Knee Deep

This game is innovative, dashing in its theatrical art direction, superbly voice acted, and carefully crafted. So why the thumbs down?

First, because the gameplay is stilted. You cannot wander around and explore: it's just one dialog choice after another. Which could be OK if not for the pretense—suggested by the dialog choices—that you control these characters in some way. So do you or do you not? It's frustrating that when you finish a dialog you feel like you really want to go back and question another witness again. But that's not the way the game's belligerently linear path takes you. The beautifully crafted setting screams for exploration, but there is none.

And let's examine the dialog choices: only some affect the story, and of those few seem to allow you to control the personality of the characters, but then they're all over the place. You can make a character nice, callous, weird, or kind in any given encounter, and switch whenever you like. It's completely schizophrenic, except that there's no penalty for being inconsistent. Nor is there a reward for consistency. It simply doesn't matter what you choose, and soon enough you will stop caring. This is not a role-playing game. It's not even a choose-your-own-adventure game. All you really need to care about is making sure you don't choose something that will cause you to miss out on some of the story. That's a pathetic amount of investment.

So, how's the story? It gets too convoluted too quickly, but also predictably so. You just know that there will be plot twists. And since you can't control anything about the game, your role is just to be patient and wait for the next, yawn, surprise. The script is often preposterous: people get murdered while bystanders stand by and make sarcastic comments; strangers confess deep personal secrets and then move on to talk about real estate projects; everybody seems to be obsessed about their moms. There's so much snark packed into this game that I feel encouraged to be snarky about the game itself. But ain't nobody got time for eye-rollings: negative reviews are the way to go!

Finally, this game is unoriginal: it's a lot like Kentucky Route Zero, just placed in a different southern state and with a different visual concept. The mood is copied, as is the idea of switching between characters, and even the surrealist vibe. It's disappointing that a team as creative as this one seems to be unable to come up with their own concept. (Offensive, even: there might be a case for plagiarism. Even though there's what I think is a homage to KR0 in the end.) It's also strategically bad to copy, because it begs the games to be compared, and KR0 comes out so much more mature, captivating, and exploratory. Where KR0 is poetic, Knee Deep is art-school pretentious.

This is all a bit harsh, perhaps. I did enjoy the game, to an extent, as a bit of poorly written but nicely produced theater. But I was very annoyed by the game's flaws, and believe that others will be annoyed, too. I just can't recommend it to anyone I care about unless they really ran out of things to play.

Also: thank you, devs, for supporting Linux! Except that you didn't allow for v-sync and the tearing is abominable.