It’s hard to put into words the surreal beauty of “Kentucky Route Zero,” which is interesting because it borders on being a text adventure game out of the ’80s. There is more than enough talk about, yet it’s still difficult to put into words what this truly is. 

By all accounts, the five part narrative adventure, developed by Cardboard Computer, depicts a nightmarish, depressingly dark, eerie version of Midwest America. The main story follows a delivery driver who stops along the highway at random, trying to find an ominous route known as Route Zero. He encounters a series of weird but fascinating places and is soon accompanied by an ensemble of characters, all terrifically written with vibrant personalities.

There is no real gameplay outside of walking across the environments and speaking to inhabitants in your quest forward. The game is nearly a text-adventure — in which dialogue segments drag on for minutes at a time — immersing the player deeply into the ramblings of insane characters who describe everything. The world is not frequently rendered. Instead, it is described in painstaking detail within these text boxes. It’s so imaginative and foreign in that nothing about this Kentucky seems right, yet at the same time, it is so grounded and real in its atmosphere. 

It feels like a hometown — a setting like a childhood summer break where days consist of baseball practices, cheap pretzels and warm nights at that favorite pizza place, alongside the weirdest of friends. 

But it’s all gone. The good days are always in the past in this world, and what’s left are quite literally paper towns for the player to read through. Only the distant highway hum, crickets and wind fill the silent void. 

In all seriousness, when it comes to its writing, “Kentucky Route Zero” has a knack for being able to poetically describe the emptiness and depravity of impoverished, dying towns and forgotten industries. This isn’t an apocalypse. The world is not dead, but barely holding on. Creatures of the night are still human, with their own quirks, coping mechanisms and humor, all having to clock in the next day — arguably a worse world to live in than a zombie wasteland. 

Conceived in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, “Kentucky Route Zero” aims to depict this hallowed existence of depressed monotony, but its true power lies in how deeply it immerses the player in its world.

Depression is not absolute in “Kentucky Route Zero.” Nobody is sad or mad all hours of the day. Like fading nostalgic memories, there are glimpses of good times, even for just a few moments.

In the third act, during the game’s strongest emotional point, the cast finds themselves wandering into a strip mall bar in the dead of night after a car crash. After entering the bar, the stained fluorescent light bulbs and air conditioner hum fade to a mesmerizing song segment, where color returns and the hue of everything around the player becomes more vivid. Then, in a snap back to reality, the characters are back in their metal folding chairs, and onward in their journey after paying their tab. 

Adding to this paradox is the fact that, at times, “Kentucky Route Zero” is hilarious. The game will, at complete random, throw in a joke that catches the player off guard. Some jokes are composed of the blunt humor of the character’s cynic taking in the paranormal happenings around them. Other humor comes from the micro-games between each act, like watching a TV station’s crew performance at a late-night broadcast, unfazed by the studio flooding due to a storm.

It’s a game few will tolerate due to its the slow pace, and fewer for the abstract narrative and atmosphere. But for the few who push through and come to see the true nature of the game, there is truly nothing like “Kentucky Route Zero.” For that few, it will leave a lasting hole in their stomachs for anything like it, which nothing else will fill. 

“Kentucky Route Zero” is available on Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One and Windows. 

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