Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
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by renex
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by renex
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by renex
10 Reviews:
Cthaere
I wanna escape the poolrooms is a beautiful puzzle game, and one of the most curious cases in a game I've ever seen. A clash of two polar opposites that creates a mesmerizing yet bizarre result.
Broadly speaking, game design philosophy has 2 big camps at the moment: One camp designs from the point of view that the designer's job is to convey an interactive experience to the player; The entirety of the game is therefore a means to serve the designer's intended experience to the player. The other camp thinks of the game as a complex and interrelated system in which the player is an integral & important part, but not the focus; By perfecting the system, you'd make for a seamless experience and players who dance to your strings completely subconsciously to get the game experience you wanted to deliver, as you have laid out the underlying systems that subtly nudge them in that direction.
I bring these up since this game is a perplexing mixture of both; The atmospheric design is stunning, the game is beautiful yet reserved; It is elegant, evocative, and immersive. The attention to detail is astounding. This sense of atmospheric design goes beyond the obvious technical capabilities of the maker, and is a separate skillset that I am deeply envious of. In this regard, the game is a masterclass, it deserves to be in a museum. I could stand in an empty room here for hours. In terms of player experience, the visual, audio, and atmospheric designs are of the highest order. The only (although admittedly big and glaring) blemish are the clowns, which you can handwave excuse as backrooms shenanigans. The tactile feel also doesn't really come across perfectly (why is the metal box just as hard to push as the corks or floats?) but that's a lot less obvious, to the point I have only noticed it while writing the review, and pales in comparison to the monumental achievement of everything else.
And then, on the other side of the coin, you have the gameplay, which feels purely system designed. The puzzle elements here are pretty much pure logic; You may have to test some interactions, find out some spikes that only reveal themselves at a certain water level, or find out what some buttons do, but in general you have all information available to you and your task is figuring out how to proceed. Whether you stand around thinking about the logical constraints to figure out a way, or just go into it trying to explore your avenues, the open information aspect of it means that once you've seen the room, there's nothing to do except get to the next. Furthermore, thinking about the logical constraints will naturally lead to asking questions such as "why are these spikes here, what purpose do they serve? what is the workaround I'm going to need to get past them?" to yourself, breaking out of the immersion to try and take a look from above. The corks, sponges, metal boxes and floats get reduced to level design mechanics, rather than natural occurrences. The only possible saving grace to cling to is the idea that the backrooms have consciously set them up as obstacles, however I have never managed to convince myself to believe it. A more atmospheric, mysterious, and exploratory puzzle game, in the vein of Limbo or Little Nightmares, would be a far more obvious choice for the gameplay to complement the atmosphere. Had that direction been taken, and had the quality been up to par with the visuals, this would have been able to seamlessly pass for a commercial game, and I would have gladly paid for it. But as it is, the gameplay aspect detracts too much from the overall experience.
So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the puzzles in isolation. I am generally a hater of pushblock puzzles; They are incredibly tedious to execute once you've figured them out which is made worse by having to figure out functions of hard to reach buttons, and how every mistake sends you back to the start - two things that you'd expect some sort of qol for by now, although I do think that might hurt immersion (but then again the above paragraph still applies). They also feel like they cannot produce any of the brainblasting "holy shit" moments many other traditional puzzle games have achieved, and in general their highs seem limited and their lows unfortunately common. As for this game, it managed to make fairly good pushblock puzzles in general through introducing a collection of related gimmicks and building upon them, although they were mostly fairly simple up until the end, at which point it felt like every other puzzle had some sort of alternate solution or cheese to it. In general, fangame pushblock puzzles do not showcase tightness of design nearly as well as other puzzle games (the sokoban family with baba/parabox/sausage, as well as lockpick) and this game did not manage to prove me wrong; The variety of gimmicks, while lending itself to a good learning curve and amount of options to work with, does not reach the impressiveness of slimepark; There was never really any "wow" factor with the puzzles. They were just Pretty Good Puzzles that are well executed for what they are.
And that's the painful part. They're good, but they're not enough. The toll on the atmosphere is too high for the benefit they bring. I wish there was no gameplay. I would have rather walked through 100 empty but carefully crafted rooms with maybe occasional spikes/floats and some water level controls, mostly used sparsely, than have played this game. It is immensely frustrating to look at this game and see what it could have been compared to what it is.
But that doesn't mean I can give a judgement based upon it. Therefore, my rating is based on what is in the game only - Which does include the dissonance, which means the production value contribution has taken a big hit - and not the frustration of what it could have been. As an immersive experience, this game is incredible in the few short moments of respite. As a puzzle game, I didn't like it too much, but that has more to do with disliking the subtype of puzzle game the game is; The puzzles are certainly well made and the game is likely worth your time if you enjoy them, even if it doesn't reach the high highs that the other well known puzzle games do. I would recommend giving this a look even if you don't intend on playing it, especially as an aspiring gamemaker, as the level of atmospheric polish is worth studying.
[3] Likes
Broadly speaking, game design philosophy has 2 big camps at the moment: One camp designs from the point of view that the designer's job is to convey an interactive experience to the player; The entirety of the game is therefore a means to serve the designer's intended experience to the player. The other camp thinks of the game as a complex and interrelated system in which the player is an integral & important part, but not the focus; By perfecting the system, you'd make for a seamless experience and players who dance to your strings completely subconsciously to get the game experience you wanted to deliver, as you have laid out the underlying systems that subtly nudge them in that direction.
