4/5 ★ – clunkymechanics's review of Kentucky Route Zero.

Completed: January 22 2021 Time to beat: 9 Hours Platform: Nintendo Switch GG| Book Club: Chapter 04 | January 2021 Kentucky Route Zero served at the fourth game for GG|'s Book Club For Games, under the theme "What Did I Miss In 2020?". Although this title was extremely divisive amongst the club, it really shone through as a highlight in my personal gaming journey. I am always looking for games that push my expectation of what a video game can do and Kentucky Route Zero did exactly that, for better or for worse. Kentucky Route Zero is marketed as a point and click adventure game, however I am more likely to describe it as a non-conventional visual novel with lite exploration elements. The game is broken up into five acts, all separated by interludes which are usually cut scene-esque diversions from the main plot, supplying a bit more insight as to what this game might be about. Initially this game was released over 8 years, developer Cardboard Computer dropped one act at a time as they saw fit. To be honest, I think digesting this game in this fashion may have been beneficial to its initial reception. Allowing the player two hours of gameplay every 18 months may seem extreme, but I like to think of this game as a sort of comic book or graphic novel, where it sits in the back of your mind long term until you get the next installment. Despite only being nine hours long, playing Kentucky Route Zero as a straight shot can be a bit of a slog. Not only is the game play slow but the dialogue is also dense. There were many nights were I went to bed thinking "What did I just witness?" and I think that thought process could have benefitted from a bit of a longer burn rather than forcing myself to rectify my thoughts and move on with the plot. On more than one occasion I felt myself become mentally exhausted by the amount of information I was taking in as there is a lot of subtext to every single thing that happens in this story, maybe 18 months between acts is exactly what I needed. Among book club members the thing that was most criticised about Kentucky Route Zero was the pacing. Throughout most of the game the characters are slow to control, interactivity options are far and few in between, and the dialogue often takes several minutes to get to the point it is trying to make. I would really love to believe that approaching this game as if it were like any video game you have ever played is not the right approach - Kentucky Route Zero is best experienced if you wash your brain of everything you know about contemporary media (and especially interactive media) and then just let the experience carry you. The methodology of using video games in fine art has been done before by artists like Ernest Edmonds, Marc Lee, Toshio Iwai, and many more, whose works are non-coincidentally represented in the set and themes of Kentucky Route Zero. The difference between these media artists work being able to be digested as fine art and Kentucky Route Zero being pigeon holed into being perceived as a game is purely setting. There is a lot to be said about "what makes art art?" and the answer to that being "it's in a gallery", and I will save that conversation for the theorists, but I do strongly believe that Cardboard Computer took a leap of faith when they put something so contradictory to what we understand to be a game on the Nintendo eShop. Maybe this is part of the experiment, I am a strong believer that art should be accessible to everyone and not be confined to gallery walls to be considered something worth talking about, however with unclear intentions of what this work was meant to be perceived as I grapple with labeling it as either art or a video game - but who says you can't have both? Without spoiling too much I will say the slow burn of this narrative was far worth the mental gymnastics in the end. There are so many themes represented in this game it is hard to list them all, but I will say if the philosophy of "does having to work to earn living intrinsically mean you're not living?" interests you this narrative experience is something you don't want to miss. As mentioned previously the plot is dense and sometimes things don't make sense, but I think that is the main point I would want to reiterate to anyone interested in playing this game: You are in a gallery to view a series of abstract paintings. You stand in front of the first painting. You feel something. You don't quite understand what you are feeling but you are feeling it. You move onto the second painting. The feeling you had before morphs slightly, this painting is different. You are feeling a new feeling mixed with the old feeling. You move onto the third painting. A totally different feeling washes over you, this painting is much different, you feel a whole new wave of feelings but the experience from the last two paintings still sits with you. You feel present with the artists intentions. What was this exhibit about? You don't know how to articulate it, all you know is you felt what you were intended to feel.