Your swipe is your swing. Bring your handicap down, compete in tournaments and climb the world rankings.
A golf game for iPhone and iPad with five courses, real ball flight and no luck in it.
For press enquiries, review codes and pictures at full size, email info@toayen.co.uk.
| Name | Shotmaker Golf (Shotmaker on the home screen) |
|---|---|
| Developer | Toayen, United Kingdom |
| Platform | iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or later |
| Release date | Coming soon |
| Price | Free to download, with Larchmere and Dunmarra Links free for ever. The Shotmaker Club costs £24.99 a year or £3.99 a month and opens every other course. A single course costs £5.99 to keep. |
| Genre | Sports and simulation |
| Courses | Five 18-hole courses, ninety holes in all |
| Age rating | 13+ |
| Online | A tournament every week with world ranking points and a major each season, a daily challenge, leaderboards for every course and matches with friends, through Game Center. Playing on your own needs no account and no connection. |
| Data | No ad networks, no analytics and no tracking. Online play sends rounds and a Game Center nickname to Toayen's server, as the privacy policy sets out. |
| Languages | English |
| App Store | Coming soon |
| Website | toayen.co.uk/shotmaker |
Shotmaker is golf played with one finger. Your swipe is your swing, so its speed, line and rhythm decide how far the ball flies and which way it curves. There are no meters and no luck: the same swing always hits the same shot. Play five courses from a parkland classic to a mountain valley, play a new tournament every week, climb the leaderboards, and build a handicap that means the same thing for every player.
Most golf games ask you to stop a moving bar. Shotmaker asks you to swing. You draw your swing on a pad at the foot of the screen, and the game measures it in millimetres the way a launch monitor measures a real one: the speed of the swipe, the line it travels, the face it presents and how cleanly it strikes. The ball then flies through real air, with drag and spin worked out from the same physics that launch monitors use. Its carry, launch and spin for a well-struck shot match the averages of tour professionals.
There are no random numbers anywhere in the swing or the flight. Identical swings give identical shots, so every miss belongs to the player, and so does every improvement. The game spans the range from a 28 handicap to a plus 5. A new player hits it shorter and more crooked, and tour numbers come only with practice.
Handicap rounds are played at the same settings and in each course's own fixed wind for everyone, everywhere, and nothing in the settings can change them. A handicap in Shotmaker therefore means the same for every player. Players can watch it fall on a chart, look back at every scorecard, and see where shots are won and lost: fairways, greens, putts, up and downs, sand saves and the carry of each club.
Because the same swing always hits the same shot on every phone, Shotmaker's leaderboards are an honest ranking of who plays it best. Players signed in to Game Center can enter a free tournament every week, four rounds on one course with a cut in every handicap band, and see where they stand on every course this week, this month and of all time. Every round sent carries a record of every swing, so a score on a board can be played again and checked. Players can also set up matches with friends, in stroke play or match play, each playing in their own time on the same pins in the same wind.
Shotmaker opens with five courses. Larchmere is a parkland course and Dunmarra Links a seaside links, and both are free for ever. Cormorant Point is a clifftop course above the ocean, Cinder Mesa runs through a red-rock desert and Glacier Falls lies in a mountain valley. All three are in the Shotmaker Club, and each can also be bought on its own. A caddie reads each hole and suggests the play, and a practice ground and eleven lessons teach the game from rhythm to reading the wind.
Shotmaker is made by Toayen, a small independent studio in the United Kingdom.
A parkland classic of rolling fairways, still lakes and old woods. Larchmere is where every player starts, and it rewards a well-placed drive more than a long one. Trees play exactly as they are drawn, and the lakes catch anything careless.
Signature holes
A wild seaside links on a bright, breezy afternoon. Firm, fast turf runs over old dunes, deep pot bunkers hide from the tee and gorse waits beside the landing areas. The wind and the ground decide the shot, so the ball has to be kept low and allowed to run.
Signature holes
Three landscapes in one round. Cormorant Point starts in a forest of tall dark pines, breaks out over white dunes and ice plant, then runs along the clifftops above turquoise coves. Its white bunkers are torn into capes and bays, and on the run home the ball is carried over the ocean itself.
Signature holes
A clear morning in red-rock desert. Emerald fairways run as ribbons through red sand and sagebrush, past sandstone domes and across a field of black lava. The last holes drop through canyons to a creek below the clubhouse. The air is still, so this is target golf where only the carry counts.
Signature holes
A summer's day in a mountain valley. Striped fairways roll between walls of dark spruce, a milky turquoise river runs beside them, and limestone peaks fill the sky. Some tees stand high on forest benches so the drive drops to the valley floor, and the round ends under a timber-and-stone lodge beside a falling stream.
Signature holesLarchmere and Dunmarra Links are free for ever, with the practice ground, the lessons and the handicap. The Shotmaker Club opens Cormorant Point, Cinder Mesa and Glacier Falls, and every course added after launch. It costs £24.99 a year or £3.99 a month. There is no free trial, and purchases are not shared through Family Sharing. A player who would rather not subscribe can buy any Club course for £5.99 and keep it. Nothing bought in Shotmaker changes how the ball flies or what a handicap round asks of a player, and the weekly tournament is open to everyone whatever they have paid.
Tap a picture to open it at full size. They may be used freely in coverage of Shotmaker. For a picture not shown here, email info@toayen.co.uk.
The course pictures above open at full size too. A trailer will follow.