Pools Closed

There are so many types of video games in the world, from Assaults to Zoo simulator, that there’s something for everyone along the way. For those of us who want to just chill, and play causally, there are relaxing games that don’t challenge us too hard and don’t assault our eyes and ears while playing. Swim Out aims to be that relaxing puzzle game where you can take your time with a serene atmosphere with no real penalty except the time it takes for you to play the game.

Taking place in what has to be the world’s largest indoor swim park, you have an escalating level of puzzles that are navigated by moving the swimmer a certain amount of spaces in a certain direction. As controls go, it can’t get much easier, with only the odd item every once in a while to break up the control monotony.  The puzzles themselves are not difficult as many out there, but even the more difficult ones it provides can be solved by a lot of trial of error. This repetition doesn’t make you feel smarter for “figuring it out” like you would in a Zelda game, but instead feels like a chore that just happen to take that long to do. Puzzles shouldn’t just be about trial and error, but using imagination and intelligence to approach something differently than you had previously thought.

While the puzzles can be a bit repetitive, the scenery and environment don’t do anything to mitigate this feeling either. While they were aiming for relaxing, they hit the mark too well, and it comes off as boring, like I’m at an old folk’s home, or more likely an Adult Swim (not the program block). The graphics are smooth to look at, but also not detailed at all, so it looks more like a kids’ game with its soft outlines and bright colors. The aesthetic for the layout reminds me of those plastic grid puzzles where you had to keep sliding them out of the way over and over to make the picture complete.

Puzzle games aren’t usually big on graphics, many don’t bother at all, so at least Swim Out tried to build an environment to fit for what they were going for, but in just isn’t engaging enough to keep going level to level. While the mood of a game is important, because of the genre, you do expect some kind of different puzzle mechanics, like switch places, changing colors, or any kind of “out of the box thinking” that seems to be missing here. But if you want a casual game to waste time, or if you’re a huge fan of puzzle games in general, then it’s worth checking out.