Mini Mini Golf Golf is not a particularly good golf game. The controls are a bit odd, the physics are sometimes unpredictable, and there are only a few holes to putt. That may put some people off, but it's a shame because it's just the tip of a thoroughly weird iceberg. In reality, this is an experimental narrative adventure about climate collapse, human memory, time travel, and awkward FMV video game theory podcasts. Just go to ...... Most of the story is told through the medium of miniature golf.

Released a few days ago, the debut title from Berlin-based art house game collective Three More Years is a high-concept sci-fi story set in the year 2063. From a retro-futuristic space station orbiting above the (newly formed) Great Baltic Sea, you will unravel the history of what happened to this impoverished and abused planet, while communicating with other dimensional beings who speak to you through a miniature golf game glitch.

From what little I've played (and I don't want to spoil it for you in any case), it's an audiovisual treat: VHS-like FMVs, distorted and glitched game geometry, text delivered through all manner of kinetic typography (key scenarios written on the ground in the wake of the ball's movement etc.), and an ever-changing point of view that flits between screens, adjusting dials, tapping buttons, and waiting for text to print on a weird science clipboard - it's a collage of mixed media.

There is much to unpack here. Even in the opening minutes, the game goes into the social ramifications and politics of tackling climate change and how capitalism is unwilling or unable to tackle it. But it is also a human story of overwork, memory, love, legacy, and much more. The developer's own podcast, Mini-Mini Talk Talk (available independently on YouTube), is used to convey ideas and to provide clues to the next branch of the non-linear plot, which is chopped up. Except when I'm using the mini-golf controls to make tectonic plate inserts.

“Mini-Mini Golf” is undeniably a unique work, but it is not the first game to do strange high-concept things with mini-golf. While the psychedelic “Wonder Putt Forever” offers superficial social commentary through its unfolding re-contextualized course, “Wonder Putt” seems less interested in telling a story than in conveying atmosphere. More than anything else, “Mini-Mini Golf Golf” is about telling a story, however oddly staged. The game is available on Steam for £9.89 / $11.59, with a small launch discount through December 19.