About the Game
Note: There are no monsters chasing you or jumping suddenly towards you, but the game can feel oppressive. POOLS plays on fears of getting lost, the dark, and tight spaces.

The game has no user-interface and no dialogue. No background music. Instead, the game uses sounds to make you feel like you're really there. The sounds and echo change depending on the room you're in. Walking in water is slower. All of these things makes the game feel more real and creates a tense atmosphere.
There's no typical story, no characters to meet, and you won't find any notes in game. But as you explore and advance further, you start to notice that the game's world changes around you. Rooms look and feel different. Each chapter has something unique. Constantly you're exploring new places, each with its own kind of mystery.
Base game has six unique chapters, each taking 10 to 30 minutes to play.

POOLS is inspired by a internet phenomenons "Liminal spaces", "Found footage" and "Backrooms" - specifically "Backrooms Pools" or "Poolrooms".
One of the original artists behind the Poolrooms concept is Jared Pike.
Other inspirations include:
- Matt Studios: Poolrooms videos from 2022
- Mortain Colors
- Anemoiapolis: Chapter 1 by Andrew Quist
- Kane Pixels: The Backrooms (Found Footage)

Screenshots
13 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
- Chapter 0: Fixed hotel doors sometimes opening to wrong directions
- Added "deletePlayerPref" command to the developer console - Example: "deletePlayerPref vr-tracking-origin-mode" command restores the VR tracking mode back to seated mode
- (VR) Improved standing / roomscale VR tracking mode - reduces the chances of camera getting stuck on the floor when enabling the setting
- (VR) Fixed bugs related to water slide entering: players could get stuck inside the environment, players wouldn't be teleported to the exit position when the "skip water slides" setting was enabled
- (VR) Added a tiny bit of smoothing to free movement to help eliminate judder
- (VR) Optimized some volumetric effects in Chapter 0
- (VR) Added "haptics intensity" slider to gameplay setting
- (VR) Disabled transparent material screen space reflections because of compatibility issue with water surface shader
We are investigating and pursuing performance optimizations with the goal of switching the rendering mode to multi-pass rendering in the future. Screen space water reflections do not have the misalignment issue when using multi-pass rendering, but it does come with a larger performance overhead when compared to the currently active single-pass instanced mode.
Thank you very much for the VR related feedback and every bit of support we've received thus far! We'll continue fixing bugs and working towards those performance improvements.
Also - VR support will be added to the Demo version hopefully tomorrow. We'll post an update about it once it is available.
- Chapter 0: improved audio stability and performance - should fix most audio crackling issues
- Chapter 0: fixed missing audio clip variant for "Laminate" surface type footstep
Patch is now out on Windows and Linux. Mac version will be updated as soon as we can.
- Chapter 0: Prevent getting stuck on concrete thing on water
- Chapter 0: Add clock to one certain room
- Chapter 0: Fixed missing ceilings
- Chapter 0: improved audio stability and performance
- Remove small imperfections from shallow water footsteps such as metallic noise and hard wind noises
- Add subtle underwater ladder sounds
- Add more barefoot sounds
- Chapter 2: Added autosave support for Art Connoisseur achievement progress
- Applied a potential fix for Steam achievements not unlocking
- Fix issue with the lighting, where lighting looked bad especially from the distance
- Fix falling / ground hit sound constantly playing on stairs with high movement speed
- Add missing electric/buzzing sounds to some lights
- Added Steam Community Items (collect trading cards by playing, combine cards for profile images etc)
New additions
- Rebuilt the settings menu with categories, reset to default functionality and more
- Added a volume slider for player character's breathing sounds
- Added a slider for player movement acceleration / smoothing
- Added an experimental setting for barefoot footstep sounds - feedback is appreciated :)
- Added toilet flush sound as a rare event
Bug fixes and improvements
- Adjusted lighting in chapter 6
- Fixed a bug where autosave would not load correctly in chapter 6
- Fixed multiple issues with occlusion culling, mesh LODs and asset placement throughout the game
- Fixed a rare bug where player could get stuck on a chair
- Improved chair enter / exit logic
- Fixed a visual glitch when sitting on some chairs
- Fixed a bug where water splash effects would not trigger when entering a water body at a high speed
- Fixed a player gaze detection related bug in chapter 6
- Adjusted player camera near clipping plane -> fixes a bug where players could see through geometry when playing with a high FOV or ultrawide aspect ratio
- Added dynamic ambient water surface movement / wave sounds
- Updated the activation conditions of some achievements making them less annoying to unlock
- Slight adjustments to audio mixing for some environmental sounds in chapter 2 and chapter 6
- Fixed a bug where saved screen resolution setting would not load correctly when starting the game application
- Fixed a bug where screen resolution would change to the highest supported refresh rate of the selected resolution when loading into a chapter
- Fixed a bug in chapter 3 where the player could climb and get stuck on the slide at the start
- Fixed a bug in chapter 6 where the player could get stuck behind a safety railing
- Fixed a bug where "Invert y-axis" setting would be ignored when starting a new chapter
- Fixed a bug where frame rate limit selection would not be saved when modifying the setting from main menu screen
- Fixed a bug in chapter 2 where players could walk up inside a yellow slide and get stuck
- Enabled V-sync by default for new players
- Default lighting quality setting updated from "High" to "Medium" for new players
- Frame rate limit dropdown menu is now not interactable if V-sync is enabled
- Adjusted objects positions in chapter 6 to prevent clipping
Notes about V-sync and target frame rate:
In main menu screen, V-sync is disabled by default and target frame is locked to 60. This is intended behavior to prevent unnecessary system load.
In loading screens, V-sync is disabled by default and target frame is locked to 30.
If V-sync is enabled, the game's target frame rate is determined by the window mode setting and display resolution setting:
- Fullscreen: target frame rate is current display resolution selection's maximum refresh rate
- Borderless windowed and windowed: target frame rate is the maximum supported refresh rate of your display regardless of the resolution selection
- Adjusted German translation
- Fixed a bug where player could climb along the edge of the double spiral slide and get stuck in Chapter 2
- Fixed a situation where player would teleport back to a ladder after camera rewind sequence ends in Chapter 4
- Fixed a possible way to go out of bounds and get stuck in Chapter 5
- Fixed a bug where "Error In Production" achievement was practically impossible to unlock
- fixed an issue where English language selection would be ignored and the game would default to system language
- removed one potential cause for false positives in malware detections - removed all Application.OpenURL calls from game code
- fixed two locations in chapter 2 where the player could get stuck
Changelog:
- Fixed a bug where player can get stuck in the bottom of the large hole
- Add air vents around the level
- Spawn exit signs after a while to help navigate if lost
- Unusable ladders get visually broken now
- Ducks in labyrinth floating, previously stationary
- Added "back" button to in-game settings menu
- Added colliders to prevent player from going out of bounds
For the full release we are still aiming for April 2024
Changelog:
- Fixed VSYNC setting
- Added camera bobbing setting
- Added invert Y axis setting
- Added FOV setting
- Player can now sit on chairs
Current Release
14194107
Uploaded Apr 28, 2024
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System Requirements
How to Install
POOLS.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
1.8 GB
14194107
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