Mini Golf: the bank shot beats the straight line
The controls are honest and old-fashioned: drag away from the ball like a slingshot. Direction sets the angle, distance sets the power. Let go and the ball rolls. No "perfect shot" meter, just your eye.
Why the direct route rarely works
The ball rolls with friction and bounces off the walls. That means distance in a straight line is not the same as distance along a trajectory: a hard shot straight at the cup overshoots and comes back off a wall into the most awkward spot on the green. Experienced play looks different — you aim at a wall on purpose so the ball arrives at the cup already slow.
That is the key to the whole game. The cup will not take a fast ball, it skips across. So the job is not "hit the hole", it is "arrive at the hole slowly".
Scored by strokes
Your result is the stroke count: fewer is better. The best score for each hole is saved, which turns the game into a private contest against your own previous run. A first pass is almost never optimal, and that is fine — first you learn the geometry, then you use it.
Worth trying
- Before you shoot, look at the walls near the cup rather than the cup itself. The useful route is usually there.
- Under-hitting is cheaper than over-hitting. A ball short of the cup leaves you a comfortable second stroke; a ball past it does not.
- Obstacles cut both ways. Whatever blocks the straight line makes an excellent bank at an angle.
- Restart is not an admission of failure, it is an experiment: replaying a hole to test a trajectory is the fastest way to learn the physics.
A round takes a couple of minutes, so short sessions work well: read the hole, find the route, try to do it in two.