Video Game / Greener Grass Awaits

The course is closed, but that doesn't matter.

There are no lights, but the sky is clear and the moon is bright.

They will get in your way. Do not mind them.

It's all just one big game.

(Of golf)

Greener Grass Awaits is a 2023 horror golf video game by Yatoimtop, released for free on itch.io.

You play as a golfer who has come to the Green Canyon golf club to play some golf. For some reason, you came in the late evening, when the club was closed, but you are so determined to play golf that you climb over the fence and blithely ignore any attempts from the staff to dissuade you. As the night grows darker, it becomes increasingly clear that something is very wrong with this golf course - and something is also very wrong with you...

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This game provides examples of:

• Ambiguously Evil: The entity possessing the golfer. It does force the golfer into increasingly dangerous situations, but seemingly only for the purposes of destroying an evil god, after which it lets the golfer go. On the other hand, a comment from Exuberance, just before it tries to destroy the golfer's body and banish the entity implies it may also have other, worse motives.
  Exuberance: "You cannot keep that world! I will take your dinner from you!"
• The Assimilator: Implied by the TV advert for Greener Grass Lawncare seen after completing the game. The advert shows the employees, with unsettling smiles, singing what sounds like some kind of recruitment song to a woman, who eventually starts smiling similarly herself.
  Greener grass awaits you.
  It's the answer to your problems,
  If you come with me.
  Come with me.
• Can't Move While Being Watched:
  • Subverted by the Greener Grass Lawncare employees, who will creep closer to you whenever you look away but will also charge at you if you look at them for too long.
  • Played more straight with the statues that appear in the final third of the game.
• Darkness Equals Death: The golf course gets increasingly dangerous the darker it gets. In the last third of the game, you have to make use of stationary light sources and a glowing golf ball to survive, as remaining in the darkness for more than a few seconds will get you instantly killed.
• Dark Is Evil: The primary antagonists of the game are associated with darkness and repelled by light.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Something seems to have taken over the Greener Grass Lawncare employees. Their advertising jingle makes reference to "the thing in my head".
  • More explicitly, the player character is stated to be serving as a "body" and "suit of flesh" for something much more powerful than themself, which is implied to have given them their golfing obsession in order to drive them to confront its rival who has control of Greener Grass Lawncare.
• Driven to Suicide: The Green Canyon staff member who warns you to stay out of the caddy shack can later be found dead in that same caddy shack, next to what appears to be a sacrificial victim. They have a puncture wound in their head and a pair of sharp scissors next to their limp hand.
• Eldritch Abomination: Seemingly two of them, both of which are Walking Spoilers:
  • Firstly, there's the entity controlling Greener Grass Lawncare. The achievements and the soundtrack for the Final Boss fight indicate that its name is Exuberance.
  • Secondly, there's Exuberance's rival, which is controlling the golfer.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: The golf course has already morphed in some pretty surreal ways by the time you reach the very last level, but then the final level has you suddenly on a small island floating in a void, with a single tree that grows strange glowing orbs, surrounded by the giant face and hands of the Final Boss and the floating bodies of what are presumably its previous victims.
• Foreshadowing: There are a few things that hint at the Tomato in the Mirror reveal early on:
  • The golfer's golf bag only contains two clubs - a driver and a putter. It also contains a pamphlet giving beginner-level instructions on golf techniques. This is because they are not actually an avid golfer.
  • The very first thing the game has you do is choose the golfer's skin colour, which the in-game prompt words as "choose your body". Later, if you have the golfer walk into the sea, a prompt will appear to inform you that " This body cannot swim". Sure enough, it is eventually made clear that the golfer's body and the entity controlling them are two different beings.
• Glasgow Grin: Something of an Arc Symbol.
  • The security guard who tries to convince you to leave is later found dead with his face cut open in this fashion.
  • Not long after that, it becomes clear that you are being stalked by employees of Greener Grass Lawncare, who also sport these. If you let one of them catch you, their killing animation appears to show them jamming their thumbs into the sides of the golfer's mouth and tearing it open in a spray of blood.
  • In the last third of the game, there are statues of mostly-featureless humanoids with unnaturally wide mouths.
  • Finally, when you see the face of Exuberance itself, it too seems to sport a mouth like this.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Visible on the employees of Greener Grass Lawncare, possibly indicating that they have been possessed.
• Human Sacrifice: In the final third of the game, it seems someone has been killing members of the Green Canyon golf club in a ritualistic fashion and collecting their blood. For some reason, dipping your golf ball in this blood makes it glow brightly and "burn the flesh" of enemies. And then, of course, there's the Badass Boast made by the Final Boss.
  Exuberance: Your suit of flesh is fragile. I will break it open and you will pour out. That body will be the last sacrifice I need.
• Nature Spirit: Exuberance is associated with trees, specifically the trees on the Green Canyon golf course, which are apparently a rare species imported from somewhere in Europe. It has temples centred around trees full of blood, protected by roots, and in the Boss Fight it attacks using the roots of the tree in the Boss Arena. It is also associated with grass via Greener Grass Lawncare, and with darkness or night since its minions only turn up once it gets dark, its statues can only attack you in complete darkness, and it can be weakened or even killed using glowing orbs of light.
• Light Is Not Good: Brightly glowing golf balls can be used as weapons against the game's antagonists. However, these golf balls seem to require Human Sacrifice in order to make them.
• Living Statue: The last third of the game swaps the normal golf course greens for forests full of creepy statues with Slasher Smiles that change their position when you aren't looking and swarm you to death if you stay in darkness for too long.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: One of the first signs you get that there's something wrong with the golfer you're playing as is the scratchy white lettering, seemingly representing their own inner thoughts, which gives you your gameplay objectives - including casually instructing you to break into the club which is obviously closed, and to continue on to the next hole even after coming across a dead body on the green. It gets much, much worse if you try to leave, with the exit path suddenly becoming blocked off by a wall of overlapping rants in the same scratchy font.
  I love golf
  I have to golf
  Golf is my life
  I live for golf
  • Notably, the text is in a noticeably different font, and gives much more reasonable advice, at the very end of the game, when the golfer seemingly wakes up from their Demonic Possession.
• Scary Black Man:
  • The last of the three Greener Grass Lawncare employees to turn up (and also later on the last one the golfer has to face) is a bald-headed black man.
  • The golfer themselves might also this if you chose a dark skin colour - both Green Canyon staff members they encounter are visibly freaked out when they get close. However, it's not clear whether the golfer is a man or not, and either way they are clearly equally scary to the staff in a playthrough where you choose lighter skin.
• Slasher Smile: Smiles in general seem to be associated with Greener Grass Lawncare and the Eldritch Abomination that controls its employees. All three employees sport creepy smiles in both their TV advert and their poster - although when you find them in-game, they've all graduated to a full-on Glasgow Grin. It makes sense, considering their god's name is Exuberance.
• Tomato in the Mirror: It eventually becomes clear that the golfer you are playing as is not a golfing fanatic at all, but rather was possessed by a being opposed to the Final Boss. Once the Final Boss is defeated, the player character has no desire to remain at the golf course any longer and simply leaves.

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