After a 2011 original, a 2013 sequel, and a Flappy Bird riff in 2015, Noodlecake Studios has returned with another golfing game to delight iOS gamers. Super Stickman Golf: Putt Your Way to the Top tweaks the formula, with new courses and a Daily Race mode.
Tombs says she likes to feel the ground with her feet, walk the line and envision the break before addressing the ball. This helps her to be more consistent.
Basics
Noodlecake Studios’ golf game takes a familiar genre and gives it a twist that makes sense on touch screens. The result is a silly arcade blast that’s fun and challenging.
The streamlined controls are intuitive, and it’s easy to get a feel for how much power to put into the tap-based meter. But there’s more to the game than that, including a range of unlockable golfers with unique abilities and a system of item drops that rewards players for playing well.
It’s a free-to-play experience, but the developers have avoided many of the paywall traps that plague other games in this genre. That said, you can purchase a $3 in-app upgrade that brushes aside the ads and Daily Race limit, adds a turn-based mode, and unlocks a few hats.
Green reading
Green reading is the process that you follow before you hit your putt to determine where to aim. It includes assessing the overall break, the slope and potentially, the grain.
Stockton recommends starting the process by walking around your putt a few times. This brisk walk is designed to allow you to see all of the angles that your putt will take as it rolls towards and past the hole.
Using this information, pick a spot to aim at on the green and stick with it. Rushing a read can quickly lead to 2- or 3-putts. It is also important to remember that green reading is a highly individual skill. The same visual information can mean different things to Tiger Woods and a beginner golfer.
Positioning
With a little practice, it’s possible to putt your way to the top of Super Free Stickman Games Golf’s leaderboards and achieve a sense of mastery over the tricky challenges. It helps to know your way around the game’s different settings, including deserts and labs – each with their own specialized physics that can make the ball behave differently than you expect.
You can also improve your putting by studying the Statistics and Records section, which identifies your main shot areas while displaying your success to date using percentage points. The game’s Putt Preview feature can be a handy tool, too, by showing you a white line that highlights the distance and elevation of your prospective putt.
Super Stickman Golf 3 re-envisions golf as an action-packed puzzler. It’s a smarter, more brainy riff on the genre than its ‘flappy’ predecessors.
Speed
Noodlecake Games’ golf game takes the sport and turns it into a crazy 2D arcade experience. With a few clever twists on gameplay and some nifty power-ups, players compete through courses that would give Angry Birds a run for its money.
The game offers tons of different hats (Team Fortress-style) to unlock, and the courses are creatively designed with a range of obstacles and complications. Initially, the game might look like a simple affair with hills and sand traps, but later on, you’ll face levels with incredibly devious features ranging from changes in gravity to sticky gels on walls.
The game has a $3 in-app purchase to remove ads and add an energy meter, but it’s a small price to pay for such an enjoyable experience. If you want to hone your skills, the daily race mode will keep your competitive edge alive for a while.
Power
Noodlecake’s golf series is a mobile game classic that delivers the kind of short burst gaming that most smartphones were made for. This latest entry, Super Stickman Golf 3, adds to the fun with fresh courses and new power-ups.
The game starts off fairly sedate, with sand traps and water hazards, but quickly adds complications like magnets that attract or repel the ball, purple sticky surfaces that make shots from walls and ceilings possible, and anti-gravity sections where you can skip your shot over ponds.
The freemium model means you can play as much as you want without spending a penny, but a $3 upgrade brushes aside ads, bumps up the Daily Race mode and turn-based multiplayer limits, and adds a ton of collectable cards. It’s a good deal for a game that may well see you sinking balls for dozens of hours.