Within seconds of starting Bahnsen Knights, the third in LCB Game Studio's ‘Pixel Pulps’ series of games, we found ourselves inspired. We turned the lights down low, put on some headphones and, with the clear aim of savouring every moment, held the Switch’s OLED screen so close to our face that we became fully immersed in this visual novel’s rich four-colour pixel graphics and oscillating, unnerving chiptune soundscape.

Our slightly obsessive behaviour was no surprise considering how much this writer enjoyed the previous two Pixel Pulps, Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake, visual novels of genre-defining quality in the most crucial of ways—that they were a lot of fun to play (especially Mothmen). These predecessors were hyper-imaginative horror stories told to an impressive storytelling standard, seemingly inspired by the retro likes of Weird Tales magazine. To our tastes, this series already deserves to be the standa rd bearer for visual novels as a whole. They’re the kind of idiosyncratic, quality production that can elevate a genre out of what is a fairly small niche.

Bahnsen Knights hits the same high standards from its opening scene. Story-wise, its broad-strokes horror narrative might seem familiar. The Wicker Man and other stories and films come to mind. All feature the same setup: someone has gone missing in a creepy, rural location with the responsibility seemingly falling squarely at the feet—or should that be cars—of a strange cult.

This version tells the story of Boulder, an undercover police officer trying to find his partner, who went missing while investigating a gang—the Bahnsen Knights, a group of car-driving, brooding psychopaths, whose main pastimes include: painting red crosses on their cars; ‘exorcising the road’; a deep mental entwinement with tornadoes; being under the spell of their enigmatic leader, Toni; and generally posing a massive threat to Boulder’s sanity and life. If they discover you’re a mole, then your life is over. There’ll be no going back to your deeply-missed wife and kid.

So much about the Pixel Pulps makes them feel genuinely special. In Bahnsen Knights, the first thing that jumped out at us was the tightness of the storytelling. The game is told in skilfully dramatised scenes. The writing sucked us in with strong moment-by-moment characterisation, elevating that semi-familiar story set up just the way strong writing always should. In no time, you’ll forget any similarities to other stories. Bahnsen Knights has more than enough personality of its own.

Next are the visuals—the beautifully atmospheric illustrations are rendered in the colour palette of a Spectrum ZX, and they make the game feel in some ways like a low-bit graphic novel. Yet, the animations, pacing, and interactivity inherent in the visual novel medium ensure that Bahnsen Knights is its own beast entirely. It's still very much a game.

Like Mothmen 1966 before it, this features a near-constant, mesmeric cicada sound that’s so hypnotic that we started wondering if the games were designed with some bi-aural relaxing beta-wave trickery, pushing us into a dream state where our imaginations became a little more vulnerable to the inspired dreamy nightmarishness of the story.

We’ve heard plenty of complaints that visual novels don’t have quite enough actual gameplay—that they’re more reading experiences—but we found Bahnsen Knights had a nice balance between story and interactivity. As with the other Pixel Pulps, the main bulk of this interactivity appears as minor dialogue choices along the way, but this time there’s also a light roleplaying element. At times Bahnsen Knights feels almost like a point-and-click adventure—the investigation into your partner’s disappearance is well-realised as you search for and interpret clues.

The most notable interactivity comes during the action sequences, which, whether depicting a brawl or a high-speed chase, feel like simple but tonally appropriate diversions that you might have played as their own games on an alternate-dimension Grindhouse-edition of a Game & Watch. Their retro feel fits perfectly with the art style, and they weave directly into the story—or, in the case of darts and solitaire minigames, flesh out the world and make it ever more believable. These sequences are well-timed. They add a little burst of adrenaline-inducing action and often risk giving you one of the death endings if you fail—then they’re done, and the story moves on as swift as ever. Notably, there's touchscreen control throughout the game, and in these moments it often feels more responsive than using the joystick and buttons.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Argentine developer duo Nico Saraintaris (writing and game design) and Fernando Martínez Ruppel (art and music) both come out of these games leaving positive impressions that they are high-achieving artists of excellent and universally enjoyable taste. We want more from them, and we’re not bothered how they go about it. They have a smattering of other games available online too, and as always they nail the really important stuff. LCB makes high-quality and engaging work.

A quick look at the screenshots will tell you that Bahnsen Knights, unsurprisingly, runs incredibly well on the Switch. During its two-and-a-half hour runtime, you can feel confident that nothing will get in your way of delighting in this most enjoyable of visual novels. The creativity on show is such that you’ll likely be tempted to reload and tick off all the extra achievements once you’re done.

It’s not essential that you play the Pixel Pulp games in order, although one character who does appear in each instalment gets his most thorough introduction in Mothmen 1966, which is then followed up in Varney Lake. And there’s at least one other backward reference, too. For the most part, however, Bahnsen Knights is a standalone story,

Conclusion

If you’re intrigued by visual novels and their potential to delight, then the Pixel Pulps series is arguably the best possible place to start. Bahnsen Knights is the third entry and it’s pretty damn wonderful. With its tighter emphasis on gameplay, it's arguably the best of the three, though that would be like choosing your favourite child. It’s okay to love them all. Bahnsen Knights is an easy recommendation, and one which becomes even stronger if you’re interested in horror and weird tales.