Pool of Madness Turns Your Worst Nightmare Into a Lovecraftian Roguelike

You can now add 'playing pool' to the list of Lovecraftian horrors that will drive you insane, thanks to this bizarre roguelike that's got me shooting dead fish and vomiting upgrades. I've always been terrible at snooker, billiards, or any game involving a long stick and green felt, usually resulting in mild social ostracization rather than irreversible madness. However, Pool of Madness dares to ask the terrifying question: "What if a game of pool was actually an elaborate ritual to please the dark gods of the abyss?" This demo from Bit Golem transforms a simple pastime into a sanity-draining survival experience where every shot could be your last.

Surviving the Abyssal Table Ritual

Starting up the demo, my character wakes in the hull of a ship at sea with ominous set dressing and a pool table waiting to be played. The early minutes are confusing, filled with twists that make me feel almost as bad at digital pool as I am in real life. Fundamentally, I am just hitting the white ball to try and pot (or "drown") green ones while avoiding reds, but the rules quickly warp into something sinister.

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?

In a Lovecraft story, trying to understand things is the path to an early grave, so in the early goings I focus simply on survival. There are two main threats I need to worry about regarding this ritual:

  • The turn counter, which ticks down every time I fail to drown a green ball; if it hits 0, I am done for.
  • The red balls, where any time I hit them, they deplete my sanity, which essentially stands in as my health bar.

There are some generous aids to the basic pool playing for those of us struggling with the madness. While 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. This makes it agreeably easy to see what direction I'll be propelling my target in, though picking the right power level remains a challenge.

The Bizarre Mechanics of Pool of Madness

Between rounds, an 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 and there's fish on the pool, which proves rather awkward to play around.

Except 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. Perhaps this is forbidden knowledge the likes of which Man Was Not Meant to Know, but thankfully the answer is "Yes"—I can shoot the fish off the table. This winds up being a bit of a turning point in the run where I thrive by meeting Pool of Madness on its own odd level rather than fighting it.

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:

  • One upgrade allows me to simply stop the white ball in its tracks with a button click, giving myself the best possible position for the next shot.
  • Another lets me view the table from a top-down perspective for even easier lining up of shots.
  • 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 am sent screaming away from the table, doomed to start again next time I feel like it. Pool of Madness leaves me more intrigued than expected in a concept that does sound like the product of a random videogame genre generator. There is work to be done here—particularly in adding more powers and upgrades and making the early going clearer—but the 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.