It says in the article that he's been playing it for four years and has racked up 300–400 hours game time. That's a bit less than the 'obsessive' realm some people are placing this in, in terms of daily play.<p><pre><code> (400/(4*365*24))*100 =~ 1%
</code></pre>
He could easily rack up that game time with about 20 minutes per day. Granted, to do that each and every day for 4 years is still quite some undertaking, but it's not like he's spending every waking hour obsessing over it.<p>(This only sprang to mind because I instantly compared it to my 160+ hours of game time in Breath of the Wild, a game I've only owned for a couple of months...)<p>(Edited for formatting of the napkin-math)
Example of impossible hole, that ultimately gets beaten by sheer persistence and luck:<p><a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%27Desert+Golf%27&atb=v83-1__&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=R2TQcFk52JU" rel="nofollow">https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%27Desert+Golf%27&atb=v83-1__&ia=v...</a>
I'm confused. The article says that, before the recent update, hole 14,758 was impossible. But I made it to hole 28,890 before getting stuck in mid-2016. [0] After the update, I resumed playing, and am currently on hole 31,923.<p>So either I got a different layout for 14,758, or it's not impossible. And obviously, I've also never encountered a level with endless water. Is it possible that the procedural generation is not identical across all devices?<p>[0] <a href="https://karlvonl.livejournal.com/8174.html" rel="nofollow">https://karlvonl.livejournal.com/8174.html</a>
It is a beautifully minimalist game. With such an economy of mechanics, features and elements, it can be at the same time relaxing, exciting, frustrating and rewarding. Every now and then there's a "feature" (a cactus, something unique) to remind you that the game could have more, but it doesn't want to.
Honestly, I'm always a little jealous at people who possess that amount of persistence at something. It would probably get boring for me after hole 23.
Semi-related, I'd highly recommend the game "Freeways" by the same game author:<p><a href="https://captaingames.itch.io/freeways" rel="nofollow">https://captaingames.itch.io/freeways</a>
It's impressive how this game spread. I've first read about it in Grubers iPhone X article on daringfireball.net. Then suddenly it was mentioned by xkcd and now appears in other news and finally HN. Great marketing strike.
It's also a fine game with a fair price. To be recommended.