Kentucky Route Zero
Review

Kentucky Route Zero (2013) is a magical realist adventure game in five acts. This means that you explore a deep and rich world backed by haunting electronic music and hymns to unfold a story of unpayable debts, abandoned futures, and the human drive to find community.

You simply tap or click the background to move around and interact as you follow the story of a truck driver named Conway and the strange people he meets as he tries to cross the fictitious Route Zero in Kentucky to make a final delivery for the antique company for which he works.

There's a lot of text to read and at times it feels like an interactive novel (in a good way). It doesn't have the usual puzzles or challenges of other games and instead focuses on storytelling and atmosphere. You control conversations and can choose the destination of your truck. This doesn't alter the narrative but does affect the texture of interactions and relationships.

It was originally published episodically over a span of years, the TV Edition collects all five acts along with the interludes, which were originally published separately.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Kentucky Route Zero 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 months ago.