Bahnsen Knights review: Talking yourself into trouble with a crazy cult

You’re an FBI agent named Boulder trying to infiltrate the Bahnsen Knights, a gang of reprobates who are in thrall to a charismatic leader named Toni, a former car salesman. Drawing inspiration from the stark and lurid home computer graphics of the 1980s, the visual palette of this choose-your-own-adventure is a steady diet of reds, pinks and blacks.

Quite often, you’ll listen to a ream of hardboiled dialogue before getting a small choice to make in terms of a reply or a course of action. Not every decision is meaningful, however, while on select occasions, you’ll face instant death for an unforeseeably wrong option. As harsh as this is, the game quickly restores you to a point just beforehand and you can choose again.

Boulder has his own demons to deal with – not least leaving behind his family while going undercover – and the first twist within the game signals the power of the writing that drives the narrative.

The agent must pretend his wife and child have died and so his handlers force him to visit their fake graves as his drop-off point for inside information about the cult. This cruel exploitation of his emotional stress is typical of the game’s hard-edged depiction of the dangers inherent in hanging out with a ruthless, unhinged band of villains.

He needs to chat carefully to his comrades in arms, sussing them out and learning more about Toni’s plans without arousing suspicion. Every so often, he’ll face a an odd little mini-game – such as darts, driving or solitaire – though not all are mandatory and only some require you to successfully complete them.

The heart of Bahnsen Knights is therefore the conversational back and forth, elevated by sharp exchanges crafted by the team behind related pulpy visual novels Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake. The allegorical plot may not take us very far but the flavoursome characterisation of this freakish group justifies the price of admission, which on most platforms is less than a tenner.