Cybernetic dolphins take up mini-golf in Dolf
Peter Nichols's follow-up to Crude Oil stays outside the human point of view, down to a dedicated screech button.
There is a dedicated screech button. Dolf is underwater mini-golf played by cybernetic dolphins, and its Steam page earns a full quote: "Long after humanity fumbled the Earth, super-intelligent dolphins repurpose ocean trash to play a high-intensity underwater ball game." Humanity "fumbled" it. The dolphins are just playing through.
The first 21 seconds of the Dolf teaser, silent here. The full trailer with sound is on Steam.
Dolf comes from Peter Nichols, the Los Angeles artist and developer who works as Elfsend. It is wishlist-stage with no date yet, built on six-degrees-of-freedom underwater movement for one to eight players, taken as a quick circuit or a full 18 holes. The reel announcing it is short on rules and long on feel, and the response has fixated on exactly one thing: the sound the ball makes coming off a dolphin's snout.
Nichols's last game made you a puddle of petroleum on the run from Big Oil, and Crude Oil came up on our podcast in June. The practice underneath both games is a refusal of the human point of view, and Nichols runs it from inside the art world as much as the games one: they are a member of NEW INC, the New Museum's incubator, and showed in DEMO2026's TOTAL FLOW showcase, curated by Mindy Seu, this spring. Dolphins inheriting our trash and turning it into a golf course is the oil puddle's argument again, played for comedy this time.
Mini-golf has always been kind to games that lead with feel; Wonderputt made that case in our archive years ago. Wishlists are open now.
Courses, the swimmer lobby and the upgrade store in Dolf. Images: Elfsend
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