Kentucky Route Zero

[Chris L]

Kentucky Route Zero is one of the most beautiful and totally indescribable computer games I've ever played. It falls loosely into the adventure game genre, but really isn't like anything else in that genre or any other. I've seen it described as a work of magical realism, but I've never really liked that term and prefer to think of it as surrealism, though that doesn't really describe it either.

You play as a delivery man with a friendly dog who's trying to get a package to an address off the eponymous highway, but when he gets directions they lead through Mammoth Cave, where he finds small towns, office buildings, and a lot of strange characters who fall in with him just for the hell of it. It plays out more like a dream than a game, with the same kind of logic (or absence thereof) that dreams have. In fact, it reminds me very much of my own dreams, in that there's a lot of wandering around toward a vague goal, but the journey really is the reward in this game, which lacks almost any of the standard characteristics of a computer game other than exploration -- no fighting, no score (except musical), no spectacular visual effects. (The graphics are simple, lovely and stylish.) It's more of an experience than a game.

It's being released episodically, with the small studio (Cardboard Computer) that designs it taking longer with each installment because the game is becoming increasingly ambitious. The fourth installment has been out for a while, but I played the first three installments more than three years ago and I'll need to go back to the beginning to remember what happened (not that it really matters that much). The developers are also releasing short "interludes" between episodes that fill in background details on the characters. You can download the most recent, Un Pueblo de Nada (A Town of Nothing), in versions for the PC, Mac and Linux at this address. It takes roughly 20-30 minutes to play and should give you some idea of whether the game is something you'd like. You can buy the game itself on Steam. I highly recommend it.