Sweet Pool is as impactful as it is disgusting. The visual novel stars a teen named Youji whose already poor health takes a turn for the worse thanks to some disturbing lore involving writhing, meat-like parasites. The music and sound design are stellar, imbuing the game with a constant sense of dread. It’s definitely not a story for the faint of heart, and I wouldn’t recommend Sweet Pool without an abundance of content warnings. I love it, though. Body horror melds with beauty here to form the sort of unique, messy genre fiction that queer characters are often excluded from.