The Black Pool
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About the Game
The Black Pool has taken you to a remote and unknown galactic system. Make your way across a number of diverse and randomized worlds to try and make it back home.
Throughout your journey, you will learn to master supernatural elemental abilities. Carefully select powers from a large pool of possibilities, complimenting existing abilities and those of your friends. Strategically upgrade these abilities to maximize your potential. There are thousands of possibilities, can you become powerful enough to face what lies ahead?
The Black Pool is a 3d action roguelike to be played solo or preferably with up to 3 of your friends. Each attempt to make it back home will take you through a gauntlet of different worlds. You will discover different elements, abilities, and upgrades. Striking visuals, an electrifying soundtrack, and high pace / skilled action will plunge you into each attempt to battle your way out.
THE JOURNEY HOME
In each attempt to return home, you will traverse across a random sequence of highly diverse worlds. Throughout the journey, you will unlock supernatural abilities from randomly selected sets of elements, and upgrade these selected abilities from a set of randomly offered options. This procedural sequence of worlds and offerings of abilities and upgrades yields a highly replayable roguelike sequence. Each playthrough presents a randomized set of choices that ensures that every session is completely unique. Committing to decisions and improvising an effective build is core to the game.
IMPROVE WITH EACH ATTEMPT
With each attempt you will learn how enemies behave and what their weaknesses are. You will learn how each of these supernatural abilities work and synergistic ways to use abilities together. In addition, you unlock enhancements that are permanent and persist across playthrough attempts.
BRING A FRIEND
While you can try and make it on your own, it may be more fun to bring a friend or three. The Black Pool has been designed to maximize the cooperative multiplayer experience. Many of the abilities contain game mechanics that deliver fun and rewarding interactions between players. Redirect friendly attacks, amplify team spells, coordinate stuns and team buffs, create barriers, and much more. In The Black Pool, co-op play can be much more than simply playing the same game together— you are rewarded for actually working together to be successful.
Game Discussion
Steam User 13
Pretty good indie roguelite that deserve more attention.
Pros:
✔️Fast paced and skill based combat.
✔️Satisfying movement systems.
✔️Tons of upgrades and skills for varied playstyles.
✔️Lot of different environments.
✔️Amazing graphics.
✔️Good procedural generation.
✔️Nice progression system.
✔️Can be played solo or co-op.
✔️Mysterious and intriguing atmosphere
✔️Fairly priced.
cons:
❌No FOV options.
❌Uninspired enemies design. (they don't look bad.)
❌Certain enemies have hitscan beams and they can feel cheap and poorly balanced.
❌Sometimes the physics are weird.
❌No skins or customization for characters.
❌Soundtrack is not very good. (subjective.)
If you enjoyed games like Returnal and Risk of Rain 2 you should definitely give The Black Pool a try.
Of course it's far from perfect because there's only two persons working on this but it's very enjoyable in it's current state and there's lot of room for improvements.
The Black Pool is well worth the price of admission, it's highly replayable and fun to play.
Hopefully this game gain more attention so they can keep updating and creating content for it.
Keep it up developers, your game is good and have tons of potential.
Rating 7.5/10.
Steam User 9
Written By Hidden Gems Review :
The Black Pool is a FPS Roguelite game.
Stranger Things characters meet returnal gameplay, you are a kid who have diferent type of powers in a very well designed roguelite game, very challenging overall for a good price so thumps up !
Steam User 11
POSITIVE POINTS:
- The multiplayer mode is really fun, and you can play it with up to three friends. Still, if you don't have friends you can also play it solo.
- As a good roguelite it's very replayable, and has a great variety of powers and abilities: it's a blast to evolve some of them because of how spectacular and powerful they are, especially when they combo with your friends' attacks.
- The art direction and musical direction are very well executed, fitting perfectly together.
NEGATIVE POINTS:
- Although we can play it solo, it's a lot less fun, because we miss out on the combo system between elements.
- Although at the beginning it is quite easy, its difficulty is progressive, and if we don't have the right powers and skills we will suffer a lot in some confrontations.
- Its story is too basic.
CONCLUSIONS:
The Black Pool is a game that offers an exciting, varied and frenetic gaming experience. Being a roguelite, it's not a game for everyone, but it's certainly a very fun game, especially if we can play it with friends: seeing the synergy between the different elements is spectacular - it's hard to believe that this game was made by just two people!
EVALUATION:
7,5/10.
Although we can play alone, but the combos between the elements are lost, and that makes the game also lose in spectacularity. If you can play with friends, don't hesitate and buy it, because it ensures hours of fun. And if you don't have friends, it's always a good time to make them and enjoy with them.
If you'd like to see more reviews written by me, follow my Steam Curator page and help support my work on Purrfect Games. Thanks!
Steam User 5
I'm not even a fan of shmups but the weird otherworldly nature of this game with its rogue-like elements mixed in is a fever dream. I'm shocked it hasn't gotten more ink or reviews. It might be the time it released... that was right around a certain massive DLC everyone was waiting for. Whatever the reason may be, this gem shouldn't be overlooked.
You play as one of 4 ugly kids. You drop into this grim main chamber and pick your starting powers that are randomized. It's a godsend when you get a rare or better off the rip. Then, you make your way into the meat of it and worlds vary. They are all kinds of strange. They are almost liminal spaces that feel familiar yet aren't. I'm talking rocky planets, floating islands, strange suburban 'hoods, and more. It's also co-op which is wonderful and adds to the madness onscreen.
Make no mistake, this is more of a shmup and the chaos on screen is nuts! I love it. It's colorful, trippy and hypnotic. It also has a FEEL. You know? When you want to play a game and its very theme permeates into you. That's what this game does. It's also quite good looking and decently optimized. Though, if you look at my profile, I can throw my rig at an unoptimized game so... who knows.
It's an easy recommendation. This small studio made a wonderful game here. I'd like to see what else they are up to. I'd be interested in them exploring the weird suburban theme deeper.
Steam User 2
Risk of Rain 2 where you only fight the void while playing as the protagonist of the next Life is Strange game.
But seriously it's pretty good, needs some visibility on Steam
My only bit of feedback is:
- Add text or an icon to ability choices and those power-up choices, especially for new players. I didn't know which pick was the heal until later runs. Same goes for those power-up choices on kill/assists that you get to pick after 6 abilities, I'd like a text pop-up saying what it is.
- I'd personally like the air speed or air directional control of the base player to be increased
Steam User 3
One of the best roguelike/roguelite games I’ve played in a very long time. I was hesitant to buy it because of the player count, but once I did I realized I had found a hidden gem.
One bad review says you can’t spam abilities 24/7 even if it seems like an “auto attack”. Don’t listen to this as you can literally upgrade your abilities, or choose completely different ones on your next run. There’s tons of different elements to choose from and that completely changes the path of your abilities.
Buy this game. You won’t regret it. You’ll only want it to get more popular so more people can find this gem!
Steam User 4
Don't let the limited reviews and indie developers put you off from this game. If you like co-op roguelike games then look no further. This game has aspects that separate it from other games, such as some abilities are able to be enhanced by your teammates, making it extremely rewarding to work together and combine different abilities to make the spell really powerful. All the different kinds of elements and abilities look and feel super cool, and the graphics are pretty good. The ONLY gripe I have about this entire game is that I wish there was more variety when it came to the enemies, but that is overshadowed by how cool the abilities look and sound. If you like roguelike games and are considering if this game is worth the $20, trust me, it is.