Mini Golf Pro

Drag back from the ball to set aim and power; longer drags produce harder shots. Release to swing. The ball rolls until it stops; obstacles (windmills, ramps, water hazards) interact realistically. Sink the ball in the hole with as few strokes as possible. Each course has 18 holes and a par score.

Mini Golf Pro is, hands down, the best browser sports game on this site. 36 hand-designed mini-golf holes. Realistic ball physics. Par-tracking scorecard. The category has had hundreds of mediocre browser entries over the years and Mini Golf Pro stands clearly above them.

The hole design is the headline thing. Each of the 36 holes is hand-designed with a specific puzzle and a specific intended approach. Some holes reward direct power-shots. Some reward bank-shot strategy off rails. Some require multi-bounce setups. Some have moving obstacles you have to time around. Hole 17 (the windmill) took me about twelve attempts to par. Hole 28 (the spiral ramp with the magnet block in the middle) is one of the better mini-golf hole designs I've seen in any version of the genre, browser or not.

Physics is the second thing. Ball-rail collisions respect angle of incidence. Spin on the ball (you can put English on shots with a modifier key) affects post-bounce trajectory. The greens have subtle slope you have to read. The game gives you a slope-indicator overlay if you turn it on, which I appreciate because reading slope visually is harder in a top-down view than in 3D.

I played this with my partner last Sunday afternoon. We took turns through all 36 holes. The two-player pass-and-play mode works exactly right. We argued about par scores. We laughed at flubbed shots. We actually had a good time, which is the highest praise I can offer a casual sports game.

Five stars. Best mini-golf I've played in any browser. Worth showing to anyone who's ever liked the genre. Even worth showing to people who haven't, because this is how the genre is supposed to feel.