

The Black Pool
Smug Marmot Studios · 2024 · Action Roguelike, Roguelite, Co-op, Roguelike, Co-op Campaign
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About The Black Pool
THE JOURNEY HOME
The Black Pool has taken you to a remote and unknown galactic system. In each attempt to return home, you will traverse across a random sequence of highly diverse worlds. Throughout your journey, carefully select powers from a large pool of random possibilities, complementing existing abilities and those of your friends. Strategically upgrade these abilities to maximize your potential. This procedural sequence of worlds, offerings of abilities, and upgrades, yields a highly replayable roguelike sequence which ensures that every session is completely unique. There are millions of possibilities. Committing to decisions and improvising an effective build is core to the game. Can you become powerful enough to face what lies ahead?IMPROVE WITH EACH ATTEMPT
With each attempt you will learn how enemies behave and what their weaknesses are. You will learn how each of these supernatural abilities work, and synergistic ways to use abilities together. In addition, you unlock permanent enhancements that persist across playthrough attempts which make you stronger, and also enable varied play styles.BRING A FRIEND
While you can try and make it on your own, it may be more fun to bring a friend, or three. The Black Pool has been designed to maximize the cooperative multiplayer experience. Many of the abilities contain game mechanics that deliver fun and rewarding interactions between players. Redirect friendly attacks, amplify each other's spells, coordinate stuns and buffs, and much more. In The Black Pool, co-op play is more than simply playing the game together— you are rewarded for actually working together to be successful.ARENA SURVIVORS GAME MODE
The Black Pool patch 1.2 introduces an entirely new game mode: Arena Survivors— a fast and intense battle arena featuring rapid progression and randomized waves of increasingly more difficult enemies. It delivers a fun and highly replayable “survivors-like” spin on The Black Pool gameplay and also provides a quick way to experiment with abilities and builds without the time commitment of a full playthrough. A successful Arena Survivors attempt will take around 30 minutes, compared to 90 minutes for the full game mode. Four unique arenas have been developed for Arena Survivors, each presenting varied and evolving layouts, hazards, and challenges.WHAT’S IN THE GAME
- 10 unique worlds, consisting of over 50 unique levels which dynamically adjust based on procedural selection.
- 90 unique abilities and augments derived from 9 elements: Fire, Light, Ice, Decay, Terra, Wind, Lightning, Void, and Chaos.
- 99 upgrades for abilities and augments.
- 18 upgradeable device powers which enhance player progression across playthrough attempts.
- 55 enemies, including 11 unique multi-stage boss encounters.
- Original musical score consisting of 7 dynamic tracks which seamlessly progress with the playthrough sequence, and 10 tracks for the Temple hub world.
- 4 multi-tier endgame challenge modes (3 options for each).
- Randomized event challenges that reward players with augments and other special upgrades.
- Cooperative multiplayer up to 4 players.
- Recovery for disconnected or uncompleted playthrough sessions in both single and multiplayer.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
The Black Pool offers engaging co-op gameplay with fun mechanics and interesting build synergies that players enjoy with friends, but suffers from significant aesthetic and presentation issues that undermine the experience. Players criticize the overly stylized, garish visual design, lackluster sound design that makes combat feel hollow, and optimization problems, with many describing it as feeling amateurish or "sauceless" despite solid mechanical foundations. Some also report performance crashes and feel that balancing issues, forgettable enemy variety, and unsettling character models furthe
The slop mines are lush, 0/10 game 10/10 time
the poeple yearn for the slop
I want to like this game but it's ROUGH. The premise is cool: think of Returnal but low budget. Cool skill combo ideas, some very original skill mechanics... But also some really underwhelming ones. Sound design is all over the place: the music is cool but the sound effects are mostly awful. Skills with cool visual effects lack punch in their audio, making them feel wimpy. Aside from that, as mentioned at the start the game is really rough. Movement is floaty and imprecise, camera does weird things often and the controls are not very responsive. All three are very important features for a roguelike. All in all, the game has good bones but I don't think the developer plans on growing it much further. I'd only advice getting this if you're starved for a new 3D action roguelite and wanna try something different. But be prepared for the jank, and get it at a sale.
Looks super promising but it's unplayable in its current state. Two major issues: 1. Even with the gamma at 100 in settings, it's extremely difficult to see where things are. 2. Massive input lag. Both keyboard and mouse have something like a 500ms delay before responding, which is completely untenable. Also, the company's official recommendation for reporting bugs is a Discord server. Don't we know better than to require people to join Discord servers to get support from a company by now?
Good soup
i see its on sale buy it then add me this game is cool
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