Building Spaces You’re Not Meant to Understand
By EllieNash
There’s a moment somewhere in Geralt’s Liminal Pools where you stop trying to figure it out. It’s not because you’ve solved it, but that you realize you’re not supposed to.
At first, you look for meaning. You try connecting pieces. You look for intention, for structure, for something that tells you why you’re there and where you’re going next. The longer you stay, the more that instinct falls away.
The space doesn’t guide you with logic. It doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t even fully settle into one emotion. Instead, it drifts somewhere in between the calm, the surreal, and the slightly uneasy, like a dream you can’t quite hold onto, but don’t want to wake up from.
“I always loved this kind of stuff – dreamcore, liminal, brutalist, anything atmospheric,” Geralt explains. “Whenever I build a room, I want people to feel what I feel.”
Liminal Pools is not a world you explore freely, but rather a journey that unfolds piece by piece. You don’t wander. You move forward. Each space reveals itself in sequence, each one carrying its own mood, its own quiet weight. Over three to four months, these moments were built individually, but together they form a whole that feels cohesive in a way that’s hard to describe and even harder to forget.
What’s striking about Geralt’s work isn’t just what he includes, but what he chooses to hold back.
“The perfect sweet spot in my mind is for things to be calm and slightly uneasy,” he says. “A good example is the big ‘snake.’ That’s probably the scariest thing in the room. But I only show its body – you never see its face. The moment I show the face, it becomes horror. And it loses the charm of surrealism.”
Geralt draws inspiration from liminal imagery and spaces across other platforms, but Liminal Pools feels less like a reference and more like a personal translation of that atmosphere into 3DX. It isn’t trying to shock you. It isn’t trying to scare you. It’s trying to keep you in that in-between space where nothing is fully explained and nothing fully resolves. Because of this, no two people walk away with the same experience.
That feeling isn’t shaped by visuals alone. The soundtrack, curated alongside Pypr, moves quietly with the environment, reinforcing its tone without ever demanding attention. Even within the build, there are subtle shifts in perspective. One of the more disorienting sections, the twisted corridor, was created by builder Ketchup, folding seamlessly into the journey rather than standing apart from it.
“I think it depends on the person. Some people feel scared when a space makes them feel small or dreamlike. Some find it calm. It’s always interesting to hear.”
Geralt doesn’t try to correct those interpretations. He lets them exist, unchanged.
There’s also something quietly intimate about the way he experiences his own work. While visitors move through Liminal Pools, Geralt sometimes follows through his camera, re-experiencing his space through someone else’s perspective. Even after touring the space countless times himself, that act keeps it fresh. And when they reach the end, he does too.
“It feels special, especially when they tell me how they feel at the end. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to go through it.”
Like many builders on 3DXChat, Geralt works within limitations. Lighting, in particular, becomes a challenge, something he has to simulate rather than fully control.
“Building in 3DX requires more problem solving. You have to fake a lot of lighting and color to get close to what you imagine, and even then, it’s a compromise.”
Yet, the limitations of 3DX push Geralt forward. He’s begun exploring Blender, with the goal of taking what he’s learned and pushing it further by expanding beyond 3DX and into spaces where lighting, textures, and materials aren’t restricted, and where he can fully realize the kind of environments he creates.
Despite all of this, Liminal Pools doesn’t feel like a technical showcase. It feels like a quiet, strange mood that doesn’t ask for your attention, but holds it anyway.
And maybe that’s the point.
Geralt’s own advice for experiencing the room is simple:
“Don’t try to understand it. Just feel it.”
With Special Thanks to Geralt