Games

I'm jumping into psychological horror today, with a walking simulator called POOLS. This game has no jump scares, no monsters. It's just dark (and sometimes bright), liminal spaces that give you an eerie, creeped-out vibe, themed around indoor pools with unnaturally dark waters. The longer you walk through this maze of irregular pool rooms, the more anxious you'll feel.

There is an end to the pool rooms, but not before it starts getting weirder and weirder. There are six chapters to weave through, so you do make progress the longer you walk. Just gotta keep it together long enough to find the end of each chapter.

The sort of blurry vision around the edges of the screen makes for an unsettling, unfocused view, which will have you frantically checking around you for movement while you walk.

The ambient noises also cause anxiety, from the rattling of an air vent, to the faint splashing of pool water, like someone is in the pools a few rooms away. If you run for a few seconds, your character will breathe heavily, which almost gave me a heart attack the first time I heard it; I thought it was someone else breathing in my ear!

This room below had a speaker over the doorway at the end of the hall, playing some loud music. As soon as I passed under the doorway, though, the sound of the music stopped almost immediately, as if muffled. It was super creepy! I walked back through the doorway and the music was there again, but it was like walking through a deafening wall with no visible barriers.

Your feet clack on the tile floors like you're wearing shoes, but make squishy wet slapping sounds if you just came out of the water. And you will be forced to go in the water sometimes. You'll hit a dead end where you can't progress unless you swallow your fear and venture into a dark room with nothing but dark pool water on the ground.

Like I said, there are no monsters and nothing actually pursuing you, but probably the most terrifying thing is the floating duckies. In some tight, claustrophobic dark rooms, you'll be surprised by them hanging out behind pillars or around a wall. And no matter where you go, they always slowly spin around in the water until they're facing you. Goddamn creepy ducks. 😨

This game was inspired by the backrooms, that creepy meme about glitching through the edges of reality and finding yourself trapped in an infinite trail of musty, yellow-wallpapered office hallways.

But unlike the backrooms, there is no monster lurking in the darkness and there is a definite end to the pools. You just have to be brave enough to keep moving forward. No matter how crazy the pool rooms start becoming. I've only posted screenshots from the second chapter, before things started getting really weird. So go check it out for yourself and see what happens...