Wizard Pool

I love it when a game completely catches you off guard and is so much more clever than you expected. I bought Wizard Pool on a whim because it was under three bucks and I've always had a soft spot for billiards games. I've never been very good at pool though. In high school, some of my friends and I would occasionally go over the local pool hall and play a few games, though never seriously. My friend Mike's approach to it was simply to hit the cue ball as hard as possible and pray something went in, if that tells you anything. I did not do well in my geometry and trig classes either. It was still fun regardless! I expected that [b]Wizard Pool[/b] would be a simple arcade take on 8-ball with a wizard theme or maybe similar to the ancient [b]Lunar Pool[/b] with the goofy tables. Turns out, it's neither of those. Instead, it's physics puzzle that forces you to rethink how to even approach a break. Right off the bat, [b]Wizard Pool[/b] has a fantastic aesthetic design that is very inviting. It's impossible to not recognize the influence of [b]Mega Man Legends[/b] on it. Your wizard may as well be the Blue Bomber himself, just with a floppy, triangular hat. There's even a story mode that has our protagonist, Kue, completing an eight story tower with eight different challenges, in an attempt to find out what happened to his uncle who had approached the tower in the past. It's not deep, it's not brilliant, but it's also pretty funny. Each of the floors is hosted by a different sapient, magic pool ball and they have each set up a different theme for their floors. The conversations with the pool balls are light and have plenty of goofy jokes too. It's not a memorable story but it's fun in the moment. I do appreciate the effort of including it too. It'd be easier to just have a series of challenges but the story does add a charm to it. The real meat of the game is the challenges themselves, of course. Unlike real-world pool, the colors on the balls correspond to a magical property. Pink balls will trade places with any ball it touches, even the cue ball, while keeping its momentum from being struck. Yellow balls start out extremely tiny but will grow in size corresponding to their current speed. Purple balls don't interact with any ball except for the cue ball and will float right through anything else on the table. Along with a handful of other colors, all of the challenges are based around these property and how they can be used together to reach the objective. Each challenge has a goal ball or balls that need to be sunk and there is a maximum number of turns that you are given to pull this off. The number changes from round to round too. The pool puzzles here are absolutely fantastic because of all of this. When you figure out how to chain the powers together or use them to avoid something that would cause you to fail in any other realistic setting, you kind of feel like a genius. There is a make or break thing for players here though. The entire game is controlled with just the mouse. The cue is moved around with the mouse, you rotate it with the mouse buttons, and to hit the cue ball, you have to use the mouse to slam the tip of the cue into the ball. When it works, it feels amazing. Getting the speed right for the proper amount of power takes a little bit to learn but that's no big deal. What does get frustrating though is that it sometimes feels hard to aim. You swing and you manage to completely miss the cue ball a bunch of times in the row because of how fiddly this kind of thing can be. I was never sure if I was hitting the cue ball in the right spot on the ball to get it to cut at the angle I wanted it to. I was using the trackpad on my Deck though, so maybe it's easier with a normal mouse. A trackball would probably be a ton of fun too. Usually you have a ton of leeway but it gets a little tricky in the later puzzles. The game does offer you some concessions though. If you fail to achieve the goal on the table enough times, it does give you the option to skip that room and continue onward, with no penalty as I can tell. I'll admit that I used it a couple times on a couple puzzles that were really getting under my skin but I don't care. My quibbles are all minor though. I didn't ever stop having fun while I played it. There are also local and online multiplayer modes but I didn't get a chance to try those out yet. A quick glance I did made it seem more like a traditional pool structure but with the magic balls. I bet it's a blast with a buddy and a couple of beers. Even as just a simple physics puzzle game though, it's worth it. It's $2.99 at full price and it's well worth that. It's the best game I've played that's released in 2026 so far (though to be fair, I've only played two). I'm very glad I took a chance on it.