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 10
The Black Pool immediately kicks into gear with awesome elemental powers and swarms of interesting and complex enemies. Beautiful landscapes and exciting music carries you through worlds as you attempt to figure out the best way to combine your powers and dispatch enemies. With changing ability combinations and randomized worlds each play through, this game has some serious replayability in store for it.
Steam User 6
This game is unlike any that I have played before. Very dark. Very ominous. Very challenging. I played with 4 friends for several hours and it was a blast. Co-op was very smooth and despite the difficulty and constant death I was always wanting to come back for more. I am looking forward to getting better at the game to kick some robot butt.
Things I Love:
- Doesn't hold your hand to figure things out. You have to try different things and through experience you learn what works best for you. Tired of long winded tutorials? This game is for you.
- Music/art direction create a very eerie vibe. It all gels together very well.
- Playing with friends. I love a good coop and found that with the different powers available you can create a formidable team.
Things I Want to See:
- Once a couple of your teammates are down in a tough battle the odds are pretty insurmountable to overcome. Pretty impossible to revive a teammate as 50 enemies are raining destruction on you.
- Ability to use earned "currency" between levels and not just at death. There were a few times where getting a little boost before the next round would have helped us make it through. Instead we died and had to start over.
- More powers. I love what's in here so far and I want to see the devs add even more.
Overall, I recommend the game highly.
Steam User 5
Fun and unique 3rd person shooter. Each world is very detailed and has different challenges. You'll be spawned in to take control of elements such as lightning, fire, earth etc to fight the enemies. Combine elements in Co-op for your attacks to deal extra damage. The music really sets the mood.
Steam User 2
This game is pretty unpolished, but the levels look fantastic and the game is fun to play, so it will get better in the future
Steam User 2
First off, the graphics and music in the game are quite cool. Certain levels are quite dark but that seems to be by design to give a more haunting feel and mixup the gameplay. This game does not take it easy on its players. The enemies can be tough in their different attack styles and become overwhelming at times but the challenge makes it fun to play. The game has very high replayability since you play through different random worlds each time. The variety of different element based powers to select are quite interesting to try in different combinations and require you to adjust your playing style.
The most fun from this game though is in playing the multiplayer coop and fighting through through the levels together. When the right set of powers from teammates are all working in tandem it can make taking on some of those tough enemies a lot easier and hopefully making it to the end. Even if you don't though, getting the upgrades helps improve your chances for the next time.
Really fun game to play, definitely recommend.
Steam User 2
I'm having a lot of fun with The Black Pool. I love the roguelike aspects of this game. It starts out tough, and as you progress and die, you gain currency that you can apply to skills for the next playthrough so you can progress even further. The elements and power-ups you get each time are random, which encourages different styles of play. I've found the most success with elements that allow me to be further away from enemies, so when I get one that forces me to play closer, I'm challenged to learn to use my Dash and Jump abilities better to avoid enemy attacks. Each playthrough is unique, rewarding, and a blast to play. And the music is banging.
Steam User 6
I would have liked more of a story here. Seemed ripe for a decent story to be told. All we know is that the friends are tryin' to get back home. The gameplay is pretty smooth. I played the single player mode and it was doable up to a point. I finally succumbed to a boss type character as soo much stuff was goin on at once. The game seems to primarily encourage co-op play. The graphics are pretty good and the levels are a bit huge. The soundtrack is also pretty nice. Solid effort but it still needs a bit more.
Gameplay here: