Poolscape

Poolscape is a slower-paced exploration game set in nine Poolrooms levels. You wander through their environments, taking in the sound and atmosphere as subtle horror elements emerge. The game uses PSX-era visuals and quirks rather than aiming for realism, and includes locations that are original to Poolscape as well as ones familiar from Poolrooms or Backrooms lore.

Explore the levels

The nine environments range from repeating tiled rooms to vast industrial spaces, dreamlike pools and a structure set in deep space:

• Classic Poolrooms: Repeating tiles and fake skylights create a familiar, uncanny Poolrooms setting designed to introduce the retro experience.
• The Aquatic Megastructure: An immense brutalist facility with large industrial walls, designed to evoke megalophobia. It is the largest and most expansive environment in the game.
• Dreampools: Bright pools, matte-colored tiles and low-poly palm trees create a euphoric, dreamlike setting with an unsettling suggestion that something may be watching.
• Dark Poolrooms: Almost total darkness, claustrophobic hallways and thick black fog make this a tense, unnerving environment.
• Nostalgia Springs: Vaporwave, mall-like architecture combines neon lighting with 1990s aesthetics. The level is inspired by the Neon Springs from the YouTube series Lost in the Hyperverse.
• Oceanscape: A calm, breezy ocean setting with strange sculptures and floating platforms, inspired by the ocean environment in The Backrooms: Lost Tape.
• The Chlorine Complex: A seemingly endless motel-like structure deep within the Backrooms, made up of shallow indoor pools. Its three sections each have a distinct atmosphere, and the air is musty and smells of chlorine.
• Promised Future: A Frutiger Aero- and Y2K-themed environment like a Windows desktop wallpaper, drawing on earlier levels while introducing its own surprises.
• Cosmic Pools: A marble structure in deep space, filled with strange pools and pathways. Low gravity lets you jump higher, so watch your head.

Hub and exploration

A central hub replaces a traditional main menu, with waterslides that take you to each level. Notes found throughout the environments reveal Poolscape's lore. Some levels include light platforming, with a forgiving respawn mechanic if you fall into an abyss.

A Weirdcore-inspired entity keeps a close eye on you through most levels, but does not harm you. Each level has its own ambience and set pieces, giving you reasons to revisit the environments on multiple playthroughs.

Sound and visuals

An original soundtrack includes ambient tracks to support the liminal atmosphere. The game's PSX-era graphics use low-resolution textures, low-poly models, color dithering, pixelation, vertex snapping, distance culling and distance fog. You can also apply an optional VHS filter by interacting with the VHS Tape in the Sky Pools; it gives the game a Puppet Combo-inspired look.