Pools

Genre: First-Person Walking Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

Pools, originally released in 2025 on PC, ported in 2025 to PlayStation 5, then ported in 2026 to Nintendo Switch, is a First-Person Walking Simulator that edges in the direction of Horror through the realm of “liminal spaces”, that odd subgenre that aims to creep folks out not through monsters or serial killers or blood and gore, but instead via vast, empty, and somewhat surreal spaces. This genre is probably best known from the “Backrooms” series, and in the case of Pools, the surreal “liminal space” is a mazelike enclosed labyrinth of hallways and rooms lined with clean white ceramic tiles and partly flooded.

To its credit, Pools is graphically quite good, with excellent textures, lighting, and reflection in the slick tiles. The water also looks decent, though nothing truly impressive. There’s also a subtle “unfocused” effect that creates a blurred effect at the edges of the screen, with lens flares occasionally adding to this somewhat surreal visual aesthetic too. There’s not really any music here, but these visuals are joined by your echoing footsteps, the light sloshing sound of water, and the echoing movement of air in large corridors.

For the gameplay itself… there’s not much here. It is a Walking Simulator, after all, and so you’ll be doing a lot of… well, walking. In the best Walking Simulator games, the simplicity and repetitiveness of this gameplay is balanced out by making the place you’re walking through interesting in its own right, but here it’s kinda’ the opposite – just rooms and corridors that are all variations on the same white tile motif, sometimes flooded with water, sometimes not. When you enter a room and get excited that you see an actual chair to shake up the monotony, that seems like a pretty clear sign that something’s wrong here.

Does Pools succeed at its approach to “Horror”? Eh, I guess? I dunno, the game is mildly creepy throughout, but nothing here got my heart racing. More than anything I was frustrated by the tedious repetition, by the slow walking speed, by the input delay that made it feel like I was controlling my character while drunk. And nothing here felt particularly enjoyable.

If this was a $2 tech demo, it might be worth a look just out of curiosity’s sake. But at $10, Pools doesn’t feel like it has enough actual game in the game to be worth the price. And in any case, I didn’t find myself enjoying this in any way beyond being mildly impressed by the visuals… before the frustration and boredom set in.

tl;dr – Pools is a First-Person Walking Simulator set in a “liminal space” consisting of rooms made out of white ceramic tile that have been partly-flooded. While the graphics here are surprisingly decent, the gameplay is tedious, repetitive, and just not at all fun. And while this is mildly creepy, it’s not a game I would recommend to Horror fans. Or anyone, for that matter.

Grade: D+

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