Knee Deep is a highly entertaining and unique adventure game, set on theater stage, whee the acts play out in a typical theater fashion.

You can pick from a wide variety of dialog choices and can have large consequences down the line.
The voice acting is a great addition and the actors give life to the character's through their high-quality voice work.

Music in this game are some of the best and most atmospheric I have heard, in many AAA games on the market.
The graphics are great and have unique art style that really adds to the atmosphere.

Each of the character's have unique personality and personal story lines.
There is a unique blogging mechanic where you can post blog articles that will affect the attitudes of characters that you've dealt with along the way.

+ Unique setting & atmosphere
+ High-quality soundtrack
+ Fully Voiced
+ Multi Choice Dialog
+ Interesting Blog mechanic
+ Unique art style

Knee Deep is an episodic murder mystery game following three protagonists who come together to solve the murders happening in their hometown of Cypress Knee. The setting is set on a stage and it's really surprising the first time when you see the buildings and environment being built right in front of your very own eyes. You as the player have some control over the three main characters of the play. I say some because I felt as though some of the selections that were given felt forced on me.

Anyways, there are choices you can make (in a form of news reports that you can send to your editor/boss), that will determine how other non-playable actors will react to you. Now, since there’s only one act, I am not sure how much of an impact my decisions will have on future acts so that is to be determined. I will update as more acts are added.

The characters are quirky, albeit strange at times but they all have unique personalities that set them apart from each other. I mean it’s not every day someone asks you to feed a raw chicken wearing a diaper to an alligator. (However, if this is an everyday occurrence to you, please call me.) Some of the dialogues are funny and the story is engaging. I believe it took me about 3.5 hours to complete the first act so it’s not too long.

I would recommend this game, especially since the price dropped to $9.99. The developers are pretty responsive to their players.

I’m not much for scoring but I suppose I would rate the first act a 7/10.

For your viewing pleasure, I uploaded my playthrough of this game on YouTube.

Knee Deep Playlist

Knee Deep is a game that starts off very strong. It's fast-paced, the writing is witty and the overarching story is intriguing enough for you to go "so what's really happening here?", but that veneer quickly devolves into absurdity for the sake of absurdity. What was fast-paced becomes jarring, some scenes in Act 2 and 3 last less than 30 seconds and doesn't progress the story at all, and is essentialy a punchline. This might not sound too bad but since Knee Deep presents itself as a play, there's the curtains drawing to fade in and out, which ends up being longer than the actual scene. It's hard to describe just how unnatural this feels but it really screws with the progression and pacing of the story.

Act 1 is a little bizarre but there's enough loose ends to go "this can end in a satisfying way by answering my questions" but Knee Deep answers questions by just killing off characters for the sake of being weird. Did you ever write stories when you were really young and you'd have all these cool ideas but you'd blow your load all at once because of how exciting it was to get those ideas out there and it ends up being this mess of excitment, confusion and ♥♥♥. That's the best way I can describe Knee Deep. It's a big confusing mess of a story that feels really incomplete and rushed from its middle to end. I can't really recommend this to anyone... Maybe if you really like David Lynch but don't want any of the foreshadowing and artistic integrity that comes with most Lynch stories.

It's a 5/10 for me. Pretty much all the positives are in the first act, for creating enough intrigue that I wanted to play more. It's unfortunate that it goes nowhere.

Knee Deep is an interesting mystery adventure game where you essentially play as the director in a stage play called Knee Deep. The play revolves around the death of famous actor, Tag Kern. At first glance, it seems like it would be an open-and-shut suicide case, but three characters soon dig deeper and together uncover a conspiracy involving the entire town of Cypress Knee.

The game immediately strikes you with its unique presentation. The art style is pretty and the way the camera moves as well as the cinematography really makes you feel that it's a stage play. The characters even transition through scenes, which while it could be considered as padding, really cements the idea that you're directing a real stage play instead of just playing a video game.

The characters are endearing, too. I especially liked Romana, the blogger. Of course, you kind of dictate their personality through the choices and how they say certain things, so it's easy for me to make the characters likeable. Some might find some of the characters cliche'd or typical, however.

The mystery of the game is also pretty good and keeps things tense. The pace of the story-telling is great and really makes you want to find out what happens next. There are also some small puzzles that are fun distractions from the pretty heavy tone of the rest of the game.

A small complaint I have, however, is the wonky controller support. At least at the time of this review, the controller only recognizes input when your mouse pointer is near the choice area, which isn't exactly ideal as you're then blocking a portion of the screen. Hopefully this can be patched in a later update.

Overall, I really enjoyed Knee Deep and I would recommend it to fans of adventure games as well as for those looking for a nice mystery.

What I played: The full game in about 5-6 hours
Like: The story, the art style, the overall presentation
Dislike: Poor controller support.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

The 4.4 hrs on record was the time that it took me to play through this game once, entirely. I wanted to review this from Act 1, but thought it would be better to save it until Act 3 was released. Now that all the acts have been released and played I figured now was the perfect time.

I personally really enjoyed this game. It's more or less a simplified point-and-click game where all you need to do is really press 1 of 3 buttons to make decisions in game. The characters of this game are also wonderfully written and funny. On top of this, the whole game takes place on a theatre stage with you as an audience member who is also the director (somehow) who decides many of the lines in the game.

