POOLS
Last updated: 2025-11-17
- Masterful atmospheric liminal horror experience.
- Engaging walking simulator with strong level design.
- Stunning graphics and immersive ambient sound.
- Inconsistent horror intensity; lacks clear story.
- Short duration; can feel repetitive for some.
- VR causes motion sickness; inconsistent performance.
Emotions
Players feel satisfied by the game's exceptional visual fidelity, including stunning graphics, realistic water rendering, and ingenious map designs that create unique, atmospheric environments. The game effectively delivers a deeply immersive and unsettling liminal space experience, often blending psychological horror with a creepy yet calming ambiance without relying on traditional jump scares or monsters. Many reviewers also highlight its strong value for money and how well it fulfills expectations for fans of the Backrooms and poolcore aesthetics.
Excitement stems from the game's high-quality visuals, amazing designs, and compelling atmosphere that creates a thrilling and often fear-inducing experience. Players are particularly excited by the enhanced immersion provided by the VR mode, which magnifies the game's eerie and unique liminal spaces. The game's capacity for new discoveries, engaging exploration, and the anticipation of future content or updates also contribute significantly to this emotion.
Disappointment arises primarily from the game's perceived lack of content, short duration, and poor value for money. Many players experience frustration with widespread technical issues, including poor optimization, frequent bugs, and VR performance problems. Additionally, some reviewers find the game fails to deliver a sufficiently scary or engaging horror experience, often becoming repetitive or deviating from its initial atmospheric promise, while others struggle with motion sickness and confusing navigation.
Admiration is driven by the game's exceptional artistic quality, including stunning graphics, realistic water rendering, and brilliant architectural design that brings dream-like structures to life. Reviewers consistently praise the masterful sound design and atmospheric qualities, which create an immersive and uniquely unsettling experience without relying on cheap scares. The game is often lauded as a "masterpiece" for its ingenious level design, creative concept, and overall high quality, particularly in VR.
Players derive enjoyment from the game's overall positive and immersive experience, often highlighting the fun of exploring its unique and aesthetically rich environments. The game's ability to blend creepy and eerie atmospheres with moments of relaxation, enhanced by beautiful graphics and evocative sound design, contributes significantly to this feeling. Many also appreciate the lack of aggressive monsters or jumpscares, allowing for a more contemplative yet still engaging form of psychological horror.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 90% · Negative 10%. Score: 10 / 100
Positives:
- The game excels at generating deep psychological horror and profound unease through its immersive atmosphere, stunning visuals, and subtle sound design. It deliberately avoids cheap jumpscares and monsters, instead leveraging environmental cues and the player's imagination to create a constant, palpable tension that is both unnerving and captivating.
- Highly praised as an exceptional walking simulator, the game offers compelling exploration through cleverly designed, maze-like yet non-frustrating levels. Its creative environments, evolving water features, and unique elements (like non-Euclidean geometry and slides) keep players engaged and curious without relying on traditional objectives or repetitive tasks.
- The game is widely celebrated for perfectly capturing the "Poolcore," "Backrooms," and broader liminal spaces aesthetic. It masterfully evokes the specific blend of familiarity, nostalgia, unease, and isolation characteristic of these surreal, empty environments, often hailed as the definitive experience in its niche.
- Players consistently praise the game's exquisite graphics, photorealistic quality, and impressive attention to detail in lighting, reflections, and water effects. The visual aesthetic is described as beautiful, immersive, and a significant contributor to the game's overall artistic merit and eerie ambiance.
- Despite its unsettling nature, many players find the game profoundly relaxing and therapeutic, offering a unique form of stress relief and mental escape. It provides moments of calm and introspection, allowing players to unwind, explore at their own pace, and appreciate a strange sense of peace amidst its eerie environments.
Negatives:
- Feedback on the game's horror elements is mixed; some players found it genuinely terrifying and anxiety-inducing, while others experienced no fear, deeming it too tame or lacking traditional scares. Many felt the game deviated from its psychological horror premise, resulting in a confused or unfulfilled atmospheric experience.
- The game is consistently criticized for its extremely short duration, often finishing in 1-2 hours, making its purchase price feel unjustified. Players frequently express a desire for significantly more content and levels to warrant the cost.
- Many players found the 'walking simulator' gameplay quickly became dull and repetitive, especially due to a lack of interactive elements, puzzles, or varied mechanics. This contributed to a general sense of boredom and a desire to rush through the experience.
- A significant number of players reported experiencing severe 3D motion sickness, dizziness, and nausea, often triggered by specific visual effects like fisheye perspectives, rapid transitions, or confusing level layouts. This issue made the game unplayable or highly unpleasant for many.
