An indie game for many people POOLS I’ll lean in Horror Area. While Running simulator There are no monsters hunting you Border design its surroundings are very likely to unsettle the player. Long, interconnecting rooms made of tiles and strangely shaped bodies of water sloshing back and forth make you believe that something is just not right in the world POOLS. And yet it awakens in me a surprising nostalgia for the many hours of my life spent poolside.
POOLS is a series of six mazes to navigate, with little guidance and no real threat. Instead, it represents an architecturally uncanny valley influenced by the idea of liminal spaces and back rooms. There is also a lot of water. But the eerie emptiness of a space designed for more than a single person evokes the same feeling as early morning swim practice.
Swimming pools, at least large public swimming pools like those of POOLSare designed as common areas. They should be places of life and sound. In real life and in game, being alone while exploring a pool and surrounding facilities can feel otherworldly. This isn’t necessarily a worrying thing. That’s pretty explicit POOLS tries to evoke, for me it seems almost meditative.
I was a competitive swimmer for most of my middle and high school years. Like any sport, it was a time-consuming task that meant early mornings and late evenings. The mornings are particularly unforgettable when you sit alone in front of a huge pool in a huge complex wrapped in a warm parka. Before sunrise, when the pool is lit only by a few fluorescent lights on the patio, you may feel like the only person in the world.
Navigating the white tiled architecture of POOLS it’s about discovering something new. Every room is unique. Each has its own curves and hard angles, as well as its own use of the central water features. Some rooms have beautiful pools reminiscent of bathhouses, some have colorful waterslides, and others are completely flooded. Many find the design functional, with simple railings and ladders surrounding rectangular water containers. When traveling to compete, each pool was a new place to explore. Often they were my only window into the city I was in – the pool was the whole world.
I wanted to memorize the unique elements of each pool, right down to the differences in the feeling of sliding through the water. These reconstructions still exist in a deep part of my mind. Some are clearer than others, but they are connected like a kind of mind palace that I can walk through. They are always empty except for the dull hum of electricity from the lights and the splashing of the water.
The best visual representation of this for me has always been the work of Leanne Shapton. Shapton, now an artist and writer, was a competitive swimmer for most of her youth. In her memoirs Swimming studies, Shapton intersects text with various artwork. What I find most memorable are the pages with simple geometric representations of various pools around the world that Shapton visited. The dark shapes of the pools are contrasted by a simple white environment that has nothing else to offer.
Like Shapton’s art, POOLS breaks these spaces down to their essentials: dark water and muted white surroundings. But the game triggers something in me that is much closer to my memories. It’s a combination of the visual representation of the space, the sound of water dripping on tiles, and the ability to wander at my own pace. There are some rooms POOLS This feeling is lifted almost straight from my brain, like I’m walking down memory lane. It’s not the unsettling experience that the game aims to provide for most players, but rather something more personal and equally exciting.
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