Mini Putt

Mini Putt is a free browser mini golf game, a putt putt course you can play online whenever you have a spare minute, built around one honest question: can you read a hole before you hit it? Twenty-seven hand-made holes run across three courses, then the course keeps going with new holes, and the whole thing plays with a single drag. Pull back from the ball, watch the dotted line trace the exact path the ball will take — bounces included — and let go. Nothing is hidden behind a hidden power curve or a lucky roll, so a bad shot is always something you can point at and fix.

The putt is the first of three verbs, and the other two arrive while you are playing rather than in a tutorial. At hole seven the caddie hands you side spin: a slider under the course bends the ball in flight, which turns a blocked line into a curve around the obstacle. At hole eleven you get the lob wedge, and the same drag now arcs the ball over walls and straight across water. Because each verb shows up on a hole built to need it, you learn what it is for by using it rather than by reading about it.

The course does the teaching after that. A slope is a constant push, so you aim above the line rather than at the cup. Sand kills your roll almost instantly, which makes power the question instead of angle. Ice does the opposite and barely slows you at all, so the answer is a softer touch. Water sends you back with a penalty stroke. Bumpers add energy rather than absorbing it, portals keep your speed and heading, boost pads overwrite your velocity outright, and tar simply stops the ball dead. None of these are decoration — each one changes which part of the shot you have to think about.

Later holes stop introducing single ideas and start combining them. A sheet of ice under a sideways slope makes overshoot the default. A conveyor belt drags the ball while it rolls, so the line you aim is not the line you travel. A pane of glass lets a fast ball through once and then closes behind it, which means the hard shot and the safe shot are genuinely different plans. A magnet ring near the cup rewards getting close rather than getting exact. The later holes ask you to hold two or three of these in your head at once, and after hole 27 new holes keep coming with a light breeze and one stroke less to spare.

Six one-off moments punctuate the round and each changes the rules rather than the numbers. A night round kills the floodlights so only the ball and the cup glow. A crosswind pushes every shot sideways for a full hole. A sudden-death hole gives you exactly one stroke. A bent putter caps your power, so a long hole has to be played in pieces. The vault hole pays five times as much if you finish under par. They happen once each, which is what makes them memorable instead of mechanical.

Par is tracked per hole and you earn one to three stars for beating it, with coins on top. Coins buy mulligans in the pro shop, which replay a stroke you would rather forget. Your best score on every hole is saved on your device, so you can come back and chase a birdie on a hole that beat you last time. Nothing expires, nothing is on a timer, and there is no way to buy your way past a hole — the only way through is to read it.

It plays with one hand on a phone and with a mouse on a desktop, in portrait, and every hole fits on the screen at once so you are never putting at something you cannot see. If you like Mini Putt, try Eight Ball or Penalty Shootout next.

Drag back from the ball and release to putt — the farther you pull, the harder the shot, and a dotted line previews the exact path including bounces. On a keyboard the arrow keys aim and set power, and Space putts. From hole 7 the slider under the course adds side spin, which bends the ball in flight. From hole 11 the Lob button arcs the shot over walls and water.

Mulligan replays your last stroke and takes it back off your card — you start with one and the Pro Shop stocks more. Sand kills your roll, ice barely slows you, tar stops you dead, bumpers add speed, portals keep it, and the ball only drops if it reaches the cup slowly enough.