Dice Golf
Building a golf game from idea to shelf
Dice Golf started as a simple conversation with a friend. From there it turned into a golf game you play on a table, with family or betting with friends. The dice aren't random. They're weighted to the real odds of the best players on tour, so a drive behaves like a drive and a three-footer behaves like a three-footer. We worked the mechanics out through a long stack of paper prototypes, then designed the logo, the box, the scorecards and seven custom dice. We took it from idea all the way to a product sitting on a shelf.
- Brand Identity
- Package Design
- Illustration
- Game Design
Painted, not photographed
The cover is my illustration. A photo would have meant photographing a course that doesn’t exist, so we painted one instead and put a die where the ball should be. It reads as somewhere you’d want to play, which is most of the sell on a shelf.
The roll isn't random
Seven dice, each with a different number of sides, cut from molds we had made. One for the driver, one for irons, one for chipping, one for putting. Every one is weighted to what the best players on tour actually do from that spot, so club choice and course management matter the way they do outside. Two courses come in the box, Lazy Links and Sandy Straits, eighteen holes apiece. It’s golf in the rain, golf with a toddler in the room, golf when getting to a course isn’t happening.
Figured out on paper
None of it worked on the first try. Six directions for the cover before the painted one won. Hand-drawn scorecards, rules rewritten every time a round came out wrong, a paper version we played over and over until the numbers felt right. Golf is a game about odds and nerve, and getting that onto a table took a lot more rounds than either of us planned on. You can buy the finished thing at playdicegolf.com.
This was a defined project. How that works