Most Scuffed Golf

The world of Most Scuffed Golf is made of cardboard, but the interface didn’t match. To the community, the game looked AI-generated and lacked its own taste. For an indie game competing with thousands of titles on Steam, and followed live by a streaming community, that’s a real problem. The brief: give the game a distinctive, believable character.

Rather than inventing a new style, I built on what the game already had. In a material study I examined what makes cardboard look like cardboard: edges, folds, layers, tape, wear. This turned into moodboards and design rules for every element in the game, from buttons to the course.

Building on Tobias Wallisch’s design system, I designed every screen in the game. In Photoshop I created textured panels, buttons and frames that look cut out and glued on.

I also drew the illustrations for the map design and the ball skins. To make sure they really work in the game, I brought them onto the 3D objects in Blender: UV unwrapping for the balls, and shading tests to see how the map illustrations look under the game’s lighting. Now the interface, the course and the in-game objects speak the same language as the 3D assets.

Wieland Welte developed the game, another artist built the 3D assets, Tobias Wallisch created the design system, and Mark Mayer rendered the assets and implemented the UI in the game. My part was ideation, the material study, designing every screen, and the illustrations for maps and ball skins.

It was my first project for a real client, with deadlines and people I hadn’t worked with before. Above all I learned to work efficiently and respond precisely to what the client needs. I took my Photoshop skills much further and picked up Blender for the ball skins. The collaboration is ongoing, and the game is already available to pre-order on Steam.