There are 151 games tagged “Mini Golf” on Steam at the time of writing, and I feel pretty safe in saying that none of them are like Mini Mini Golf Golf. After all, it’s not really a mini golf game, though it still kind of is.

I love weird, experimental games that tell stories in unexpected ways, like 1000xRESIST and Indika, two standout indies from this year. The former brought you through different time periods in unexpected ways and explored themes of resistance to oppression and Asian diaspora, while the latter used multiple visual styles and modes of gameplay to tell its surreal religious tale. Mini Mini Golf Golf fits perfectly into this category of games trying something new.

I recently played the demo on Steam, and its themes were immediately apparent. It tells a sci-fi story about a future of disastrous climate collapse, wrapped up in the metaphor of a childhood memory. What’s interesting is how it does this: through neon-soaked, almost vaporwave-style mini golf.

When the game opens, you’re looking at two screens from a first person perspective, and you have some sort of e-ink notepad in your hands. A ‘hybrid’ in charge of the program you’re working on instructs you to scroll through frequencies on a monitor to your left, locating broadcasts about the climate and how industries are attempting to mitigate the consequences of its breakdown.

This is just part of the storytelling. Most of the gameplay happens on the screen on the right, which is where you play mini golf. As you putt your golf ball across courses, you see text appearing in its wake – the entity you’re interfacing with in this screen, some strange entity from the future, is using it to talk to you. By launching your ball into portals, across levels, and through obstacles, you’re allowing it to speak to you and tell you about its life, unrolling its speech across each course.

At times, as you reach certain points in the game, you’ll be prompted to scroll through that left screen again to find hints as to how to discover glitches in these tunnels and access new levels. One broadcast on that screen had two people, claiming to be the developers of Mini Mini Golf Golf, talking about games as a medium and about the game that I was playing right then.

It’s all very meta and confusing, but in a way that feels less gratuitous and more compelling. I’m still not quite sure what Mini Mini Golf Golf is trying to say and how its metaphor works as a whole, and I’m struggling to wrap my mind around the intricate science fiction world it’s crafting for me, but it’s definitely not like anything I’ve ever seen before and it’s a testament to how creative storytelling in video games can be.