those people. Donning an orange suit, you happily stomached leaving untold billions to die in a climate catastrophe, while you fled up to Tesla City on Mars, as is the name of this otherworldly “utopia” for the rich.
Your main interactions with the game, apart from golfing, will be with a radio station: “Radio nostalgia from Mars”. This is where practically all worldbuilding happens, as well as the channel that plays the background music for your 35 hole-long golf trip.
The channel itself interviews a new caller each session to hear about some new aspect of life on Mars, and how they miss life on earth. This first part can be, for all intents and purposes, quite endearing. It’s nice to hear about people managing to adjust and overcoming the challenges in front of them - though these challenges are miniscule compared to those of the people left behind. No, where their true self shines through isn’t in what’s said or discussed, but in what’s omitted. Never once is there any mention of the untold billions that were left on earth, of the infrastructure they destroyed, or the warning signs they ignored. What they do mention, however, is the aesthetic. That is the angle that Radio Nostalgia from Mars takes: that we all miss the blue, beautiful, “uninhabited” Earth.
Jacob Geller, in his really touching video “Art in the pre-apocalypse”, mentions how “If you give the end of the world more than a line in your story, it consumes the whole thing”. The residents of Tesla City seem to demonstrate an extreme variant of this, where the annihilation of the world is felt in every facet of their life, every conversation, every glance upon their red planet, and every radio program. It should, by all means, be an ever-present part of their life, one that they should all mourn and regret not preventing. Yet, they don’t, because if they can ignore the consequences, the preventability, and treat it all as some inevitable ecological catastrophe, it magically won’t matter. That if they force the end of the world to only take up a single line: “And then the world ended.” the weight of billions of dead civilians won’t consume the lie that they’re living. To the ultra-rich in Tesla City, the earth that they miss must be purely aesthetical, and earth in the present must be just a big golf course, because if it isn’t then what they destroyed really did matter. Really did hurt.
Nevertheless, Golf Club Nostalgia does still present as a so-called “cozy game”, and engaging with it in this context is where things get interesting. The game really wants you to have fun, and while the golfing can get a bit tedious at times, I think it mostly succeeds in its goal. And so to wholly deny this facet of the game is damn-near impossible. Yes, the earth might be an ecological hell-hole, and billions might be dead, but at least you’re playing golf. And golf is fun.
Golf Club Nostalgia is, in my opinion, a perfect exercise in alienation. To engage with the game and progress its story, you too must buy into the lie that everyone is living: that Earth is nothing but a big golf course. To refuse is impossible within the boundaries of the game alone, which neatly divides the world in 35 holes for you to complete, and to look past and persevere in the face of this nihilism is an oddly satisfying experience - one which I hadn’t ever expected or experienced in a game prior. You might not get the same out of Golf Club Nostalgia as me – hell, it’s probably a lot more interesting to talk about than play – but I still recommend you check it out, and support Demagog Studio so we might get more like this.
Best regards, Bjørk :3