“My husband and I would like to open a Minigolf nearby on a land that we have spotted, and we need you to design us a miniature golf course. But I won’t hide that we asked several designers like you to propose us something, so of course we will choose the best one!”

Minigolf Designer is a competitive free form puzzle board game for 1 to 5 players that plays in 60 to 90 minutes (around 20 minutes per players).

In Minigolf Designer, players will compete to collect tiles representing sections of minigolf holes, and arrange them the way they want to form a 9 holes miniature golf course. However, in the end the players will gain more or less victory points depending on certain aspects of their minigolf, and also depending on the number of people drawn on their minigolf.

Tiles are proposed to the players ordered from the least to the most valuable tile (depending on the number of victory points that the tile provides), but this order becomes also the player’s next turn order.

The game is simple and plays fast, as players do only one thing during their turn: pick a tile and place it on their minigolf design. After placing around 40 tiles, their minigolf is complete and players can score them to declare the winner.  

Minigolf Designer delivers a quite new player experience to board game lovers, mostly due to its free form aspect. The fact that you can create any design gives this feeling of freedom. You can actually play just by following your artistic creativity!

But it’s not a purely artistic random placement of pieces either. The puzzle aspect comes from the challenge to assemble the tiles in a way that satisfies a bunch of preferences. However, there is no unique solution; with the 256 tiles present in the box, you can build millions of miniature golf courses!

Competitive players will also enjoy the game by trying to satisfy as much design constraints as they can, if not all (which is possible). There are 7 design aspects that could give you victory points, but none of them are mandatory. Therefore, both kids, casual players and competitive players can enjoy the game but in different ways.

“I personally like to play minigolf, and I always enjoy to discover the various obstacles every time I try a new minigolf. This was the triggering idea for this game. I thought the guys who design real miniature golf courses may have a lot of fun just to invent new obstacles and try to fit all the holes on the available space, in a logical manner. So I designed my game around this idea, and now we can experience the same fun.” – Alban Nanty (designer of this game)

Since this is our first publication, we do not have a network of retailers to get Minigolf Designer to a wider audience, which means this may be your best chance to get the game!

Please note that the final appearance of the game components may differ from the images above. 

The minigolf tiles are 4 cm (1.6 inches) wide. The cards are in poker format (around 6 x 9 cm). The game box will be 30 x 30 x 7 cm (11.8 x 11.8 x 2.75 inches). The estimated weight of the box is 2.150 Kg (4.7 pounds) (with complete punch boards). 

As you can see the turn is very fast. Players will need between 36 to 40 tiles to complete their design, which means the players will play around 40 turns before the end of the game.

The tiles are presented to the players on a ruler (with one more tile than the number of players), but they are sorted according to their number printed on the back. When a player pick a tile, she leaves her pawn at the same place. The order of the pawns on the ruler becomes the next turn order.

Therefore, the more victory points the tile you pick has, the more likely you will play last in the next turn, leaving you with less choice in the next turn. On the contrary, if you pick a boring tile, or even if you pass in front of everyone, you will be the first player to choose a tile in the next turn.

Simple Version

The above explanation is the basic mode, suitable for kids, family and casual players. This is probably the version you will play for the first time, to get familiarized with the game.

Advanced Version

The game also comes with extra wooden disks and cards, to play a more competitive version of the game. In this version, the players follow the exact same rules as the simple version, but at the beginning of the game (and later during the game), players will have a chance to bet secretly on which aspect of their minigolf they will more focus on. At the end of the game, the players can gain extra victory points, if they are actually better than the other players for the aspect(s) that they chose. However, this is risky, because if they are not the best, they will loose points.

Solo mode

The rule book contains also some rule adaptations to play solo. In solo mode, the player don’t need the Rulers, but still draw 2 tiles during each turn, for choosing one. They can pass, meaning not choosing one of the two tiles, but that makes them loose victory points.

 Watch a full game with two players:

Unlike many other board games whose illustration is made on computer, Minigolf Designer is really a game of art. Its original artwork was all paint by hand by our artist Gul. She painted 170 different tiles in 10 x 10 cm (3.9 x 3.9 inches) format, even if we knew that tiles will be smaller in the game (4 x 4 cm or 1.6 x 1.6 inches). 

We decided to give away those pieces of art, already framed in a modern and sober frame. If you pledge at the “The Game + One Original Art Work” level, you will receive a unique painting already framed and ready to be displayed on your desk. The pieces of art will be randomly distributed to the backers of that pledge level, therefore it will be a surprise to see which tile you received. You can then try to find the tile in the game and maybe even notice some difference if the tile has been edited after scanning. 

 As we only have 170 painted tiles, we had to limit the quantity for this pledge level, so hurry up if you want your original art work!

The above picture is one of the possible tile that you may receive, but each available painting that we give away is different, so the image above is just here to give you an overview of the overall look, but the tile will certainly be different. The frame itself should be the one displayed on the image.

The painting size is around 10 x 10 cm (3.9 x 3.9 inches), and the outside frame is a bit less than 15 x 15 cm (5.9 x 5.9 inches).

We run this Kickstarter campaign through our company named Thematic Games. Alban has started up this company in 2015 for the purpose of creating immersive games and entertaining experiences. We believe immersion and story telling is what makes people dream, therefore we always pay attention to the theme of each game we create.

For this project we are also helped by Jerome Levy, an Executive Producer in one of the major Video Game companies, who helps us as an adviser for the Kickstarter campaign and the overall aspect of the project.

For more info on Gul’s creative work, you can visit the Wenlin Studio website.

• All shipping cost are paid up-front on Kickstarter.
• The cost displayed in local currency in between brackets are just estimates, depending on the currency exchange rates at the time this page was created. Kickstarter will display the exact shipping cost added to your pledge when you click on a pledge level.
• You may expect custom fees or VAT, depending on your country, and you are responsible for paying them. We cannot mark your reward as a gift or declare that it has a value of zero (however in many countries, a low value item like this game is custom free).
• Each order will have a tracking number that we can communicate in case of excessive delivery time.
• For certain countries specially expensive, we have set a specific cost not listed above (which may differ from the “Rest of Europe” or “Rest of the World” cost). In any case, you will see the shipping cost when you click on a pledge package, depending on your location.