With Annapurna’s backing, “Kentucky Route Zero” is no longer relegated to PCs, and has been released for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in a $24.99 package that collects all five chapters as well as the mini preludes that preceded four of them. Anyone, regardless of game experience, should be able to play, as the key component is largely choosing dialogue, a nod to the text adventure games of yore, with some light driving of vehicles throughout.
We traverse this world via highways that are Mobius strips or waterways where a telecommunications firm has been relocated to a sewer-like cave. We visit an island, whose entire real estate is a tiki bar that provides its guests with the brief, hallucinatory respite of a Mai Tai or six, and sometimes we soar in the claws of a giant eagle. At one point, we are an eavesdropping cat — a charming reward for playing through to the fifth chapter.
“Kentucky Route Zero” is a triumph because we want to live in and with this universe. The game unfolds as an interactive poem. Its look is graceful — the metropolitan noir of Edward Hopper, brought to the Kentucky plains — and yet it also has a sense of humor. Dialogue is delivered with the acerbic tone of Chicago author Nelson Algren. Among the street-tough words of wisdom Conway drops: “Don’t name dogs after loved ones.
Such a style comes to the fore in the fifth chapter, especially scenes in which the player as a cat runs among a town where buildings disappear into air. Ultimately, we as players endure the game’s underlying sadness because we want to know what the game’s characters will say or do, and, more important, understand how we can shape them. While we can’t change the story per se, we can mold characters so they’re hopeful or honest.
‘The best game of the 2010’s.’ I never heard of it. Who said it was the best game?