I would personally say that Act 1 starts off a little slowly (but considering the game is set on stage like a play, this is expected) in that not much really begins to happen until the very end of Act 1. In my opinion from the second half of Act 2 to Act 3 is where everything ramps up dramatically. To me, the entirety of Act 3 was the best part of this game.

I'd recommend this game to you if you're looking for an episodic style game where you don't need to be paying attention 100% of the time as there are (thankfully) no quick time events.

My only complaint would MAYBE be the current price of it. It was £10.99 (UK, full price) at the original date of posting this review, and for something that took 4.4hrs to complete. But then again, you get SO MUCH of that value in Act 3 alone. A definite recommendation from me!

More and more videogames are following the "interactive story" model that's been popularized by Telltale, and among these, it's good to find that lower-budget productions, such as this one, can still manage to bring something new to the formula.

Gameplay-wise, Knee Deep keeps to the basics (low interaction with the environment, high amount of choices pertaining to character development), but what sets it apart, besides its Twin Peaks-esque setting, is its extremely theatrical direction. The characters wander from stage to stage, while buildings open and close like pop-up books to make way for them. They proclaim their lines (often in rhymes), self-conscious of being actors in a play, sometimes breaking the fourth wall, and the other three as well. I haven't seen this kind of staging in any other game, ever. A lot of current videogames take their inspirations from cinema, but this one works like a theatric play, and I hope I'll see more games going down that route.

+ Extremely original direction
+ Twin Peaks-like atmosphere with weird characters
+ Replayability through dialog choices
+ Some dialog choices make the game feel like a VtM:Bloodlines Malkavian playthrough

- Slowdowns now and then, particularly during minigames
- Somewhat low production values (though I find it contributes to the atmosphere)
- Kinda short for its price (but I got it in a bundle, so I won't complain)
- Act 3 feels a bit rushed


9/10 Rough around the edges, and lacking a bit of polish, but culturally significant for the evolution of videogames as a storytelling medium.

I really would like to recommend this game. This game definitely takes storytelling to another level.
It's visually stunning, pleasantly surprising and the neo-noir stage universe really draws you in.
The game is hard-boiled, gritty, almost surreal, and at other times chilling. The choices for the characters are intriguing enough to make the player want to learn more about their backstories and why they speak the way they do.

The saddest part here is that while the story keeps you wanting more, the game itself does not allow you to continue due to a huge number of bugs that make the game unplayable. It starts with an optional cult personality test that causes the game to crash, which leads the player to completely forsake that portion of the story in order to move on, despite what it could've built in terms of conflict development or motivation.

Despite the overwhelming amount of bug reports from the community, the lack of response from the development team makes me realize that I can never see through the end of the game without watching playthroughs (when I would rather make the choices myself).

It's really sad. I would've loved to see this game to the end. I enjoyed it, really, but it's just unplayable.

I love the conceit, but the actual game is lacking. $22 for 3 hours of game - and it *really* should have been five acts. As it is, what should play as a tense, interesting drama instead feels like Rocky Horror. Needed more character writing, more mystery, more everything. The "noir" only lasts as long as the first episode.

Interesting - the concept, the setting, the story. The game's lighting was terrible, so bad in fact I am not sure if it was intentional - most of the game was played in shadow, despite setting "brightness" all the way up. A few minor bugs (like the continue button getting cut off and needing to use the keyboard for a scene) were bothersome.

The best part were the strange/belligerent/cynical response options from each of the playable characters.

This game has both positives and negatives, as is the case with all games, and going into it after seeing all the positive reviews had me really exited. However, after finishing the game I'm able to say that the negatives VASTLY outnumber the positives. So let's start the with the positives shall we?

- Great soundtrack
- Interesting setting and art style
- Puzzles are ok, though not really diverse. They're all pretty much the same, but challenging enough for it not to ruin the experience.
- Act 2 and 3 are better than Act 1 (This is barely a positive; 2 and 3 are both pretty mediocre and confusing still)
- Some of the jokes are funny

And that's about it really. The game has a lot of potential considering the unique setting of being played out like an actual theatric play, but it throws away that potential, which I will explain as we move on the negatives:

- Story is messy and makes no sense
- Heaps of loose threads at the end of the game
- Terrible dialogue. The characters will just change the subject in the middle of a conversation or simply go quiet and walk away without reaching any conclusion to the actual convo.
- Choices are vague. When you decide what to say in a conversation the choices don't give you much to go on. They usually only contain one or two words, which often leads to your character saying something that you didn't mean or want at all. For some reason the creators also made it so you have three main characters instead of one. And on top of the main characters you sometime pick the dialogue options for an additional 3-4 characters. The problem with that is that the game doesn't clarify which character you're picking a choice for - meaning that if you're currently watching a group of people and get to pick a dialogue option, you don't know which character is gonna say what you pick. The fact that there are three main characters also makes it so that you often go through the same exact dialogue with a person three times, since all three characters basically do the same things.
- Act 1 is dreary and repetitive to no end, and it goes on for way too long. While Act 1 took me around three hours to play (mind you I took some breaks because I simply wasn't enjoying myself) act 2 and 3 took 2 hours COMBINED.
- Jokes get so overused, it's ridiculous. There's one specific joke about a character saying the wrong words while talking and not understanding that he's doing it. It was slightly funny the first time, but they use the same joke every single time he says a sentence. Safe to say it gets really annoying after a while.

Luckily I picked this game up during a sale, so I'm not too bummed about it not living up to my expectations, but I would NOT recommend getting this at full price. It's simply not worth it.