A GAME BY MATT SEPHTON

It’s golf… in a tank!
Swing into action and tee off on thousands of golfcourses. Get ready to putt your skills to the test withyour choice of difficulty: easy, normal, hard, or expert.
And let me tell you, expert level will blow you away!
This game is a hole lot of fun and has a deep scoring
system that rewards eagle-eyed players! The controls
are as smooth as a perfect swing, making it a breeze
to navigate the greens. Plus, don’t miss the built-in
player’s guide that’ll help you master your approach!
So, get ready to drive in this not-so-serious version
of golf. It’s a fairway to heaven!

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WHAT IS TANK GOLF?

CONTROLS

As with normal golf the aim is to get the ball into thehole. But in this game you drive a tank that fires balls,
and you get one shot per ball. This changes the strategyof the game as every shot must be a hole-in-one.

✛ FORWARD / REVERSE / AIMⒷ FORWARDⒶ HOLD TO SET SHOT POWER
🎣 AIM MORE QUICKLY⊙ OPTION MENU

PLAYER'S GUIDEThis player’s guide is an enhanced and expanded
version of the one found in the game. The game haseverything you need to know to play the game. Thismanual has all that and more!

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Menu screens can change the function of the controls
so be sure to check the on-screen button labels.

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STATUS BAR

POINT OF VIEW

The bar along the top of the screen shows your score,
best score, chain, step, and either the number of balls
remaining or the game over message. As you play,
secondary messages appear underneath the item
they are related to. These include score additions,new best, broken chain, extra ball and more.

The game is view is from a top down perspective, abit like old adventure games. All directions work as
you’d expect, but the vertical element or change inheight can seem a bit strange at first.
It’s recommended to look at thepath of the ball, or its shadow,rather than the ball itself. There isalso a shaded vertical line between
the ball and shadow showing thecurrent height of the ball.

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GAME OPTIONS
Pressing Ⓐ at the main menu will start a round on arandom course at normal difficulty.
If you wish to change the difficulty or course you
should press Ⓑ to get to game options. Here you canuse ✛ to cycle through the four difficulties or look fora course that takes your fancy.

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DIFFICULTY
Easy difficulty increases the size of the ball andhole and removes hazards.
Normal has the normal size hole and ball.
Hard reduces the size of the ball, so requires
greater accuracy.
Expert mode cranks the difficulty up even further
by adding wind!
Listen how the ball size affects the audio.

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THE ANATOMY OF A SHOTPOWER

Taking a shot is a 3-step process—AIM, ADJ, GET—
which is different than other golf games.

Pressing and holding Ⓐ will begin the process ofapplying power to your shot. The ball will begin to
move immediately! Power will continue to rise as you
hold the button, the ball will rise, and continue totravel with a constant speed in the direction youaimed. This is shown by a path on the ground madeof a solid line. ———AIMINGYou have an area in which you can move aroundbefore making a shot, which allows you to try for anoptimal approach line. Drive around this area using✛ and note that using 🎣 to aim and is quicker andallows greater accuracy (5°) than the d-pad (1°).

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When you release Ⓐ the path becomes dotted,
denoting that the ball is slowing down as it falls backdown to earth. *****12

ADJUST
Whilst the ball is in motion—from the moment you firstpress Ⓐ start the shot—you can apply aftertouch to theball. This is when you can adjust the path of the ball.
It’s a kind of magic!
You can use left/right/crank to bend the path one wayor the other, and you can even change your mind at any
point so you can have the ball snake around obstacles
on the way to its destination.

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ADJUST (MORE)MISS

But that’s not all! You can also use up and down tocontrol the height of the ball, though to a lesser
degree. If you want the ball to land a little quicker
you’d use down, and if you want it to stay in the air alittle longer you’d use up. You have such a large
degree of control!

If things don’t go according to plan, the ball will end up
in the middle of the fairway, in a bunker or water hazard,
or out-of-bounds. All of these situations will result in alost ball and your chain will be reset.

However, be aware that use of aftertouch incurs ascore penalty. If you’re going for a high score then it isbest to use it sparingly: prefer light touches or shortpresses rather than holding. Or don’t use it at all!

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Both water hazards and out-of-bounds shots will be
notified on screen.
You can take another shot if you’ve still got balls inreserve, otherwise it will be game over. Try again!

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HOLE OUTA NOTE ABOUT DRIVING

If everything does go according to plan, your ball will
make its way uninterrupted to the hole of choice. Afterthe ball enters a hole your chain will increase and a
block appears that you will need to collect.

The game doesn’t just put you at the next holeautomatically because there is an element of strategy
attached to driving.
Being able to drive anywhere allows you to not only
line up your shot precisely, but also approach the holes
in any order. You might choose the easiest shot or thehighest scoring, the short game or the long game.

At this point the area in which you can move opens up
and you can drive around the whole screen. You candrive off the screen edges and you’ll appear on theopposite side.

And you can pick up flags that are inside your area andbe rewarded with extra balls. Plus, driving is fun!

Score double for pin shots! This is when the ball hits
the top of the flag rather than going in the hole. Wow!

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SCORING FORMULA
Each hole is worth the number on the flag x1000.
Points are deducted for use of aftertouch. And thechain multiplier increases with every successful shot.
(HOLE - ADJUST) × CHAIN = SCORE
So visiting the holes in order will result in bigger scores.
Leave the highest scoring holes until later in the roundwhen your chain should be at its highest. There’s anelement of risk and reward to this, and skilled players
will relish the opportunity to achieve high scores. Thereis a visual guide when you visit the holes in order.

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SCORE BOARDS
Whenever you record a new best score it will besubmitted to the online score board at game over.
During this time a 🔄 symbol will appear in thebottom right of the screen.
Best scores are recorded per-difficulty, so there are
four online score boards. You can view the scoreboards at any time by pressing ⊙ and choosing theScore Boards menu item.

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TECHNIQUES••••

Maximise score per hole
Keep your chain going
Try for skill shot bonus
You can pick up extra balls

WIND
Expert difficulty level introduces wind, which will blow
the ball away from the expected path. The strengthand direction of the wind can be judged using two
different on-screen elements: the flag on the back of
the tank, and the ripples on the water hazard.

23SOUND
You can choose between SFX + MUSIC, SFX only, orMUSIC only. There’s only one song but it is quite longand also changes dynamically based on yourperformance in the game. The changes are subtle butaudible, so listen out for them.
Sound effects are also dynamic and are influenced byelements of the game system, such as the size of theball and the length of your chain, and how well you
completed a round.
Listen out for changes!

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TIPS & TRICKSOFFLINE & DEMO VERSIONS

Driving against the edge of the area whilst turningslightly left/right to more easily line up a shot.

🎣 aims in 1° increments, ✛ aims in 5° increments.

Alternative downloads are available! Offline is thesame as Catalog but without score boards, andDemo is a limited taster. Both allow you to play incolour using the Playdate Simulator!

Avoid having to drive across the entire screen bydriving off the edge and you will loop around.

https://gingerbeardman.itch.io/fore-track

There is a secret visual reward for the very bestplayers. To see it you have to play in a specific sortof way for a whole course. Let me know if you see
anything that is worthy of a screenshot!

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When you want to play more holes, or start submittinghigh scores, you can get the full game on Catalog.
https://play.date/games/fore-track/

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CREDITS
A game by Matt Sephton.
•••
•
•

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Manual edition: 2024‑07‑26

Original Concept by kata68k
Music by watson @ MusMus
SFX by Sound Effect Lab
Thanks to X68000 & Testers
Logo by Neven Mrgan

This game uses EasyPattern by Eben Eliason
to achieve the animated water pattern.

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