When I say nothing scares me, it may sound like I’m projecting a macho attitude about horror. But what I really mean is, nothing scares me. When you don’t have a monster in hot pursuit, or some tangible focal point for fear, your imagination can really run wild. Well, nothing is after you in Pools, and that’s what keeps me on edge the entire time.
Pools is a game heavily inspired by The Backrooms and other examples of liminal horror. Think abandoned spaces, eerily sterile architecture, and aspects of interior design that either feel out-of-place or coldly nostalgic. The Backrooms itself started as a concept and a creepypasta, and as those stories tend to do, it quickly took on a life of its own. There’s no shortage of indie games that have taken inspiration from it, but you can also just watch Kane Parsons’ 2022 found footage short on YouTube if you want to get the gist in a few minutes.
Pools takes the isolating and disorienting idea of liminal horror and distills it into a small handful of maze-like levels with a low-key mix of analog horror aesthetics. Everything necessary for a jump-scare-filled ride is present and accounted for, but Pools opts to invoke a different type of fear. Instead of cultivating a mood of eerie quiet only to occasionally interrupt it with audio-visual freak-outs or the sudden appearance of an unstoppable bogeyman, Pools is content to let the player wallow in its atmosphere.
That atmosphere is a stifling one that takes the ostensibly safe and sanitary veneer of a public pool and expands it to an absurd degree. These aren’t decrepit, abandoned pools with cracked tiles and cloudy, septic waste in place of chlorinated water. They look like a soul has never stepped foot on their pristine porcelain facades. They might be welcoming in any other context, but there’s something off about them. It’s not just that they’re completely empty; they’re also sprawling in ways that don’t immediately make sense. Tube slides twist and turn from one room to the next. A diving board peeks out across a yawning chasm, its maw as black as the night. Oh yeah, and there are massive rubber duckies floating around. I swear that’s not a jump scare, but I wouldn’t fault anyone for jumping.
As you wade through waist-deep water, climb pool ladders polished to perfection, and turn with great trepidation down yet another interconnected corridor, dread begins to bare its teeth. For the most part, all you can hear as you explore these twists and turns are the sounds of your feet plodding along, the sloshing of pool water, and your own heavy breathing after saying screw it and jogging down another all-too familiar hallway. You’ll also hear the occasional legitimately spooky sound. Guttural growls echo out from an indeterminate location. A soft musical jingle chimes to life and all you can do is wonder where it’s coming from, what triggered it, and what it all means, if anything.
There’s no feeling that Pools ever aimed to pull the chair out from under those looking for a more traditional horror game. The developers at Tensori even go so far as to advertise it as an experience in which you just “explore, admire, and listen.” They go on to reiterate that there are “no monsters chasing you” in this self-described “walking simulator.” I read that description before playing, so I had a metaphysical blanket draped over me to constantly reassure me that nothing was out there. My imagination didn’t see it that way, though. You can tell me there aren’t any monsters waiting in the dark, and you can show me in stark detail that I’m all alone in the world. That only serves to exacerbate any fears inherent to the surreal setting.
I also find it really frustrating to get lost, and that’s not a bug in Pools, it’s a feature. It’s very easy to get turned around, even with such standout landmarks as “big-ass slide” and “oddly menacing rubber duck” to serve as your own personal breadcrumbs along the way. Since I also knew that would come into play before booting it up, I met Pools on its own terms and turned that frustration into another facet of fear.
Pools isn’t something that’s going to have you quaking in your boots, or sweating it out while cowering in a corner. It will, however, provide ample space for your mind to work overtime and play a few tricks on you. At times it can be relaxing, and at others it can be claustrophobic. Most of all, though, I found it isolating. It’s like waking up a little disoriented after a short nap only to find everyone else has blinked out of existence. Taking your headphones off is like coming up for air, and that’s all I can really ask for from a subtle horror experience like this.
