Review: Kentucky Route Zero

The genre of magic realism is curiously underserved by much of the games industry, which prefers its content to fall either side of the divide between high fantasy and gritty reality. So when Kentucky Route Zero hit Steam it was exciting to see a new experimental game striding out with a bold visual direction and high ideas.

Developed by a two-person team on a Kickstarter budget of $8,500, the sense of style the game adopts is partly forced by development necessities, with low-poly models and heavy use of silhouettes, but it wears it well, with monoline maps and thin slab serif fonts hinting at a stylish noir which it delivers visually.

The opening scene outside Equus Oils, with the fading sunset outlining a giant horse’s head mascot, is both eerie and majestic, introducing the quiet, retiring game world of rural Kentucky with class. Protagonist Conway is a lost delivery driver, looking to get to his destination by way of the titular and mythical Zero. Along with his dog, whose name you can pick, and later teaming up with another lost soul in Shannon.

Although presented in the style of a classic point and click game, there are a few differences. The game is much more dialogue heavy than the likes of Sam and Max, and inventory puzzles are virtually absent after the first chapter. Instead, the focus is on set piece interactions and solving small dialogue puzzles which keep the machinery of the story ticking along.

This is a task managed well for the first half of the game, but around the third chapter it becomes more difficult to follow as the plot descends into confusing sidetracking, with the emphasis on the character’s internal stories taking precedence. This is a noble attempt, but it did eventually lose me and start appearing more as a series of loosely connected set pieces around the time attending a band’s long-postponed gig turned rapidly into fiddling with an old mainframe computer in a cave.

One area where Kentucky Route Zero shines consistently is in the music, where as-live performances from in-game characters or silhouetted bands in the woods contribute a haunting bluegrass backdrop to proceedings. It’s almost a staple of modern adventure games that they contain high quality soundtracks, and this is no exception, particularly in the hauntingly ethereal sequence at the beginning of Chapter 3.

Cardboard Computer have managed an impressive feat with the budget available to them, but ultimately, the first four chapters of Kentucky Route Zero start to run out of steam quickly and some of the longer dialogue sequences can become a chore. It’s understandable given the development team and time available that there aren’t more action sequences, but I started to get the feeling that a shorter and more tightly-written story released as a single game might have been preferable to a five-episode epic (the last part of which still hasn’t been released).

The episodic nature of the game is presumably a restriction forced by budget, with the income from a first episode needed to produce a second and third. But it’s easy to wonder what a bigger studio would have made of Kentucky Route Zero, and unfortunately the resulting product probably wouldn’t have been able to justify the budget. It’s not one to introduce to new adventure gamers and will probably never gain a mass market, but as a piece of art it’s a remarkable achievement.

Sadly, by the mid point this starts to overtake the substance, and it’s ironic that a new installment in a genre famed for its commitment to storytelling would fall into this trap. It’s worth taking a trip down the Zero — but you might not want to stay forever.

6/10