Multiplayer, Power-Ups, and Workshop
Golf With Your Friends supports up to 12 players online, plus local hotseat and Couch Mode play. The host sets the course, mode, stroke limit, collision, power-ups, ball shape, and gravity before anyone joins, and only the host needs to own a DLC course for everyone to play it. Four power-ups exist: Honey Trap, Double Jump, Snap Freeze, and Randomizer, all added alongside Hotseat mode in April 2019.
Golf With Your Friends is designed as a multiplayer experience. While solo play is fully supported, the game's best moments come from chaotic 12-player lobbies with collision enabled and power-ups flying. This guide covers everything beyond the basic shot mechanics: how to host and manage lobbies, how each power-up works, how collision changes strategy, how to customize your ball, and how to access the Steam Workshop's enormous library of community-created courses.
Multiplayer Lobbies
Creating a Lobby
From the main menu, select Play and then Create Lobby. You configure the game before inviting players.
| Setting | Options | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Course | Any unlocked course | DLC courses only require the host to own the DLC. Other players in the lobby can play on the host's DLC courses for free. Workshop maps only require the host to have the map subscribed. |
| Game Mode | Classic, Dunk, Hockey, Speed Golf | Changes the hole target type. See Courses and Game Modes. |
| Max Players | 1-12 | 12 is the maximum for online play. |
| Stroke Limit | Default 12, and can be set as low as 1 | Strokes allowed per hole before forced completion. The upper bound is not documented. |
| Time Limit | Off, or an adjustable duration | Per-hole timer. |
| Collision | On / Off | Enables ball-to-ball contact physics. |
| Power-ups | On / Off | Spawns power-up pickups on the course. |
| Ball Shape | Random each, Random all | A developer described the real options as random each, where everyone gets different shapes, and random all, where everyone gets the same one. |
| Gravity | Numeric value | A slider, not a low, normal and high toggle. Developers have referenced specific values such as 0.50. |
| Turn Order | Simultaneous, Ordered Turns | Simultaneous is the default and everyone shoots at once. Ordered Turns enforces turn-by-turn play. |
Hotseat has its own separate Turn Order setting with three options, Random, Lowest Score, and Lobby Order. Do not confuse it with the Simultaneous and Ordered Turns choice above, which governs online play.
Joining a Lobby
You can join games three ways:
- Friend Invite: Accept a Steam friend's lobby invitation.
- Lobby Code: Enter a lobby code shared by the host.
- Server Browser: Browse public lobbies and join one with open slots.
Hotseat (Local Play)
Hotseat mode allows multiple players on the same machine. Players take turns using the same keyboard/mouse or controller. This is purely local with no online component. Each player enters their name, and the game rotates control between them at each hole.
Couch Mode
Couch Mode (added in late 2022) simplifies local play even further. It skips the full lobby setup and drops players into a randomized sequence of 9 holes drawn from all available courses. The host can also use the Max Course Length modifier to truncate any course to a custom number of holes (as few as 1), making quick sessions and sudden-death matches possible. See Courses and Game Modes for details.
Collision Strategy
Collision is the single most impactful custom setting. When enabled, balls interact physically.
How Collision Works
- Your ball can push, redirect, and stop other players' balls on contact.
- A fast-moving ball hitting a stationary ball transfers significant momentum.
- Angle of impact and relative speed drive the outcome. Nothing published confirms how the game weights the balls against each other.
- Your own ball is also affected. If you hit someone else, you lose momentum.
Offensive Strategies
The Sniper: Aim directly at an opponent's ball that is sitting near the hole. A well-timed shot knocks their ball away from the cup while potentially sinking yours in the process.
The Blocker: Park your ball directly in front of the hole to physically block other players from sinking. This costs you a stroke (since you are not trying to sink), but it forces everyone else to waste strokes trying to navigate around you.
The Chaos Agent: On holes with tight corridors or ramps, shoot at maximum power directly into the group. Even if your ball goes wildly off target, the collisions disrupt everyone else's carefully planned shots.
Defensive Strategies
Wait and Watch: Do not shoot first. Let other players commit their shots, then aim for the hole once the chaos settles. Being the last to shoot means no one can hit your ball after it stops.
Use Walls: Position your ball behind walls or inside corners where other players cannot reach you with a direct shot.
Power Down: Near the hole, use the gentlest possible putt. A slow-moving ball is harder to displace than a fast one. If someone hits your barely-moving ball, it might only shift a few inches instead of flying across the green.
In collision games, the best player is often the most patient one, not the most accurate. Let others fight while you calmly putt around the chaos.
Power-Ups
When power-ups are enabled in the lobby settings, pickup items spawn on the course. Roll your ball over a pickup to collect it. Power-ups and Hotseat mode arrived together in an April 2019 update.
Team17's patch notes name all four power-ups and describe what each broadly does, but the studio never published detailed numbers for them. Precise figures that circulate online, such as an exact blob count or a duration in seconds, do not trace to any Team17 source. The descriptions below stick to what the official notes and independent references actually support.