I bring these up since this game is a perplexing mixture of both; The atmospheric design is stunning, the game is beautiful yet reserved; It is elegant, evocative, and immersive. The attention to detail is astounding. This sense of atmospheric design goes beyond the obvious technical capabilities of the maker, and is a separate skillset that I am deeply envious of. In this regard, the game is a masterclass, it deserves to be in a museum. I could stand in an empty room here for hours. In terms of player experience, the visual, audio, and atmospheric designs are of the highest order. The only (although admittedly big and glaring) blemish are the clowns, which you can handwave excuse as backrooms shenanigans. The tactile feel also doesn't really come across perfectly (why is the metal box just as hard to push as the corks or floats?) but that's a lot less obvious, to the point I have only noticed it while writing the review, and pales in comparison to the monumental achievement of everything else.
And then, on the other side of the coin, you have the gameplay, which feels purely system designed. The puzzle elements here are pretty much pure logic; You may have to test some interactions, find out some spikes that only reveal themselves at a certain water level, or find out what some buttons do, but in general you have all information available to you and your task is figuring out how to proceed. Whether you stand around thinking about the logical constraints to figure out a way, or just go into it trying to explore your avenues, the open information aspect of it means that once you've seen the room, there's nothing to do except get to the next. Furthermore, thinking about the logical constraints will naturally lead to asking questions such as "why are these spikes here, what purpose do they serve? what is the workaround I'm going to need to get past them?" to yourself, breaking out of the immersion to try and take a look from above. The corks, sponges, metal boxes and floats get reduced to level design mechanics, rather than natural occurrences. The only possible saving grace to cling to is the idea that the backrooms have consciously set them up as obstacles, however I have never managed to convince myself to believe it. A more atmospheric, mysterious, and exploratory puzzle game, in the vein of Limbo or Little Nightmares, would be a far more obvious choice for the gameplay to complement the atmosphere. Had that direction been taken, and had the quality been up to par with the visuals, this would have been able to seamlessly pass for a commercial game, and I would have gladly paid for it. But as it is, the gameplay aspect detracts too much from the overall experience.
So now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the puzzles in isolation. I am generally a hater of pushblock puzzles; They are incredibly tedious to execute once you've figured them out which is made worse by having to figure out functions of hard to reach buttons, and how every mistake sends you back to the start - two things that you'd expect some sort of qol for by now, although I do think that might hurt immersion (but then again the above paragraph still applies). They also feel like they cannot produce any of the brainblasting "holy shit" moments many other traditional puzzle games have achieved, and in general their highs seem limited and their lows unfortunately common. As for this game, it managed to make fairly good pushblock puzzles in general through introducing a collection of related gimmicks and building upon them, although they were mostly fairly simple up until the end, at which point it felt like every other puzzle had some sort of alternate solution or cheese to it. In general, fangame pushblock puzzles do not showcase tightness of design nearly as well as other puzzle games (the sokoban family with baba/parabox/sausage, as well as lockpick) and this game did not manage to prove me wrong; The variety of gimmicks, while lending itself to a good learning curve and amount of options to work with, does not reach the impressiveness of slimepark; There was never really any "wow" factor with the puzzles. They were just Pretty Good Puzzles that are well executed for what they are.
And that's the painful part. They're good, but they're not enough. The toll on the atmosphere is too high for the benefit they bring. I wish there was no gameplay. I would have rather walked through 100 empty but carefully crafted rooms with maybe occasional spikes/floats and some water level controls, mostly used sparsely, than have played this game. It is immensely frustrating to look at this game and see what it could have been compared to what it is.
But that doesn't mean I can give a judgement based upon it. Therefore, my rating is based on what is in the game only - Which does include the dissonance, which means the production value contribution has taken a big hit - and not the frustration of what it could have been. As an immersive experience, this game is incredible in the few short moments of respite. As a puzzle game, I didn't like it too much, but that has more to do with disliking the subtype of puzzle game the game is; The puzzles are certainly well made and the game is likely worth your time if you enjoy them, even if it doesn't reach the high highs that the other well known puzzle games do. I would recommend giving this a look even if you don't intend on playing it, especially as an aspiring gamemaker, as the level of atmospheric polish is worth studying.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: N/A
Jan 17, 2024
voraciousreader
Difficulty based on puzzle, not on execution
The puzzles are very good, but what really sets this one apart are the visuals and atmosphere, which greatly enhance the experience, especially the sound design. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys pushblock puzzling!
[2] Likes
The puzzles are very good, but what really sets this one apart are the visuals and atmosphere, which greatly enhance the experience, especially the sound design. Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys pushblock puzzling!
Rating: 9.2 92
Difficulty: 60 60
Jan 15, 2024
Murphy0749
It's awesome to go splish splash in the pools
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.2 92
Difficulty: 41 41
Dec 30, 2023
ameliandyou
I loved everything about this game. Almost everything about it made me happy, I can't think of a single time playing I wasn't immersed and having fun. Also the clowns were amazing.
-0.2 points for no backtracking (i cried after discovering i couldn't go back and get my soggy mango)
-0.2 points for some silly spike placements not being fun at all (i hate dying like 2 minutes into executing a puzzle)
If you are reading this and are looking for a fun fangame for all skill levels, I would attempt to escape the poolrooms.
[1] Like
-0.2 points for no backtracking (i cried after discovering i couldn't go back and get my soggy mango)
-0.2 points for some silly spike placements not being fun at all (i hate dying like 2 minutes into executing a puzzle)
If you are reading this and are looking for a fun fangame for all skill levels, I would attempt to escape the poolrooms.
Rating: 9.6 96
Difficulty: N/A
Apr 4, 2024