Yes, worth buying.
At $9.79. It has been as low as $6.85.
- Graphics: 75 reviews raised it, mostly praise
- Audio: 35 reviews raised it, mostly praise
- Gameplay: 17 reviews raised it, mostly praise
- Bugs: 6 reviews raised it, mostly criticism
Based on 7k player reviews · updated 4 days ago
What players think
The recurring themes across 300 analysed reviews: what players praise, what divides them, and what to know.
The repeating textures, gorgeous lighting and great reflections, especially with all the water around, make it look amazing.
It also has excellent sound design.
I've been reluctantly playing horror games for years, playing with the volume off, bracing myself for scares, because I love the eerie, open world, fully immersive exploration gameplay, but always wanted the option to just explore the maps, which POOLS offers!
The level of optimization is excellent and deserves explicit praise, especially given how demanding high-quality reflections and water rendering can be.
Runs well enough on the steam deck and comes with 3 well crafted presets for it.
Theme by theme
Every theme is scored by what reviewers actually said about it, not just whether they recommended the game.
Ranked by how many sampled reviews mention each topic. A topic sits in a column by what reviewers said about that topic; the percentage beside it is how many of them recommended the game anyway. 3 more themes were each raised by fewer than 6 sampled reviews and are not shown.
Should you buy it now?
Crit’s read on the price, from Steam price history.
Currently $9.79. The lowest we've tracked is $6.85.
The data behind the verdict
For the players who want the receipts.
We’ll surface hours-played once playtime ingestion ships.
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