Honey Trap
Effect: Slows down players who roll through it. The official patch note introduces it simply as a way to slow down your friends.
Strategic use:
- Drop honey in narrow corridors that opponents must pass through.
- Place it in front of the hole to slow incoming putts.
- Remember that it sits on the course and never follows you, so plan your own next route around it.
Double Jump
Effect: Gives your shot a boost, per the official patch note. Community descriptions of a fixed number of charges and exact expiry rules are not documented by Team17.
Strategic use:
- Use it to clear obstacles that a single jump cannot.
- In Dunk Mode, the extra lift helps on hoops that a ramp alone will not reach.
- Hold it until the point in the roll where the height actually matters.
Snap Freeze
Effect: Introduced as a new mechanic in the Worms update. Players use it to arrest a ball mid-roll, and that is what makes it valuable near hazards and in collision lobbies. Team17 published no breakdown of its activation stages.
Strategic use:
- Stop your ball before it rolls into a hazard.
- Halt on a moving platform to control where you end up.
- In collision games, use it to hold position near the hole.
Randomizer
Effect: Officially described as giving your opponents' next shot a random ball shape to shake up the competition. It affects opponents only, lasts one shot, and never touches your own ball.
Strategic use:
- Activate just before opponents attempt a difficult precision shot.
- Time it when several opponents are about to putt near the hole.
- Use it freely, since there is no risk of catching yourself in it.
The Randomizer is the most disruptive power-up in the game. In competitive lobbies, holding one and timing it correctly can swing an entire round.
Ball Shape Physics
The "Random Ball Shape" lobby modifier and the Randomizer power-up do not just apply a visual skin to your ball. They alter the fundamental collision mesh and center of mass. Each shape has distinct physical properties that change how your ball (or your opponents' balls) behave.
Shapes confirmed to exist through patch notes and independent references are the Egg, Cube, Cone, Puck, Star, Bauble, and Acorn, alongside the default sphere. Several patch notes deal with them directly, including a fix for tile collision issues while playing as a Star and a fix for falling into gaps with the egg on Oasis, which tells you the shapes genuinely interact with geometry differently.
| Shape | Physics Behavior |
|---|---|
| Sphere (default) | Standard rolling physics. Smooth and predictable. |
| Cube | Flat faces resist rolling, so it does not carry momentum the way a ball does. Precision putting is difficult. |
| Egg | Rolls unevenly and does not track straight as it slows. |
| Acorn | Irregular geometry that struggles to build speed off ramps. |
| Cone | Irregular geometry with the same problem, and a common target of fairness complaints. |
| Star | Does not ricochet like a ball and moves erratically off surfaces. |
| Puck | Low profile that slides instead of rolling. |
| Bauble | A Christmas event shape that rolls close to the default sphere. |
The acorn can make a hole genuinely unwinnable. If a hole needs a hard shot up a ramp and across a large gap, the acorn cannot generate the distance to cross it, and the player strokes out. This is a documented community complaint about the shape and not a bug.
Two shapes commonly listed in online guides, the Icosphere and the Cylinder, appear in no patch note, wiki, or independent reference. Treat them as unconfirmed. The per-shape details that circulate as exact physics claims, such as a bauble being heavier or an icosphere causing micro-deviations, have no source behind them either.
Ball Customization
Cosmetic Types
| Type | Description | How to Get |
|---|---|---|
| Hats (Toppers) | Small items placed on top of the ball (crowns, antlers, party hats, helmets) | Playtime drops, DLC packs, Steam Market |
| Trails | Visual effects that follow the ball during movement (fire, sparkles, smoke, rainbows) | Playtime drops, DLC packs, Steam Market |
| Floaties | Inflatable ring accessories that wrap around the ball (donuts, rubber ducks, inner tubes) | Playtime drops, DLC packs, Steam Market |
Earning Cosmetics
- Playtime drops: Cosmetics arrive as drops while you play, random from the full pool of available items. Player consensus on the Steam forums is up to three drops across roughly 45 minutes of playtime, then about a 24 hour wait before the next batch. Team17 has never published the formula, so treat those numbers as community estimates.
- DLC cosmetic packs: Several themed DLC packs are available for purchase. These provide sets of hats, trails, and floaties with a specific theme (e.g., Sports Day, Rock and Roll).
- Steam Community Market (PC only): On PC, cosmetic items can be bought and sold on the Steam Market. Rare items from early drop pools can be more expensive.
Equipping Cosmetics
In any lobby (before starting a game), select the Customize option. Three tabs let you browse your owned hats, trails, and floaties. Select an item and click Apply to equip it. Cosmetics are purely visual and have no effect on gameplay.
Steam Workshop
The Steam Workshop is one of Golf With Your Friends' strongest features. Thousands of community-created courses are available for free download. Custom courses range from faithful recreations of real mini-golf layouts to absurd multi-hour endurance maps.
Downloading Workshop Maps
- Open the game's Steam Workshop page (through Steam or via the in-game Workshop browser).
- Browse or search for maps. Sort by Most Popular or Most Subscribed for quality.
