Tiny Discs Review - “Daily disc golf fun”

• Simple way to experience disc golf
• There's never the same course every day - random permutations beget fun
• For a disc golf, the floor is lava, so reach the baskets with the least throws possible
• Try your best to score some achievements through creative ways

Is that a bird? A plane or perhaps an alien spacecraft? Turns out it's a frisbee, whose UFO-inspired shape was all the rage back in 20th-century America. While the fad passed before we could ascertain the truth behind the existence of these enigmatic visitors, we can always relish disc golf, a sport that centres around frisbee.

It exists in the subset of niche sports that its mainstream cousin, golf, overshadows. Thankfully, Short Circuit Studio has stepped up to convey its charm in a portable format, making the sport more accessible considering the sparse number of disc golf courses worldwide.

Meet the discs over yonder

The objective is simple: you fling the disc into five baskets dotted around the map, or more accurately, within its circular range. To accomplish this, you have three types of toss techniques. Meet Putter, Midrange, and Drive; they correspond to short, middle, and long-range respectively. 

Putter, as its name suggests, finds its use in putting your disc in the basket if you're near it. The Midrange is self-explanatory, while Drive is handy in covering long distances between two points. There's also a button that lets you decide whether to swerve the disc left or right, with its effect most prominent in mid-range throws. With everything set, you prime your shots by dragging and holding down, then releasing to see your disc soar through the skies. 

Fling, and take flight!

You don’t progress on a stage-by-stage basis like in Candy Crush. Instead, you are greeted with a different golf course every day with randomly generated layouts and basket placements. On Mondays, you might get a tundra to reflect your Monday Blues; on Fridays, you might get a tropical beach to celebrate the upcoming weekend.  

Flexibility is at your fingertips; the game doesn't dictate a path for your disc, nor does it force you to follow a chronological sequence to score the baskets. It’s all on you to chart the optimal path involving the least throws possible. There’s a spate of achievements with amusing ways to unlock and is the best avenue to flex your creative muscles.

• Have a penchant for guiding things? Try Roia on for size

There are plenty of elements that make things challenging. Not only do you have to circumvent the foliage that causes your discs to ricochet, but there’s also topography you must factor in when making your throws to ensure they don’t miss the mark - or worse, end up in an abyss of deep waters. If you’re up to some mischief, you can boss the pigeons around with your disc - a perfect comeuppance for them invading the hawker centre near my place. 

The disc in the drip

Tiny Discs also satisfies your inner fashionista by letting you add a unique flair to your saucer pal. In the wardrobe, you get trail effects and stickers at a price of a couple hundred coins, which you earn after completing the course. If delayed gratification is not your thing, you can outright buy them at a price. Beyond that, there’s no arbitrary upgrade system to augment your disc.

Each course is tastefully decorated with a cel-shaded, minimalist style that Short Circuit Studio is known for. As for music composition, you only get a funky beat-box tune to accompany the aesthetically pleasing graphics, which can sometimes break immersion.

• Sucker for more games with similar styles of graphics? Check out our glowing review on Going Up

Here's the catch

Brace yourself for an ad apocalypse as it is essential for replayability (and cosmetic to a lesser extent). As things go, you only get one free play daily. Subsequent retries on the same course or replaying the ones from the previous day will cost an ad.

However, there's always the option to pay a flat fee of four quids (roughly RM22.90) for the unlimited play pass, a fair asking price to maximise your fun while avoiding sanity loss due to ads. For competition, a ranked match mode is sneakily hidden behind a trophy icon, but it feels more like a waiting game thanks to its matchmaking time that stretches into eternity.

The absence of an upgrade system can be a double-edged sword. While coins have no other uses beyond cosmetics, the game is free from any tier upgrade system that augments your disc-throwing ability, much to the chagrin of minmaxers. On the same note, if you’re not too keen on fashioning your disc, you’ll be spared from binge-watching a cascade of lifeless ads just to accrue coins.