'LSD: Dream Emulator' doggy paddled so 'Pools' could do the butterfly stroke

There's a bundle of blog posts waiting in the wings but I still have a million other things going on and trying to find the files I need to finish them up during little pockets of downtime is proving difficult; it's a sod of a situation but rest assured, there will be footage of local waterfowl doing aquatic bird stuff sometime soon.

For today though, we're having a look at Pools, and a fraction of the 805 screenshots I took during my first playthrough (this is after trimming the numbers back 'n' all - it has a very appealing aesthetic!) It has a compelling atmosphere, both beautiful and eerie in equal measure, and the mazes are superbly satisfying to explore. When you get a feel for how everything connects, what passageway leads where and you find somewhere you haven't previously been, reaching a new area feels really rewarding, especially in the moments when you walk into the more grand rooms that almost feel like ancient temples in how they're laid out. It's awe-inspiring, but in a very calm and quiet kind of way.

I will readily admit that chapter 6 lost me a bit; that's a matter of personal preference, really. Based on the first 5 levels, I was quite wedded to the idea of some kind of nostalgic, dreamlike, leisure centre-based purgatory, with the marble people maybe being the victims of some mysterious genius loci, or a cosmic horror kind of vibe, with something from another plane of existence having picked up on architectural structures and we'd be exploring its skewed attempt to replicate an environment as we would understand it.

As it is, when chapter 6 rolled round, the whole thing did a hard veer into feeling very much like Haruki Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Don't get me wrong, it works in that book because the whole structure alternates between two distinct atmospheres with each chapter, so the shifts in tone are well established. On the flip side, Pools went deep into the implication of a kind of dystopian sci-fi experiment thing all at once, and it felt out of step with the sedate, melancholy and vaguely ominous pacing of the rest of the game, with too many sudden, jarring changes in environment being jammed into one chapter. Still, it does authentically recreate the feeling of dream logic throughout its run, both in its quieter moments and in the final chapter, when it gets a bit manic. Maybe the final chapter was based on those kind of chaotic dreams that turn up when you've decided to go back to sleep for a bit, in which case, it definitely succeeded in getting that feeling across. Also, I must applaud the sheep chillin' on the chaise - that was adorable.

I've still yet to get to doing Chapter 0 (it was late, the futon beckoned) and from looking at the trophy list afterwards, it looks like there are some secrets I've missed, so maybe those  will provide more context and more of a run-up to the dystopian reveal, but that will have to wait for now. As it is, tonal whiplash aside, I thoroughly enjoyed this game. It's wonderfully immersive and the environment design is superb, both in terms of its visuals and the layout of each maze. It's definitely one I'd go back to just to soak up its atmosphere at a more leisurely pace, without any particular objective in mind. Now onto these pictures...

This bit reminded me of the train station in Silent Hill 4 - appropriately, heading down these stairs results in a death. Thankfully, dying in this game just results in it quickly rewinding like a video tape, so you don't lose your progress. Considering that it mostly consists of mazes, the lack of a concrete failstate is ideal; it lets the player experiment and explore without having to worry about retracing their steps if they screw up, and keeps it from becoming frustrating due to poorly set-out checkpoints (some of my favourite games are guilty of duff checkpointing like that, casually side-eyeing The Evil Within as a particularly rough example...)

 

If you listen carefully, you can hear these flamingos chanting "Uyamai mōshi ageru ten-ni owasu onaruji..."

Monster guts spotted in the wild!

(Although, running jokes aside, this is another thing about the sixth chapter that felt a bit out of place, as monster guts, among several other things, hadn't previously been established in this environment.) 

 

And to close, the sheep, lounging at leisure. What a treasure.