Polf

Polf is a 2D arcade style game developed for the University of Northampton Summer Game Jam 2026. The game was developed by a team of second year students, created over the course of 4 days and inspired by a combination of golf and pinball. The game is a single player game where the player uses a Playstation DualSense controller to hit a ball in a targeted direction. The aim of the game is to get the ball into the hole in as few hits as possible. There are a variety of obstacles and hazards that the player must avoid in order to get the ball into the hole. This ranges from traditional golf inspired sand traps to pinball inspired bumpers and flippers to more unique features like a black hole that sucks the ball in and causes the player to loose a stroke.

This project was developed by a team of people. Here is a list of credits for the project:

Project manager: Joshua Cossar
Lead programmer: Thomas Jebson
Lead designer: Izzy Copsey Design team: Josh Cossar, Matthew Thompson
Lead artist: Alice Haydon-Grime Art team: Lucy Philpott

This game jam focused on two main features:

• Make a game designed specifically for the University of Northampton Tower of Power.
• Make as much use of the PlayStation DualSense controller features as possible.

With this brief in mind, the team came up with the idea for the game, and I heavily prioritised getting as many features from the PlayStation controller into the game as possible. This included:

• Using the adaptive triggers to simulate the tension of a golf club.
• Using the haptic feedback to simulate the feeling of hitting the ball.
• Using the analogue triggers to control the strength of each shot.
• Using the lightbar to provide visual feedback for different stroke strengths.

Alongside this, I also focused on implementing the vertically scrolling game levels, and the power up mechanics. I am particularly proud of the black hole mechanic, which uses the equation for gravitational acceleration to pull the ball towards the hole using realistic gravitational physics.

On the day of the event however, issues with the way the target machine was configured meant that all the extra PlayStation controller features were not able to be used. This lead to the game being unplayable beyond the basic menu selection on the day of the event. This was a huge disappointment for the team, and was not something we could have anticipated when testing the game.

The game has since however been patched to work with a variety of controllers, and is now playable on all Windows machines.

As this game was developed for the University of Northampton Tower of Power, the game is played in a specific and unusual resolution of (216x1134) and as such play not appear properly on a standard monitor (as evidenced in the screenshots below). The game however is still fully playable even in this state.