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Pool Panic is about doing weird things with billiard balls

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Pool balls have been known to do strange things from time to time, such as hopping over the rail and irritating nearby bar patrons. But rarely have they gotten up to the hijinks of Pool Panic, an adventure puzzle game about billiard balls coming out this summer.

Adult Swim Games calls Pool Panic “a sprawling adventure game full of weird things to do with pool balls,” and the game’s new trailer underscores the point with a Rick and Morty-esque beach confrontation between a cue ball and its spherical fellows. It’s weird, because seeing a pool ball with a face is automatically weird, but also because despite there being no table in sight, this is apparently still a game based – loosely, at least – on pool mechanics.

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Adult Swim says Pool Panic has a “colorful cartoon overworld” that spans deserts, jungles, and carnivals, and that you’ll be solving puzzles and taking on bosses, presumably by making trick shots with the main characters. There are more than 100 levels, we’re told, and they’ll mix pool with activities like mini-golf, soccer, and… birthday cakes, apparently.

You can watch the trailer in all its cartoon strangeness here:

It’s bright, colorful, and somehow slightly menacing, which is pretty on-brand for Adult Swim Games, which has also published offbeat gems like Headlander and Battle Chef Brigade. Why does the cue ball wear tube socks? What’s up with that Matroyshka doll ball? What are they all doing at the beach? Who can say?

As the trailer indicates, Pool Panic will launch for PC and Nintendo Switch July 19th, so hopefully we’ll find answers to our many questions then.