As you progress through the various acts, you?ll come across a growing group of characters that move along through the story with you, picking up the reigns of Conway?s core task while embarking on their own individual journeys. It doesn?t take long for Kentucky Route Zero to pierce it?s own thin veil of reality, and before long you?re embarking on a series of events that will guide you down the titular, tunnel-like Route Zero, introducing you to an increasingly odd cast of characters and castoffs that seem at ease with their unusual surroundings. Other locations are a little meatier, like the home of Weaver Marquez, allowing you to step out of the truck and move around a bit. Some locations you?ll have limited interactions with, prompting a bit of text and maybe a dialogue option or two. When the game beings you?re given an overhead map of roads and highways, just a bunch of white lines on a stark black background, with small wireframe icons that indicate landmarks as you move a wheel icon along those paths. The atmosphere of the game is akin to a fever-induced David Lynch dream sequence, oftentimes jumping from one fantastical location to another in a way that doesn?t entirely make sense, yet still somehow works.įor example, the opening act of the game introduces you to Conway, a truck driver tasked with one last delivery of antique goods to an address that no-one has seemingly heard of before. The way it makes use of background and foreground elements to frame scenes and create familiar yet almost supernatural locations is something that stood out to me the entire time I was playing. It has one of the most stunning visual identities I?ve ever seen in a game. While that might not sound overly compelling to folks that have played similarly styled games, I can honestly say that I doubt you?ve played anything like Kentucky Route Zero. Doing so will unlock additional dialogue moments, observations from the various characters that join your group, and serve as a way of building upon the surreal setting of the game. In that aspect, it?s a little more akin to something like the Telltale series of titles in that it doesn?t focus so much on puzzle-solving or item collecting, but more on interacting with different objects and characters. On its surface, Kentucky Route Zero plays out like a point-and-click adventure game. All in all, it?s an absolutely stunning accomplishment by developer Cardboard Computer, and something that I would highly urge everyone to discover for themselves. It does a splendid job of marrying its unique visual style to an eclectic, largely ambient soundtrack, introducing various themes and ideas that aren?t often touched on in gaming. Despite being a story-focused, text-driven adventure, the individual sequences you?ll encounter across its five different acts and interludes will absolutely stick with you. The conclusion was a statement of what I already knew deep down: Kentucky Route Zero was about the journey, and that journey was immensely enjoyable.Kentucky Route Zero is the kind of game that leaves a lasting impression. For a few minutes I sat quietly, considering what had happened. Not to be outdone by Acts 1-4, Act 5 ignored what I thought I wanted to an even greater degree. As confused (and satisfied) as these interludes often left me, they kept me refreshed and fully engaged in a back to back playthrough, suddenly making sense at precisely the right moment. One takes the form of a modern art exhibit, while another has you dialing in to a ludicrous nature hotline with hilarious results. Even more experimental than the acts themselves, these interludes fill in some of the narrative blanks while trying out storytelling vehicles. For me, I was rapt from tip to tail, but particularly during the palette cleansers between acts. I can only imagine the untold hours of introspection and analyzing people must have undergone between the original act releases, wondering what the next chapter might bring.
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