- The "Sound and Story" Update - 19 August 2026
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 gamep…
- Stability hotfix - 5 August 2026
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, an…
- Minor hotfix - 14 July 2026
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.
- The "Challenge Accepted" Update - 3 July 2026
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 st…
- The Performance Update - 1 June 2026
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 dis…
- Minor hotfix - 22 May 2026
A quick patch fixing a crash when clicking Free Play on the main menu. (This only affects the unreleased retail version, not the publicly available demo.)
- The Controller Update - 19 May 2026
Grab your controller or Steam Deck because Celestial Golf just got updated with full (experimental) controller support! Controller supportI have just done a complete overhaul of the control scheme when using a game controller. The game is now fully playable and tutorialized for controller (just touch any button to switch input prompts and tutorials over to controller mode). I would love to hear your feedback on anything you find difficult to control in this mode, what you think could be improved, and especially if you ever needed to switch to keyboard/mouse to accomplish a task. I would also like to know what aiming mode (see Settings) you found most useful. Please use the Send Feedback link in-game. Added a cursor selection mode when using the controller (D-pad-right + right thumbstick), allowing bodies to be selected as the focus (LT) or target (RT).Added the ability to adjust the pla…
- Demo update: Character and music - 4 May 2026
Today's update is light on any gameplay changes, but brings a massive glow-up to our alien character, now full of life and excited to take you on your solar tour!Headline changes:Replaced the alien character with a new more detailed model, created by my 3D artist and brother David. The character is now animated and changes facial expressions depending on context.The character dialogue panel has also got a bit of polish, with text now typing out one character at a time for more comfortable reading.New music:Extended the music on holes 1-6 by over a minute, to avoid being too repetitive. Replaced the traditional/ethnic music heard on Earth with some short new compositions by myself. Settings now persist across sessions, and can be reset to defaults if desired.Gameplay changes:Earth (Hole 5): Slightly reduced max stroke power (it was too possible to hit the ball all the way from the tee to…
- Demo now available! - 16 April 2026
The public demo of Celestial Golf is now available on Steam. To try it, head to the Demo page and click Install Demo. (Also, do enjoy the shiny new trailer.)If you have been participating in the playtest, that will still be around for awhile but eventually will go away, so to keep playing, please switch over to the Demo.The demo features the first nine levels of the game, in which you will journey from the Moon to Mars, learning the basics of orbital maneuvers and advanced targeting of distant celestial bodies.Note that the game is still under active development, so there are some missing pieces (notably, there is currently no save system, instead you can simply pick any level from the main menu). But it is now at a level of polish that I am happy to share it with the world, so go ahead and get golfing! In space.
- Devlog: How I redesigned the game's tutorial - 23 March 2026
Celestial Golf needs a detailed tutorial to teach you how to manipulate orbital trajectories, but the first attempt was too verbose and filled up too much of the screen. In this video, I walk through how I redesigned the tutorial system in response to player feedback.I originally designed a single combined system to teach controls, concepts and add a bit of flavour. It was too much, filling up much of the screen with tiny writing that players could easily ignore.Now, I have four distinct systems, built for specific purposes, delivering the necessary information in short bite-sized chunks.I hope you enjoy and as always will see you for more updates soon.Matt
- Devlog: Making Planets (Part 2) - 13 March 2026
In November, I posted the Making Planets devlog which was part one of an intended two-part series. I finally put the second part together. This video goes over how I render the highly detailed terrain for the planets in Celestial Golf from NASA source data, and bring it into Godot, providing a bumpy collision surface for the ball to bounce on.By the way, I have received feedback about the surface being perhaps a bit too bumpy (the spikes can sometimes be a real pain to get the ball past if you are stuck in a crevasse). If that was your impression from the playtest, I would love to hear your feedback. I am planning to do a pass over this and perhaps smooth it out a bit. But overall I am very happy with the look of the planet terrains.Catch you next time!Matt
- Devlog: A plan to fix the game's UI - 3 March 2026
Thanks to everyone who playtested the game (which, as a reminder, is available to anyone by clicking "Join the Playtest").In this devlog update, I go over some of the difficulties of getting playtesting feedback, and how I plan to improve the game's UI, especially with regards to the "time preview" feature which is frustrating to use.
- Playtest Now Available - 22 December 2025
If you have been following the development of the game, now is your chance to play it! I've set this up as a "playtest" (rather than a demo) to reflect that it is still in development and not polished. But it is now in a presentable state and I wanted to let as many people as possible play the game and give feedback.Here is a brand new trailer:To play the game, go to the store page and click "Join the Playtest", and you will immediately be granted access. Then install it as you would a normal Steam game.This is a demo version with nine levels which are arranged as a tutorial to slowly teach you the mechanics. It is intended that you start at the beginning and play through in order, however, in this build, all levels are unlocked from the main menu, should you wish to jump around.The playtest gathers data and feedback which I can use to improve the game, in two ways:By passively collecti…
- Devlog: Making Planets - 19 November 2025
In today's Celestial Golf developer update, I show how I created the realistic planet surfaces in the game using Blender.The game is 2D, so we aren't importing the full 3D mesh into the game, but rendering it into a colour and normal map, so we can get realistic dynamic lighting provided by Godot's 2D renderer. I show how I go from getting the NASA terrain data, through construction and rendering in Blender, and importing into Godot.
- Devlog: How I faked rotating planets using the centrifugal/coriolis forces - 20 October 2025
I just published a new video devlog about how I make the planets appear to rotate in Godot:I'm trying a bit of a shorter format (6 minutes) so hopefully it's a bit tighter than the previous ones.My early experiments with the ball bouncing on spinning planets didn't go so well, so instead, I make the planets stationary and pretend they are rotating, by applying the centrifugal and coriolis forces to the ball. I have a lot of fun playing with the loopy trajectories in this video. Enjoy!
- New gameplay reveal video - 25 September 2025
I just posted the first in-depth gameplay video showing me playing the current build of Celestial Golf:A detailed playthrough of a couple of missions, going from the Moon to Earth, and then from Earth to Mars.Check it out, and subscribe to the YouTube channel for more devlogs.
- How I fixed orbital trajectories in Celestial Golf - 9 September 2025
I just posted a devlog going into how I designed the trajectory UI and the physics of orbits.It shows some old prototypes and the changes that have been made to trajectories over time.Check it out, and subscribe to the YouTube channel for more devlogs.
