POOLS

I love Poolrooms-style Backrooms levels the endless glossy white tiles, the crystal-blue water, and that surreal feeling of wandering through corridors that seem to shift and change around you. There’s something strangely peaceful about it. The silence, the reflections, the endless passages... it feels unsettling and comforting at the same time, almost like being lost in a dream you don’t really want to wake up from.

Iron Maiden once played this game and wrote a song about it: [i]Fear of the Pools, fear of the Pools[/i] [i]I have a constant fear that something's always near [/i] [i]Fear of the Pools, fear of the Pools [/i] [i]I have a phobia that someone's always there [/i] Seriously though, the only thing more disturbing than this game is real life itself!

Please heed the "Walking Simulator" tag. That is what this is. If you do not like games where the point is just to walk around, this is not the game for you. If you do like that sort of thing, and you're like me and wish water was real and not just something they invented for video games... welcome to POOLS. There is horror ambiance, but nothing in this game can hurt you. Even if you die, which you can only do by your own fault, you get better. That said, this is the game that made me silence the Steam toast notifications. I jumped out of my skin every time I got an achievement for the first two levels.

I'm pretty sure I didn't buy this, and if I did, it was worth it. If your like me, and just wanna get stoned and walk around a trippy pool. I'm sure you will enjoy this for what it is.

An absolute indulgence of dreamlike aesthetics and architecture. A dreamcore art gallery, where the gallery itself is the art. If you've had the pool dreams, enjoy the "pool rooms" aesthetic, think the original premise of the backrooms is neat, or all of the above - chances are you'll enjoy your time here. It's 100% a walking simulator with the only "gameplay" being exploration so I wouldn't go into it expecting a "game" - but if you just want to wander around in a curious liminal space, this is one of the better ones IMO. I appreciate that the many inspirations for this work are acknowledged in the credits, and I have to say this is quite well crafted. I really enjoyed experiencing this, like visiting an old favorite dream on my own terms - and I plan to revisit it again. More generous and enjoyable than I expected, and while I've "completed" every level, I get the distinct impression there are many interesting corners of it I've yet to see. I look forward to dreaming this dream yet again...

It was pretty fun up until the water was too dark and murky to see anything.