Pools is a Backrooms-style walking simulator with no jump scares and no threats — but I was still terrified playing it
Pools is a Backrooms-style walking simulator that offers a unique horror experience without traditional jump scares or threats. Players navigate through unsettling liminal spaces, creating a sense of anxiety and isolation. Despite the absence of enemies, the game effectively taps into various fears, making it surprisingly terrifying.
- ▪Pools was first released in 2023 and is available on Steam for $9.79.
- ▪The game features no enemies or objectives, focusing instead on creating an unnerving atmosphere.
- ▪Players can explore dark spaces and experience a sense of claustrophobia, enhancing the horror experience.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Latest from TechRadar |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techradar.com/gaming/pools-is-a-backrooms-style-walking-simulator-with-no-jump-scares-and-no-threats-but-i-was-still-terrified-playing-it |
| Publication time | Wed, 20 May 2026 09:33:33 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-20T09:40:01.582Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-20T09:55:14.328Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | CvSG2cDo67MY |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Gaming Pools is a Backrooms-style walking simulator with no jump scares and no threats — but I was still terrified playing it Features By Lucy Buglass published 20 May 2026 Tip toe through the Backrooms When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Tensori) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Backrooms and its huge lore has become popular again lately, with the new movie coming out on May 29.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Latest from TechRadar .
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