Knee Deep - Season One
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Knee Deep - Season One
Knee Deep's swampy noir mystery play is one of the most interesting and entertaining ways to frame a game you'll ever see. Just a shame the final act doesn't rise to the humid, neo-gothic heights of the rest.
The ultimate frustration is that I was left wanting to play more of the game and get wrapped up in the story again, but the choices around skipping text and saving made that an unexciting experience. That coupled with the voice audio issues and narrative still being on a mostly locked path means that I probably will never unlock all the mysteries of Cypress Knee.
Knee Deep isn’t an adventure title worth playing, lacking any real hallmarks of the genre. The few puzzles essentially solve themselves, there is very little player participation outside of dialogue choices, and the plot is so bloated with forgettable characters that you lose track of who is who. It seems like the best ideas were poured into the design of Knee Deep, creating a well made digital stage show with voice actors who put in a decent performance. Unfortunately if Knee Deep was a real theatre show I would assume that the final curtain would fall quickly.
An experience that is satisfactory for a single playthrough but becomes repetitive and boring across multiple playthroughs, which is something that the achievements encourage.
Impressively single-minded in its aim, Knee Deep strips everything back from aesthetics to player agency to fashion a non-linear narrative adventure quite unlike any other. Fans of well-written adventures would do well to not sleep on Knee Deep.
This game’s strength is in its writing – the snappy dialogue and quirky characters will make you forget its flaws.
Knee Deep makes a decent attempt at telling a dark, mysterious tale, but underneath lies a bland game with little interaction. The cast of characters aren't particularly likeable and the story they tell makes some bizarre missteps. Perhaps the murder mystery fans among you could get a small kick out of this, but we'd say that most of you can safely ignore this title, knee deep in problems as it is.
Knee Deep is a Telltale-style game that is entertaining but does not fit in most of the sections. Besides, it's too easy.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
