Publisher(s): Broken Arms Games
Platform(s): PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
Release Date: TBD
I am a golf fan. I have attended a handful of majors in-person, I enter into the Masters lottery each year, and I watch random PGA golf tournaments throughout the competition season. When I first saw Under Par Golf Architect at the European Game Showcase at GDC 2025, I knew that I had to give its early build a try.
Under Par Golf Architect‘s core concept is simple: build your own golf course within a certain sized plot of land. You have to figure out where to place things like the club house, the restrooms, pathways, and more. Each structure costs a certain amount of money, and you can click whatever you want from a menu and drag and drop it down onto the course before rotating it to face a particular direction. Pathways are a drop and drag affair, so you can shape the pathway however you want.
What is really the star of the show in Under Par Golf Architect though, is designing the holes themselves. During my hands-on demo, I designed three holes. I first made a simple three-par with no surprises. For my second hole, I made another unremarkable three-par, but with the exception that I recreated the famous water-surrounded green from Hole #17 at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Finally, I re-created Firethorn (Hole #15) from Augusta National Golf Club– but with a dogleg right instead of left.
Shaping the courses felt incredibly intuitive. I first picked where I wanted the hole to start and end through a click and drag option. I then could pick through a click and drag where I wanted my fairway to be, where I wanted the rough to be, and where I wanted the green to be. When I wanted to shape my second hole to be like TPC Sawgrass’, I was able to add water elements in around it to help make it look how I wanted and so the players were forced to hit over the hazard if they wanted a lower score. With my inverse Firethorn dogleg, I was able to grab and hole’s geometry and effortlessly bend it around to create said dogleg. When I went to that green, I could then raise and lower the terrains (and you can do that anywhere, really) to punish players with a sand bunker if they hit too far by having their ball roll down into it. You can also even plant or remove trees to create course hazards on your holes. If you want to create Tommy Aaron’s Lost Ball incident with the Eisenhower Tree, then you absolutely can!
One thing I genuinely loved about Under Par Golf Architect‘s demo was that I could fairly accurately eyeball what par each of my holes would be as I was building them. Both of my par 3s turned out to be exactly that. When I shaped my third hole, the inverse Firethorn, I said I was intending it to be a par 5, and a developer agreed with me after looking at it. However, it turned out to be a par 4- and that surprised us both, but one of the developers said they are still working that aspect out in the game.
When you build your first hole, player NPCs come into play. And that makes sense, since this is a sim game, and you have to try to make money. I was able to check out the various players to see their skill levels and watch them hit the ball. The different NPCs were hitting the balls fairly consistently to where you would expect the balls to land for the various pars, and I was impressed with that (and yes, even the near best NPC players were taking five hits on my third hole).
If there was one thing that I really didn’t like, it was the controls- I didn’t like having to hit a button to confirm one menu and then a different button to confirm an option within the new submenu. I kept cancelling out of things accidentally due to the inconsistency in controls, but I was told that the controls will be fully customizable in the final version of Under Par Golf Simulator. I was also told that even if I wanted to create a golf course with no water hazards, such as the Los Angeles Country Club where the 2023 U.S. Open was held, I would still be able to bring in NPC foot traffic.
Overall, the level of customization, and the ease with how I could do whatever I want in designing my own course, was everything I could want in a golf course design simulator game, and it made me feel like a regular Pete Dye and Donald Ross. And this was only the earliest public builds! There is so much more to go still, and I am absolutely hooked into seeing how the final product turns out when it is eventually released.
What kind of golf courses would you want to design in Under Par Golf Architect?
What are your favorite in-real life golf courses?
Let us know in the comments below!
