Pool of Madness Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
Browser Miniclip pool after cosmic horror moves in, with mine balls, fish obstacles, a pocket gun, and a roguelike layer
I used to play pool on Miniclip back in the day. Clean table, simple rules, just you and the balls. Pool of Madness is what that game looks like after something has gone very wrong on a cursed pirate ship and the cosmic horror has started to seep in. You are chained to a pool table aboard a ship. Pop the green and white balls before you run out of shots or your sanity hits zero. Hit the wrong colour and sanity drops. Hit zero and the run ends. Pool of Madness is a Lovecraftian Roguelike from Bit Golem, the team behind Dagon. My verdict is Play.
Pool of Madness is a play if you want Lovecraftian pool where the cue and the gun share the same ritual. Learn the sanity rules, chase the eyeball shot preview when it shows up, and treat obstacle-clearing abilities as table-reading tools. Try the demo if you miss browser pool but wish it had mine balls and cult dread. Wishlist Early Access when Bit Golem locks a date.
Pros
- Miniclip nostalgia hook lands immediately before the weird stuff piles on
- Cue upgrades, mine balls, fish, skull pockets, and saw blades keep tables from feeling samey
- Between-round abilities can rewrite how you read obstacle-heavy layouts
- Black-ball table flip adds a sharp mid-run rules change
- Generous potting keeps runs moving when the table is already fighting you
Cons
- Generous pockets may bother players who want strict physics
- Saw-blade chaos arrives late for how much life it adds
- Story setup stays deliberately murky beyond the occult ship framing
- Demo slice ends before you know how deep the full roguelike run gets
Pool first, madness on top
The foundation is Sports pool. What lands on top is where the game earns its name. Mine balls roll around after one hit until they explode, destroying everything nearby. Fish drop onto the surface as obstacles between rounds. Some pockets get covered by skulls, and you have to shoot them out with the gun you just happen to have on hand.
Pot a yellow ball and your cue ball gets an upgrade. One looked like an eyeball on the tip that extended your shot preview from the object ball to where it travels after contact. Getting that back is something you have to earn, and it felt like a small joy.
The tone is cult Horror dread, and the exact details of why you are here are deliberately murky. That worked for me in a demo that is already busy with table hazards.
Roguelike picks and reading a cluttered table
The Roguelike layer sits between rounds. You pick abilities, some temporary for the current run and some permanent that carry forward. I found one that destroys all matching obstacles when you clear one of them, which changes how you approach a cluttered table entirely.
There are also ammo balls that top up your gun, which matters more as the tables get harder. Later rounds add saw blades moving around the table, carving up the space you are trying to work in. I wanted those earlier. They added a chaos that made everything feel more alive, and I would have liked more time with them.
If you pot the black ball, the run ends unless the whole table flips and now you are potting only black balls. That shift reshuffles your brain mid-run in a way that is disorientating and good.
Generous pots, flat screen, and demo scope
The potting feels generous compared to what Miniclip used to let you get away with. Things went in that would not have survived stricter physics. Given how many obstacles you are fighting at once, that is probably the right call. It still nags at you if you played enough browser pool to know when a pot was not earned.
An hour in and it had not started to get repetitive. The balls do not always rack the same way for the same level. The game has VR support, but I did not play the VR version, so I can only speak to the flat version, which was more than enough.
The demo came out at the start of April. Early Access is planned with no price or date confirmed yet. It seems simple, it looks good, and an hour disappeared without me noticing.
Game Info
- Developer
- Bit Golem
- Publisher
- Bit Golem
- Full release
- TBC
- Early Access
- Yes, not a full release
- Platform
- PC
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 1h
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Roguelike, Horror, Sports, Indie, Simulation, Strategy
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