POOLS

About this game

One could say POOLS is like an art gallery where you look around and listen to the sounds. Very few things to accomplish or solve, practically a few mazes. Sometimes POOLS can challenge your navigation skills. But mostly you're just... there.

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)

Latest news

• Patch Notes·19 Dec 2025Official

  Update notes (19th December 2025)

  Hello, PC & PCVR players, you haven’t been forgotten! The VR experience has gotten a complete graphics overhaul. The new version of VR mode on PC is now much more performant so if you’ve had any issues running it before, now is a good time to give it a new try. On flatscreen mode we decided to roll back to using Unity’s own SSGI instead of the previously implemented GI solution. This leads to the lighting looking a bit different in some areas. The decision was made because of unsolved compatibility issues on some systems and to make the project easier to maintain. If any of you prefer the look or feel of the earlier version of POOLS either in flatscreen or VR, we will leave it up to be downloaded from Steam (instructions at the end of this message). Personally we prefer the look and performance of the latest update though! Along with this update we want to wish happy holidays and new year to all of you who celebrate! Thank you so much for supporting us! Full changelog: VR: Complete performance overhaul with URP rendering pipelineUpdated lighting to Unity’s SSGI instead of HTrace WSGIUpdated Unity engine version (Fixes CVE-2025-59489 Unity Runtime Vulnerability)Added barefoot footstep sounds for all missing surface typesFixed dods diver achievement activating in a wrong spotChapter 0: Fixed a bug where VR player up direction would sometimes have unintentional rotation applied on startupChapter 0: Fixed a bug where player could get stuck in a room with lots of chairs and a speakerChapter 0: Disabled auto save in few places in where you could get stuck by loading auto saveChapter 0: Fixed level restart not working properly sometimes (fixes number of the beast achievement)Chapter 2: Fixed several lighting artifacts on lowest lighting settingsChapter 3: Added invisible colliders to help prevent moving through some railing objectsChapter 3: Fixed pool glitching near start of ch3, if you go under the metal railing and walk the stairs downChapter 4: Updated materials to som...
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• Announcements·6 Jun 2025Official

  POOLS joins the World Ocean Day Charity Steam Sale

  Hello everyone,We’re proud to share that POOLS is taking part in the WDC World Ocean Day Charity Steam Sale, which runs from June 5 to June 12.This special event supports the wonderful folks at Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), the leading global charity dedicated to protecting whales, dolphins, and the oceans they call home. Proceeds from the sale will help fund critical global conservation work, including missions to remove deadly ghost fishing gear from the sea, and operations where divers clear lethal entanglement hazards from reefs, the seabed, and shipwrecks in UK waters - protecting both marine life and scuba divers.By picking up POOLS (or grabbing a copy for a friend), you’re not just diving into liminal spaces, you’re helping protect the real world too.If you want to read more about WDC, you can do so here: https://whales.org/ The charity sale goes live June 5 at 10 am PDT | 7 pm CEST.Let’s save some whales and dolphins! Tensori
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• Announcements·5 Jun 2025Official

  VR mode available in Demo version

  PC VR mode is now available for free in the Demo version of the game (Windows only). Thank you for your patience & keep your feedback coming so we can keep improving the VR mode to be as enjoyable as possible! ːfancyduckː
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Kiero)

• Patch Notes·3 Jun 2025Official

  Update notes (4th June 2025)

  Full changelog: 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.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Tensori_Sami)

• Announcements·30 May 2025Official

  PC VR is here

  PC VR mode is out now as a free update! Full changelog Windows: Add PC VR support Add view distance setting Chapter 2: restored "Look At" event functionality to the statue surrounded by plastic chairs Chapter 2: possibly make Anatidaephobia easier to trigger Linux: Fix crash at the end of chapter 6 which caused ch0 to not unlock Note: For Linux and Mac users; the VR is not officially supported, but might work. Feedback appreciated
  Read full article on Community Announcements (Tensori)