I received a promo email about Mini Golf Matchup for iPad yesterday and the game’s description interested me enough to say yes to a promo code for it. I always have fun when my family and I play an occasional game of mini golf in real life, and this iPad game sounded fun so I gave it a whirl last night.

The idea of the game seems appealing enough – it’s basically mini golf with friends, with the ability to challenge your friends or random online opponents. The game starts off nicely enough with a quick tutorial walkthrough of the basics of how to play – and within just a couple of minutes you’re ready to create a free account (or login via Facebook) and start playing. Unfortunately it goes rapidly off course from there.

For starters, I really dislike the game’s interface. Look at the screenshots in this post. Every page within the app feels cluttered and way too busy. Even when you’re actually playing a hole you don’t get the whole screen to work with, which just feel ugly and wrong.

The game also does some anti-social things as you play. For instance, I found that right after competing one hole I’d be presented with a prominent ‘Invite Friends’ banner. No big deal if I could just dismiss it quickly and carry on with the game – but I couldn’t. I couldn’t tap anything apart from the banner, and could then hot Cancel on the following page. After another hole I got a full page video ad that I didn’t see an easy way to dismiss.

After a few more of those sort of annoyances, I gave up on the game. Your mileage may vary of course, but this game is too ugly/cluttered and too disjointed due to ads and forced prompts to keep me interested.

Here’s an App Store link for Mini Golf Matchup; it’s a free app with a number of In-App purchases ranging from $1.29 to $6.49, including one that will turn off ads.

Disclosure: The post author was provided with a promo code for this app. For information on our review policies please see our About page.