First Bounce

What it is

First Bounce is golf in 3D, played from behind the ball, on two nine-hole courses of real length, each par 36: a parkland of maples, pines and birches with a lake and creeks, and a seaside course with palms, white sand, lagoons and the sea down the side of six holes. Play all nine, or the first three.

Touch anywhere and pull back. A ring on the ground shows where the ball would first come down in still air, and it moves as you pull: the pull sets how far, not how hard. Once the pull is armed, a needle sweeps a strip across the screen, clear of your finger. Let go with it inside the middle band and the strike is pure; let go early and the ball starts left, late and it starts right.

Nothing random touches the ball

The wind is drawn before the tee shot, and every moment of every flight on the hole reads that one wind. The code that flies and rolls the ball reads no clock and no random number, so the same swing makes the same shot. The ring already allows for the lie (from the rough a club carries 85%, from sand 60%), and it shows the first bounce and nothing after it. The first hole of a visit has a gentle wind.

The bag, the green and the hole

A full bag of fourteen clubs, from a driver that carries 205 m to the putter. The game picks the club for the distance as it plays, a metre more or less for each metre of climb or drop, and the club in the bottom corner opens the bag if you want another. After every full shot it says how far the ball carried and how far it went in all.

Greens run at 9 feet on the standard green-speed ramp, and the arrows on the green come from the same ground the ball rolls on. The ball and the hole are the Rules’ sizes, 42.67 mm and 108 mm across, and the hole takes a ball by its geometry: it drops if it has fallen its own radius before reaching the far side, and otherwise lips out. Water costs one stroke, with the ball dropped where it went in; by the sea, the beach plays as sand. A hole ends at double par.

Up to four on one screen

Up to four take turns: whoever is farthest from the hole plays, and the lowest score on a hole tees off first on the next. A friend can join while hole 1 is played, and names are a tap away. The player who is up stands at the ball in their colour, and the pull is the backswing. Each hole after the first opens with a flyover, which a tap ends without swinging. Each course keeps its own best, and the site remembers the course you last played.

With nobody there, hole 1 plays itself: a drawn finger pulls back, the ring moves, a shot flies, one putt drops and another misses. A touch takes over, in the wind the flag was showing.

Made to be looked at

A low sun casts the trees’ shadows from the same crowns the ball meets, and the golfer’s and the flagstick’s follow the swing and the wind. The mowing turns with the view, the greens are cut in a diamond, and the crowns are painted leaves that sway in the same wind as the flag. Lakes and creeks reflect the sky, birds and falling leaves cross both courses, and by the sea the surf breaks on the beach, with boats offshore and a lighthouse up the coast. On a device that can’t keep up, the game draws fewer pixels and less grass by itself, a step at a time, and never steps back.

How to play

• SwingTouch, pull back, let go in the middle
• AimMove sideways while pulling
• Another clubTap the club, bottom left
• Holes and courseThe chips on hole 1
• A friend+ Player 2, on hole 1
• NamesTap a name at the top
• MenuBeside the sound

A short sideways drag aims without swinging, and a pull too short to arm doesn’t swing; neither does a second finger. The chips for the holes and the course show until the first swing, and a friend can join any time on hole 1. On the green the flagstick comes out, the arrows show the slope, and the putter’s ring shows how far the putt would roll on flat ground. The menu restarts the hole in the same wind, starts a new round of three or nine holes, switches course and turns the sound on or off; anything that would lose strokes already played asks for a second tap. On the site nothing takes a round away, however long it is left.

On a desktop, press anywhere, pull back and let go, as with a finger. Or use the keys: Left and Right aim (1° a press, a quarter of that on the green, a tenth with Shift), Up and Down set the pull (2% a press, 0.5% with Shift), and holding Space or Enter and letting go swings; a tap is not a swing, and Escape while holding cancels. C changes club, M turns the sound on and off, and + brings in another player. Space or Enter skips a flight or the flyover. Escape opens and closes the menu. Enter goes on from a hole’s card and plays again from the round’s.

What isn’t settled yet

How tight the needle’s middle band is, and how fast the needle sweeps, are set by feel, not yet by many people’s thumbs. Nor are the flyover’s length (three to six seconds) and whether the carry belongs on every shot. Balls on the green pass through one another, since nobody marks a ball. There is no playing against the computer and no match play: stroke play only. A mistimed strike curves, but there is no deliberate draw or fade yet. And there are two courses so far.

Build Log

Credits and licences

Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover drawn from the game’s own course, golfer, ball and ring code.

First Bounce is original work by Launchway Games.