In the murky swamps of Cypress Knee, a Hollywood actor hangs lifeless on a culturally-inappropriate landmark, and the motives seem quite suspicious. You play as three characters in this noir-theatrical playstyle game, trying to solve the mysteries that keep popping up. It’s like Sherlock Holmes meets any Telltale project.
Knee Deep takes the standard point-and-click genre and turns it on its head with an interesting twist. The entire story takes place in a theater, with your choices in each conversation changing the outcome of the final act. Not much different from games such as Mass Effect, the game forces you to follow the narrative and keeps you engrossed in the lives of each character.
The characters themselves are quite multidimensional. The three characters you play as have histories deeply engrained in the town, even if they don’t want to admit this. You start off as Romana Teague, a young blogger out looking for a scoop that will take her career to the next level, even though her past decisions keep haunting her every step. Then it’s onto Jack Bellet, a reporter for the local newspaper trying to come to grips with the fact that the world has changed and he has become one of the dying breed of reporters. He also suffers from drug addiction if you want him to, always looking for his next fix, and looking for a story that will change his fortunes. Lastly, you play as a washed-up cop, K.C. Gaddis, who, before being called to Cypress Knee for a final job, was on the verge of committing suicide.
I quite enjoyed the gameplay and choice-based style of the game, mainly because it gives you interesting choices and some hilarious outcomes. As the blogger—who is quite self-involved, prancing around thinking everyone should know her—I had the opportunity to live the dream of becoming one of those bloggers that fill the internet with inflammatory posts. This caused many of the in-game characters to become hostile.
As you play through the game, each character needs to file a report or write an article. Each character comes with their own unique personality that you can build throughout the game, going in any direction you wish. For each report, whenever you find something interesting about the said case, you have to choose your style which can be either cautious, inflammatory or edgy. These choices change the game significantly, giving you several hours of replayability, even if the ending barely changes.
The story of Knee Deep was quite interesting, and sometimes due to my choices, quite funny. The voice acting for most of the characters was quite good and I never felt like I just wanted the game to end. However, I did have quite a problem with the ending, with it taking the Stephen King route and making me go “What the heck?”. Chasing alligators in Florida is pretty normal, fighting off paranormal threats isn’t. That’s all I’m going to say without spoiling the ending but it’s truly the most bizarre and unexpected one I’ve encountered in any game.
Beyond the disappointing ending, the game doesn’t force too much gameplay on the player. The game is usually a few still scenes with characters walking about freely. However, your only input is the conversation choices and decisions you make throughout the game. I preferred this gameplay style over the overly-complex methods implemented in games like The Descendant. When a game is mainly focussed on the narrative, gameplay should be as simple as possible.
Knee Deep is a funny little episodic game that I would highly recommend. The achievements are quite generous too, giving you an easy 600 Gamerscore for just playing through the main story once.
Summary
Knee Deep is set in a small backwater town called Cypress Knee. A washed-up Hollywood actor commits suicide, and the motives become ever murkier as you continue through the campaign. The game offers branching paths much like Quantum Break, but the ending doesn’t change much. It’s quite disappointing given what I would say is an overall great story.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.