Celestial Golf

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Latest news

• Patch Notes·19 Aug 2026Official

  The "Sound and Story" Update

  This update is a very special one, because we start to see some of the game's story unfold, told through some short cutscenes and dialogue.Headlining this update are two short cutscenes to bring the world of Celestial Golf to life.The first cutscene plays when the game launches, and explains how the sport was first invented in the 1970s. (Did you know that Celestial Golf is partly based on a true story?)The second cutscene plays after completing Hole 7 (after the ball goes into the sun), adding a unique twist to the story.The story was never going to be a major focus (after all, it's a golf game), but I wanted to add some light narrative to glue the game together beyond just "go to the next hole".StoryAdded a new "feature enabled" (and sometimes "disabled") popup which appears during certain scripted story moments. These popups are integrated into the story and explain why certain gameplay features are being added or removed.Rewrote a lot of the dialogue and some tutorials, to flow better with the cutscenes and feature popups. (For example, the alien character now discusses the orbital driver, which is the mechanism used to hit the ball in space.)Renamed tutorial "manipulating apsides" to "manipulating orbits".GameplayReset to the initial shot power after each shot. This is because if you make a big hit, you don't necessarily want to do another big hit right after.Earth's ocean now glows red if the ball is predicted to splash into the water. This is intended to help distinguish between the land and water. On Hole 4, the pacific ocean glows green to indicate that it is the goal.Earth: Lowered air resistance, and increased the angle at which the ball skims (instead of sinking). These changes make Hole 5 significantly easier. (Players were continuously reporting frustration with sinking in the water on this hole, and data showed a significant number of players stopped here. Hopefully this makes the level a breezy interlude, and not a difficult challenge.)To compensate ...
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• Patch Notes·5 Aug 2026Official

  Stability hotfix

  This is a hotfix for a rare but significant bug:Fixed memory leaks which could lead to major graphical glitches. After playing for some amount of time, UI and game elements would disappear or start showing garbage. (The amount of time was dependent on in-game activity and framerate; faster computers experienced this sooner.)And a few other bugfixes:Fixed: Tutorial skips two screens when pressing Space/Enter.Fixed: Unlocked tutorials don't appear in list until level change.To ensure stability and improve future bug reporting, I took the opportunity to make a few other tweaks, without any gameplay changes:Windows-only: switched graphics API from Vulkan to Direct3D 12. This should have no noticeable effect, but was strongly recommended by the Godot team due to various video driver bugs in Vulkan. In the event of a graphics issue, you can switch back by going to game Properties in Steam, and adding "--rendering-driver vulkan" to Launch Options, but I don't anticipate this will be needed.The "Version Info" screen in Settings now displays which graphics API is being used, the video card model and driver versions.The game now logs its own version number on startup (to the log files in %AppData%\\Celestial Golf\\logs which can be helpful in diagnosing problems).Updated Godot engine version from 4.7 to 4.7.1 (this should have no noticeable effect).Thanks to everyone who reported and helped diagnose these issues!
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• Patch Notes·14 Jul 2026Official

  Minor hotfix

  This is a quick hotfix for the following issue which was introduced in the 0.8 release:Fixed inability to click the Reset Camera button with the mouse.
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• Patch Notes·3 Jul 2026Official

  The "Challenge Accepted" Update

  The Celestial Golf demo has a major new update today. This update introduces a new optional challenge system, putting your orbital skills to the test to try and minimize the amount of time or power it takes to complete each hole.In addition to the usual golf "par" (for the number of strokes you took), each hole now has a "time par" and a "power par". "Time" refers to the in-game time. "Power" is the total amount of power applied to the ball across all strokes, which is roughly analogous to rocket fuel spent. When you complete a hole under par in any of the three categories, you will be awarded one of three coloured stars. Advanced players may wish to try and achieve all three stars on all holes: many of these will require you to complete the hole using different techniques to minimize one resource at the cost of another.Your progress is now saved between play sessions, and the earned stars are visible on the brand new Hole Select screen which tracks your journey across the solar system. Progress made in the demo will be carried over into the full game at launch.Profiles and saved stateThe game now stores which holes you have unlocked, and your best scores / stars achieved on each hole.The Tutorials menu now only shows tutorials that you have unlocked by playing through the game.You can store up to three separate player profiles, which you can switch between in the main menu. You can rename and delete these profiles. Star challengesThe win screen has been redesigned. It now shows the par for each of the three categories (strokes, time and power), as well as your best score in each, and a star if you have beaten par in that category. Added animations and sound effects to celebrate completing a hole.Added a new Setting (under UI) called "show advanced pars". This shows the par for the time and power categories on screen at all times, so you can focus on achieving them. This setting is off by default, to avoid overwhelming new players. Hole selectHole select has been re...
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• Patch Notes·1 Jun 2026Official

  The Performance Update

  A minor update to the demo, but it contains major performance improvements, particularly on low-end hardware. (My old laptop is much happier after this update!)Performance updateTrajectory computation: impact with distant bodies (any body other than the current sphere of influence) is now estimated based on a circular radius, rather than calculated precisely. This should speed up all trajectory calculations. Note that the "impact" on distant bodies is now slightly imprecise, but gets recalculated when the ball gets close to that body.Body surfaces are now loaded on-demand (as the ball transitions between spheres of influence) in the background, rather than all at once when a level loads. This should drastically improve load time, GPU memory usage, and general framerate. However, there could be a slight stutter when the ball changes between spheres of influence as it has to load from disk. (Testing has shown this to be negligible.)Collision system performance update. This should drastically improve the framerate on low-end hardware.Camera panningIn the previous update, camera panning was added, allowing you to manually move the camera with WASD or D-pad left + right thumbstick. Here are a few related updates:When the ball is off screen due to camera panning, an indicator arrow points in the direction of the ball.Level 2 introduces a tutorial on camera panning. The camera state is also shown at the bottom of the screen in this level in simplified form.New setting: center on ball when hit (on by default). Misc changesTrajectories now properly detect impact with the ocean on Earth (they used to just go underwater until they hit terrain) and now report a "Splash" event rather than "Impact". This can make it easier to tell where the ocean meets the land.Settings UI updated for better suitability with controller.When switching tabs, focus the first item (previously nothing would be focused, making Settings impossible to use with a controller).Replaced tooltips with a side ...
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