I’ve always been terrible at pool, snooker, billiards, and every other game involving a long stick and green felt. Thus far, though, the consequences of that have been pretty mild—some social ostracisation here, a bit of being laughed at in the pub there, you know. What I’m saying is, it’s never sent me irreversibly insane.
But, of course, Lovecraft has to infiltrate everything these days, and so along comes Pool of Madness—a roguelike that dares to ask, “What if a game of pool was actually an elaborate ritual to please the dark gods of the abyss?”
How this particular ritual got started is not immediately clear. Starting up the demo, my character wakes up in what appears to be the hull of a ship at sea, with some ominous set dressing around me and a pool table in the middle, waiting to be played.
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My first few minutes fumbling through a run are a little confusing. I am almost as bad at digital pool as I am in real life, though that’s not helped by the odd twists Pool of Madness throws in. Fundamentally, I’m just hitting the white ball to try and pot (or “drown”) a certain number of green ones and avoid hitting reds, but questions quickly arise.
What are these weird looking extra balls that explode when I hit them? What does it mean that the green balls sometimes get swapped out for black ones? And why do I have a literal gun I can fire at the table?
Of course, trying to understand things is the path to an early grave in a Lovecraft story, so in the early goings I focus simply on survival. There are two main threats I need to worry about. One is the turn counter—it ticks down every time I fail to drown a green, and if it hits 0 I’m done for. The other is the red balls—any time I hit them, they deplete my sanity, which essentially stands in as my health bar. And God knows I’m hanging on by a thread as it is.
There are some generous aids to the basic pool playing, at least, for the benefit of people like myself. While I’m lining up a shot, a visual indicator shows not only the line the ball will travel, but the specific spot on the other ball that it will hit, making it agreeably easy to see what direction I’ll be propelling my target in. From there it’s mostly a question of picking the right balls to go for, and getting used to choosing the power level of each shot.
It’s just enough to keep me in the game. And the more I play, the weirder things get. Between rounds, a sort of aquarium vending machine with a tentacle lever dispenses power-ups, mostly with slightly confusing effects. I grow to regret picking the one that gives me a chance to vomit up a temporary buff or debuff every round—it certainly helps more than it hinders, but the animation is pretty upsetting.
At one point, dead fish get dropped on the table. It’s half past two, there’s fish on the pool. For a moment I’m sat there waiting for something else to happen, but no, they’re just there now, and I guess I’m expected to play around them, which proves rather awkward.
Except… no, hold on, I’ve still got that gun, haven’t I? And apparently I can just aim it at the table whenever I like, though ammo is fairly scarce. Can I just shoot the fish off the table?
Perhaps this is forbidden knowledge the likes of which Man Was Not Meant to Know, but thankfully the answer is “Yes”. And this winds up being a bit of a turning point in the run. I may be bad at pool, but I’m at least a bit better at weird game logic, and I quickly find that the more I meet Pool of Madness on its own odd level, the more I start to thrive.
While it doesn’t quite have the game-breaking synergies of something like Slay the Spire, there are certainly ways to twist the rules to my advantage in difficult rounds. One upgrade allows me to simply stop the white ball in its tracks with the click of a button, giving myself the best possible position for the next shot (or just avoiding accidentally potting it). Another lets me view the table from a top-down perspective for even easier lining up of shots. And the real magic begins when I discover new ways to generate and trigger explosive balls, allowing me to strategically clear awkward parts of the table.
Eventually, though, I blunder into one too many red balls, and I’m sent screaming away from the table, doomed to… well, start again next time I feel like it. I’m definitely left more intrigued than I expected to be in a concept that does sound like the product of a random videogame genre generator.
There’s work to be done here —particularly in adding more powers and upgrades, and making the early going a little clearer—but Pool of Madness’ demo is well worth checking out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to my local pub with a blunderbuss and a shopping bag full of expired mackerel to find out how much I’ve really improved.
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