More than just mini golf: how a VR game brings families and friends together
Virtual mini golf, real friendships: "Walkabout Mini Golf VR" connects players worldwide and creates a lively community.
"Walkabout Mini Golf VR" is considered one of the most creative VR games ever and has become a real community meeting point.
(Image: Mighty Coconut)
"Walkabout Mini Golf VR" is one of the most popular VR games ever. Over the years, a small indie project has developed into a global meeting place for like-minded people. There is also an active community in Germany that is fully committed to this virtual sport. The "Walkabout Wunderland" shows how a game can become a platform for friendship, competition and creative collaboration.
A Discord server as a meeting place for daily VR golf rounds
Walkabout Wunderland has long been a household name in the German-speaking VR community. Organized via Discord, it brings together players from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, regardless of age or level of experience. The common denominator: enthusiasm for Walkabout Mini Golf. The voluntary core team consists of six members in total. Christian "Foxy" Haas, one of the initiators, describes the concept as follows: "We are completely focused on Walkabout Mini Golf. That's our focus and that's what unites us." This sets Wunderland apart from other VR groups, which often manage many games in parallel. For many, playing mini golf together in virtual worlds is now more than just a VR game.
"Walkabout even got my 74-year-old father into VR. Since then, we've been playing regularly once a week. That has brought us even closer together," explains "KäptnDave". The English-language Discord channel is full of similar stories. "It's fair to say that Walkabout Mini Golf has brought some scattered families closer together again."
For Oliver "BuckRogers" Manz, too, the meetings in VR are now more than just a game: "I can only agree with Dave. My son has been living with his mother since the divorce and we've been seeing each other regularly in VR since Meta Quest 2, playing, fighting and sometimes even cuddling – whether in RecRoom, VR Fishing or Walkabout Minigolf." Part of the Wunderland community will soon even be meeting up for a road trip across Germany. "VR mini golf creates friendships for life!" But what makes a minigolf game so special?
(Image:Â Christian Haas)
Creative, accessible, unique
"Walkabout Mini Golf VR" is based on a simple but well thought-out principle: 18-hole courses with impressively realistic ball physics, embedded in imaginative environments whose comic-like art design is perfectly tailored to the graphical limitations of mobile VR glasses. There are now over 30 course worlds, including pirate islands, castles and underwater landscapes. Particularly popular are the regularly released DLCs, which are thematically adapted to fantasy films such as "Jim Henson's Labyrinth", famous novels by Jules Verne, the secret hideouts of Bond villains, the King of Rock or Greek mythology. Collaborations with the artist collective Meow Wolf or allusions to M.C. Escher's perspective paradoxes are also part of Mighty Coconut's repertoire.
Walkabout Mini Golf VR (5 Bilder)
Walkabout Mini Golf VR - Jules Verne
Mighty Coconut
)A closer look at the history of the small Texan studio reveals an unusual origin story. "Before Walkabout Mini Golf, we were an animation studio for several years," explains founder Lucas Martell. With short films such as"Pigeon: Impossible" and"The OceanMaker", the team made a name for itself early on in the art of visual storytelling. It was only when the pandemic brought everything to a standstill that Martell began working on his vision of an accessible and creative VR game. "Minigolf in virtual reality made sense to me because everyone understands it immediately. It's easy to play and the physics of the ball, the putter and the obstacles create endless possibilities," says Martell.
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Today, Mighty Coconut is fully focused on the further development of the minigolf hit and is putting in an impressive workload. A new course is released approximately every seven weeks, which takes around three years of development time from the first day of planning to release – a logistical feat for a team of 32. In addition, there are projects such as the implementation as an AR game for iPhones, free updates that bring new features to the game and collaborations that produce limited edition collectible figures or VR putters.
Virtual meeting place and sporting competition in one
Although Walkabout Mini Golf can also be played alone, the multiplayer mode for up to eight players per session was the focus right from the start. The game is now played cross-platform on Meta Quest, SteamVR, Playstation VR 2 and Pico. Each player can customize their own avatar. Lucas Martell has always seen Walkabout as more than just a game. It is also a meeting place for conversations, language learning or even business meetings. In Wunderland, this social character becomes a maxim: anyone who is not playing can follow the games live via Twitch or YouTube, comment on tournaments or take part in community projects such as the "Walkabout Lexicon" –, a kind of knowledge database on game mechanics, courses and how best to play the individual holes.
For many members, Walkabout Wunderland is more than just a leisure project, it is a sporting competition with structure. The community organizes a seasonal league with first and second rounds in which teams of two compete against each other in fixed pairings. It is managed via a specially developed web app that clearly displays statistics, scores and match schedules. There are also quarterly tournaments for teams of three in match play format. The course is chosen at random, with a veto system ensuring greater fairness. There is also a release tournament for each new DLC. The next one is scheduled for August 18-24, when the new Tokyo course will be released. The 3vs3 tournament will follow a week later from September 1 to 7. Both events will be broadcast live on the WunderballTV Network.
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Skins matches – another game mode in which each lane is scored separately – take place weekly and offer a relaxed alternative to competitive play. Scoring is carried out using a modular scoreboard tool that can be flexibly adapted to different modes.
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A game that is more than just sport
Walkabout obviously strikes a particular chord: relaxing but challenging, accessible but profound. It is much more than just a game: it is a platform where people can meet, play together and experience new content. Perhaps at some point the virtual golf course will even open up for more virtual events that go beyond pure golf. The Wunderland community would be well prepared for such formats.
With its regular streams, active tournaments and clear focus on togetherness, it already has many elements that would also be important in an expanded Metaverse approach. However, the members are not pursuing a commercialization strategy: "Wunderland is and will remain a community project, we don't want to earn money with it," says Haas. It is like the local soccer club for others. The team has only entered into one cooperation so far. As an "endorsed group", Wunderland has close contact with Mighty Coconut, which results in occasional joint rounds of golf with developers or early access to new courses.
Walkabout Wunderland thus shows how a VR game can develop into a community with real cohesion – organized, creative and open to new players. Anyone who has not yet tried mini golf in virtual reality will not only find a game here, but an invitation to become part of something.
(joe)