- The game suffers from general technical issues, including frequent FPS drops, stutters, and suboptimal optimization across platforms. The VR implementation is particularly problematic, with blurry visuals, low frame rates, and game-breaking bugs that severely detract from immersion and playability, especially given its beta status.
Gameplay:
- The game deliberately avoids traditional horror elements like monsters, chases, jumpscares, or combat, and lacks a clear narrative or explicit goals. Instead, it cultivates deep psychological unease, often making players feel watched or lost, leading them to generate their own fear through the oppressive atmosphere.
- Players are immersed in 'liminal spaces,' reminiscent of the Backrooms, specifically featuring vast, labyrinthine complexes of deserted, tiled pools and aquatic environments. The game's 'architectural horror' showcases impossible and disorienting design to create a surreal and lonely atmosphere.
- The game is structured into 6-7 chapters, each presenting a confusing, maze-like environment where getting lost and finding exits is a core part of the experience. Players must navigate these non-linear spaces, often encountering dead ends and looping paths.
- The main experience is relatively brief, typically completable in 2-4 hours. However, the game includes achievements that encourage thorough exploration and revisiting chapters for 100% completion, adding replay value.
- The game offers an optional VR mode, often in beta, providing a first-person perspective that significantly enhances the immersive and unsettling nature of the liminal environments for players with VR headsets.
Performance:
- Player feedback on overall game performance and optimization is mixed. While many users report smooth gameplay across various hardware setups, including older PCs and Steam Deck, others find the game demanding or note specific performance drops, particularly in water sections or when transitioning between rooms. Some praise the optimization, while others suggest it needs improvement.
- The game supports modern features such as 4K resolution, DLSS, and FSR, which are crucial for balancing visuals and performance. Light quality settings are a major factor in frame rate, and reducing them can significantly improve performance with minimal visual degradation. TAA is reported to cause lighting issues, and some users note aliasing or issues with reflections. Default graphics on Steam Deck can lead to disorienting issues.
- Players have reported specific bugs such as black screens at chapter starts, occasional chugs and forced restarts in flat mode (especially in Chapter 0), and a red glare bug (temporarily resolved by quitting to the menu). In VR, a hitbox flaw allows access to unintended areas. Additionally, platform-specific workarounds are sometimes needed, such as deactivating 'Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling' for SteamVR on Windows 11, and some Mac users found Crossover performed better than the native version.
Recommendations:
- The game generally receives strong positive recommendations and high ratings, with many players expressing deep enjoyment and finding it a worthwhile experience. It's often considered a good value, particularly when purchased on sale.
- Players highly recommend the game for its immersive liminal spaces, Backrooms, poolcore, and dreamcore aesthetics, offering a unique atmospheric horror experience. It focuses on unsettling environments and exploration without monsters or jumpscares, appealing to those who prefer quiet dread.
- Reviewers strongly recommend playing the game in VR for maximum immersion, describing it as a 'must-try' experience for headset owners. Additionally, using headphones in a dark room is consistently advised to fully appreciate the game's atmospheric sound design and enhance the sense of unease.
- The game is primarily a walking simulator centered on atmospheric exploration, wandering, and discovering secrets, rather than traditional combat, complex puzzles, or explicit story. It is not recommended for players seeking action-heavy gameplay or busy work.
- The game's environments can be unsettling for players, with specific warnings for those prone to 3D motion sickness, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, thalassophobia, or vertigo. Reviewers advise caution, highlighting that the game's psychological elements can be intense.
Miscellaneous:
- There is immense excitement and anticipation for the game's VR version, with many reviewers looking forward to testing it or expecting it to enhance the already immersive and terrifying experience. Some players even bought the game specifically for its VR capabilities or expressed hope for its future VR compatibility.
- Players are extremely eager for more chapters, levels, DLC, and a sequel, often requesting expanded environments or randomly generated maps for increased replayability. The strong positive reception indicates a clear desire for the developers to continue building upon the game's unique concept.
- The game is considered short, completable within approximately one to two hours, and typically priced around $10. Despite its brevity, many players find the experience impactful and worth the cost, although some feel the price might be high for its length. It's often replayed for achievements or revisited for its unique atmosphere.
- The game creates a powerful sense of disorientation and dread, often described as oppressive and frightening, even for players who typically avoid horror. Many felt lost or disembodied, leading some to uninstall due to fear or desire a VR experience to heighten the immersion.
- Despite its relatively short main playtime, many players exhibit exceptionally high engagement, with some dedicating hundreds of hours, completing all achievements, and returning to the game frequently. This indicates a strong, lasting impression and significant replayability for its dedicated fanbase.
