You’ve got a ball (or disc). You send it flying around the level until it hits the other ball (or disc). That’s the gist of it, anyway.

Of course, there are a lot of obstacles in the way. Doors that need opening, falling blocks, that sort of thing. And there are puzzles, which unfortunately include my second least favourite type of puzzle (after sliding block puzzles).

It’s a “hit the switches in the correct order” puzzle. Where the switches reset if you get one wrong. The very worst kind of trial and error and something that completely coloured my view of the rest of the game, which I was enjoying to a reasonable level, though I wasn’t finding it very inspiring.

Also, the Lite version has seven levels, which took less than ten minutes to get through, while the full version has thirty. Doesn’t seem like great value for money, though if you take to the game – and plenty of people do seem to love it, so you can probably ignore me – then getting gold medals on every level should prove a stiff challenge.

I’ll say one good thing, though – the lighting is absolutely gorgeous. It might be worth downloading the Lite just to have a look at it. And, hey, maybe you’ll like the game more than I did.

It, too, worked as soon as I started it up.

As I’d only bought it to test out my iPhone, I wasn’t really bothered whether it was any good or not, but I’m pleased to report that it’s pretty good. The hole design (licensed from another developer, I believe) is good and the swipe controls are excellent, making even a simple tap requires concentration. It’s a very good game at its core.

Unfortunately, it’s got a few problems.

The first is that it doesn’t seem to save your best scores for courses, but I’ve only played the first mode which might just be some sort of practice mode. I’ll have to see if the other modes offer records.

The second is that a boulder actual managed to push my ball into the level architecture and I had to skip the hole because I couldn’t get it out.

The biggest problem, though, is that it doesn’t have any camera controls, so until you learn a hole, you’ve got no real idea where you should be hitting the ball. On some holes it’s pretty obvious, on others I really, really wanted to look around to see what I needed to do. It’s a big problem, but it doesn’t kill the game.

(Also, bear in mind I’ve not even tried the majority of the game modes or played online yet.)

I’ve been eyeing it for a while, so when it went down to half price, I grabbed it. And it’s… well… it’s a golf game. It’s been put onto the iPhone with care and attention. It’s got a lot of courses. It feels right in that if you stay on the fairways and greens it’s pretty easy, but landing in the rough is a real problem. When I want to play some video game golf, this is a very good way to do it.

It’s really not very exciting, though, because it’s, you know, golf.

Anyway, it’s taken until now for me to try it again. Since then, the demo appears to last much longer and the price has gone to 400 points.

Frankly, it’s now a complete no brainer. The controls and physics are utilitarian, without anything special, but they work. The game may not have a graphical wow factor, but it certainly looks nice.

So why buy it? And why claim it’s a no brainer? It’s the course designer. It’s easy to use without being too simple and I knocked up a hole in no time and then had one of those moments of tiny awe as I leapt in and actually played a hole I’d designed. And then I made another. And played that, too. It didn’t work too well (I’d gone crazy on the hills), so I altered it a little, making the initial hill after the tees a little less unforgiving, but putting a nasty bunker in the middle of the fairway at the bottom. Oh, that bunker! It seems almost magnetic. (It’s a shame that you need to leave so much room between different surfaces, but that’s a very minor nitpick.)

It’s a little work of genius, that course designer and all in a community game selling for a mere 400 points. I urge you to buy it. Maybe once I’ve finished a full eighteen holes I’ll share my course with you over Live. (And maybe I’ll even rename it before I do, so you don’t have the word “Poop” in your course list. What can I say? I’m a twelve-year-old in a thirty-five-year-old body.) A golf game is a perfect thing to have sitting on the hard drive and one where you can design your own courses and play as a robot wearing a cowboy hat? That’s even more perfect.

On Saturday mornings I quite often get up before my wife. Big games of killing seem like too much effort, so I often just watch repeats of Time Team on More 4. I think from now on I’ll play Easy Golf instead. It’s like the Time Team of games.

That’s a compliment.

It’s golf. What can I say?