- Click Subscribe on a map. Steam downloads it automatically.
- In-game, select the Workshop course from the course selection menu when creating a lobby.
Hosting Workshop Maps in Multiplayer
Only the host needs to have the workshop map subscribed and downloaded. When other players join the lobby, the game automatically distributes the map to them. Players do not need to manually subscribe to the map.
Some very large workshop maps can cause loading delays for players with slower connections. If players are stuck on a loading screen, give them time. The transfer happens automatically.
The Level Editor
Golf With Your Friends includes a built-in level editor accessible from the main menu.
Getting started with the editor:
- From the main menu, select Editor, then Start.
- You are placed in an empty environment with a toolbar at the top.
- Select a theme to determine the asset set and visual style. Themes follow the official courses, so expect names like Forest, Oasis, Candyland, Ancient, Haunted, and Pirate instead of generic labels.
- Place floor tiles, walls, ramps, and obstacles to build each hole.
- Every hole needs a Spawn point where the ball starts and a hole marker for the target.
- Use the object inspector to adjust position, rotation, and scale.
- Test your hole using the Play button in the toolbar.
- Save frequently. The editor can be unstable.
Publishing your map: Build and test the course, capture a thumbnail, and upload from the editor to the Steam Workshop. Nothing in Team17's documentation or the Workshop's own support threads states a minimum hole count, so the widely repeated claim that you must finish all 18 before publishing is unconfirmed.
The level editor is keyboard and mouse only, which makes it PC-exclusive in practice. Console versions cannot create or edit custom courses, and console players cannot play Workshop maps at all.
Recommended Workshop Maps
The workshop catalog is massive. Here are some well-regarded community maps to try:
| Map Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Hogwarts | A recreation of the castle by Schweetie, opening in the Great Hall. |
| Mario Kart | Racing-track holes inspired by the Mario Kart courses. Several other kart maps exist under names like Gossy Kart and Baby-Park. |
| Pinball | Holes built to look and play like pinball machines. Several maps share this title, and there is also a Pinball With Your Friends. |
| EXTREME 18 | A difficult endurance course for experienced players. |
| Minecraft with your Friends! | Block-style terrain in the Minecraft style. Other Minecraft-themed maps exist under similar names. |
Search the workshop by name or browse the Most Popular (All Time) category for reliably high-quality maps. Workshop titles change and get reuploaded, so search by keyword instead of expecting an exact title match.
Custom Game Modes
Beyond the four official game modes (Classic, Dunk, Hockey, Speed Golf), the lobby settings let you create custom experiences by combining modifiers:
Chaos Mode (Community Name): Collision ON + Power-ups ON + Random Ball Shape. Maximum unpredictability.
Low Gravity Madness: Gravity slider set well below the default. Balls float, jumps reach enormous heights, and every shot becomes a physics experiment.
Putt-Putt Serious: Collision OFF + Power-ups OFF + Ordered Turns. The closest approximation to traditional mini-golf rules.
These community-named modes are just popular lobby configurations that players recreate manually.
Custom gravity has a real bug behind it, though it has no official name and the versions of it circulating online are embellished. A Team17 community manager acknowledged a case where gravity was unexpectedly sitting at 0.50 and stayed wrong into the following round until the game was restarted. If your shots suddenly fly much further or shorter than they should after any game with altered gravity, check the gravity value and restart the client before assuming your aim is off.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do all players need to own the DLC to play a DLC course?
No. Only the host needs to own the DLC, and everyone else in the lobby plays that course for free. Players report Workshop maps behaving the same way, with the map downloaded for joiners when the host has it subscribed, though Team17 has not documented that rule officially.
What are the four power-ups?
Honey Trap slows players who roll through it, Double Jump boosts your shot, Snap Freeze stops a ball mid-roll, and Randomizer gives opponents a random ball shape on their next shot. Team17 named all four in patch notes but never published detailed numbers for them, so exact blob counts and durations you see quoted online are not documented.
Which power-up is the most disruptive?
The Randomizer. Team17 describes it as giving your opponents next shot a random ball shape to shake up the competition. Shapes like the cube, star, and acorn handle badly enough to wreck a precision shot, and it never affects your own ball.
Why do my shots suddenly overshoot after a custom gravity match?
Gravity can get stuck at a wrong value. A Team17 community manager acknowledged a case where it sat at 0.50 and carried into the next round until the game was restarted. Check the gravity setting and restart the client before assuming your aim is off.
Can console players use the level editor or download Workshop maps?
No. The level editor is PC-exclusive, so console versions cannot create or edit custom courses. Console players also cannot access Steam Workshop maps.
What to Read Next
- Getting Started. Controls, shot mechanics, and your first game.
- Courses and Game Modes. All 13 base courses, DLC courses, and all four game modes with difficulty breakdowns.
- Achievement Guide. All 83 Steam achievements with unlock conditions, global completion rates, and recommended strategies.
- Tips and Tricks. DLC sharing, the Randomizer, and the gravity bug that survives a round.