The Backrooms are a (supposedly fictional - c'mon, I can't kill the fun) different dimension that you might fall into if you stand in the wrong spot and "no-clip" - meaning whatever solid mass you are standing on, will let you pass through it - like a video game cheat code that makes "clipping" or obstructing the player character from passing through solid objects - dissappear. And of course, you'll find yourself in the Backrooms - usually level 0 which is in the other game I added in May of 2024 that I already linked to. A endless, stretched out, endless series of rooms with yellow wallpaper, humming flourescent lighting, damp carpet, and the occasional "Entity" - ie the MONSTERS that lurk various parts of the Backrooms. There's also other "levels" including Level 7 - a house on the sea with a Harpoon Wielding madman at the upper fathoms, and some terrifying creature at the bottom, or Level "Run For Your Life" aka Level "!" where a horde of Entities chase you and you have to run about 5 miles to the exit - often used for punishment for misbehavior in the backrooms.

But one of these many levels is level 37: "Sublimity", also known as the "Pool Rooms". A Series of rooms that have various swimming pools in odd, abstract, and strange formations, all sorts of slides, floats, diving boards in weird places, and also some steam rooms and some other locations. In Tensori's "POOLS", you are in the Pool Rooms, with no threats, a few puzzles to solve, and it's kind of like a gallery of sorts. Honestly, it's a lot like another favorite DOS game of mine Get Lost!, in that there are no threats, just some minor puzzles, and a lot of atmosphere.

The game clearly expects someone to have one of those neon monolith tower PCs with the $300 video card to run this game.....But me, nah, that'd be too easy (and too financially crippling). So instead, I started doing what The Creeping Network was all about years ago with 486s and assholes telling me I can't do anything useful with them - prove it CAN be done. And it's stupid easy compared to, oh say, how I almost managed to get Diablo running in Windows 3.1 by hacking in libraries from Windows 95, including Direct X I believe - or almost played a Nirvana Video in YouTube in Opera in Windows 3.1 by copying the 32-bit libraries for Flash over from my Win7 machine to the plugins folder on my 486. Basically, I installed the game, set up Proton 9.0.2 in the compatibility settings, and then some other setting that escapes me as it had an error message that allowed me to find a Steam thread to change the settings for the Unity Engine, and get it to run. After that, I lowered the resolution to 720x480 @60Hz, turned off a lot of the various scaling and view crap that eats up GPU time, and that's basically how I got a 10 year old Laptop to run Pools even though the minimum system requirements say I need a Ryzen Threadripper with a NVIDIA/AMD GeForce Athlon Somethingwhatzit Fort Knox priced video card. Compared to hours of WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI tweaks, and hours of surfing questionable websites for dependencies back in the day - this was a piece of cake.

And it's actually quite enjoyable. In what I call "Lo-Fi" mode, it has a rather nice vibe to it, like I said, almost like playing MYST in Windows 3.1, but a little smoother, and a little tighter. This is basically my replacement for GetLost when I want to lay where I'm about to sleep and play a relaxing computer game. Oh sure, the sounds scare most people. But honestly - and I don't care if you think I'm immature for this - I find low voiced single-note gregorian chants, and what sounds like a monster on the toilet stool hilarious! Even moreso when I realize I can't get hurt by them. So yeah, well worth the $10.