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Kentucky Route Zero

A hallmark of excellence. There may be flaws, but they are negligible and won't cause massive damage.
Kentucky Route Zero Game Cover
84%Game Brain Score
story, music
grinding, character development
81% User Score Based on 3,395 reviews
Critic Score 87%Based on 6 reviews

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Kentucky Route Zero Game Cover

About

Kentucky Route Zero is a single player action game with drama and thriller themes. It was developed by Cardboard Computer and was released on February 22, 2013. It received positive reviews from both critics and players.

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folks who travel it. Gameplay is inspired by point-and-click adventure games (like the classic Monkey Island or King's Quest series, or more recently Telltale's Walking Dead series), but focused on characterization, atmosphere and storytelling rather than clever puzzles …

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Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
Kentucky Route Zero screenshot
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81%
Audience ScoreBased on 3,395 reviews
story481 positive mentions
grinding49 negative mentions
  • Masterpiece of interactive fiction and narrative storytelling, offering a unique and immersive experience blending literature, theater, and video games.
  • Beautiful and haunting art style combined with an evocative soundtrack that deeply enhances the atmosphere.
  • Poetic, thoughtful writing that explores heavy themes such as debt, loss, grief, community, and capitalism with nuance and emotional depth.
  • Very slow-paced with extensive reading and minimal traditional gameplay, which may be tedious and can lead to player boredom or frustration.
  • Story is abstract, non-linear, and sometimes confusing or vague, with many plot threads left unresolved that might not satisfy all players.
  • Dialogue choices largely do not affect the narrative outcome, giving a limited sense of player agency and impacting replayability.
  • story
    1,993 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero offers a surreal, atmospheric narrative experience focused on mood, characters, and themes like loss, debt, and rural American life rather than a traditional plot or gameplay. The story unfolds slowly and abstractly through rich dialogue and poetic scenes, allowing players to shape character interpretations but not change the overarching narrative, which some find deeply moving and others convoluted or unsatisfying. Overall, it's a unique, artful interactive story best suited for those who appreciate contemplative, non-linear storytelling over conventional gaming mechanics.

    • “Kentucky Route Zero is a game that invites contemplation rather than excitement, unfolding like a surreal stage play in which the player becomes a quiet observer of lives shaped by loss, debt, memory, and the peculiar magic woven into forgotten corners of America. Instead of guiding the player through quests or puzzles, the experience gently ushers them through a series of impressionistic scenes that blur the line between dream and reality.”
    • “The story is terribly immersive; it's a melancholy journey through coal country, more story and imagery than game, but haunting and deeply human. Each character's unique personality and story gets a chance to shine, and plenty of little moments linger long after playing through an act.”
    • “Rather than choosing how the narrative unfolds, you become a co-author of the story, writing poetry, song lyrics, and guiding conversations. Your choices shape the characters' personalities and backstories, creating a deeply personal and interactive storytelling experience that lingers long after the game ends.”
    • “The story is incredibly slow-paced, confusing, and I couldn't care about anything.”
    • “Multiple major plot points are never resolved, the chronology of certain events is never explained, and characters just appear and disappear at will without explanation or purpose, sometimes in the middle of a scene.”
    • “The story just didn't get to me; it feels disjointed and vague with no clear goal and many plot threads left dangling.”
  • music
    636 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The music in this game is widely praised for its haunting, atmospheric quality, seamlessly blending ambient, bluegrass, folk, and dreamlike elements to deeply enhance the immersive narrative and visuals. Composed by Ben Babbitt, the soundtrack is considered a standout feature, with musical interludes often serving as emotional highlights that resonate long after gameplay. While music appears sparingly, its timing and integration elevate the storytelling, making the audio experience unforgettable and integral to the game's unique, melancholic mood.

    • “The soundtrack and sound mixing are wildly good, to the point that it seemed like a character in itself.”
    • “Ben Babbitt, LA musician and frequent collaborator of Angel Olsen and Weyes Blood, fills the monochromatic palette with intensely colorful music, whether it's the Brian Eno-esque ambience of the main score, or the traditional bluegrass and folk of tracks like 'This World Is Not My Home,' 'What Would You Give,' and 'You've Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley.'”
    • “The music and sound mixing in general is absolutely amazing and the developers really knew what they were doing when creating the music and sound for this game.”
    • “You may think that's fine, since many games are like that; but most of the areas in the game do not even have music and instead just have ambient environment sounds, some even have almost no sounds at all.”
    • “With that in mind, would say this game requires significantly more patience than usual for a reading point n click game, especially if little to no music or sound drives you nuts (or puts you to sleep!).”
    • “There's a fair helping of American folk music in here, an astonishing gig at a dive bar, an organ recital in an underground tunnel.... but the ambient sounds and soundtrack are merely competent and are probably the weakest and most forgettable part of kr0.”
  • graphics
    599 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero features a unique and minimalist art style combining low-poly 3D models and vector-like graphics that evoke a dreamy, surreal atmosphere reminiscent of classic adventure games like "Another World." Its visuals, praised for their haunting beauty, expressive simplicity, and inventive lighting and camera work, strongly complement the game's melancholic and mysterious narrative, though the understated graphics may not appeal to players expecting high-fidelity or action-oriented visuals. Overall, the game's graphics are considered an integral part of its artistic and emotional experience, enhancing the immersive storytelling and ambiance despite their deliberate minimalism and occasional rough edges.

    • “The graphics are gorgeous, with a pretty interesting art style that is really nice to look at and helps the mood of the game very well.”
    • “The stylized visuals make every moment feel like a memory half-remembered, as if the world has been worn smooth by time.”
    • “With gorgeous minimalistic graphics, incredible sound design, fantastically written text and a mosaic of peculiar stories, it offers a unique emotional experience you won't meet elsewhere.”
    • “The artwork is very bland. Combine the bland graphics with the fact that it's a walking simulator with no real story, and there's not a lot left to potentially enjoy.”
    • “As for the gameplay and the visuals: between the performance issues, noticeable graphics hiccups, aliasing on the text, and just plain glacial pace, it's a frustrating experience to play.”
    • “Maybe that's by design but I don't understand the design so the art style just makes it all worse.”
  • atmosphere
    473 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero is widely praised for its haunting, surreal, and richly evocative atmosphere, created through minimalist art, a mesmerizing soundtrack, and carefully crafted sound design. The game's moody, melancholic tone and dreamlike settings deeply immerse players, making atmosphere its defining and most celebrated feature, though its slow pacing and minimal gameplay may not appeal to everyone. Overall, it stands out as a masterclass in atmospheric storytelling where ambiance and mood often take precedence over traditional game mechanics or plot clarity.

    • “The world is presented in stark, atmospheric compositions, drenched in melancholy and lit by the dim glow of neon signs, passing headlights, and subterranean lanterns.”
    • “It doesn’t state its purpose in any obvious way, but instead expresses itself through a combination of meticulously crafted atmosphere and abstract narrative.”
    • “Kentucky Route Zero is a gorgeous, thoughtful, dream-like game that keeps on giving with its writing and atmosphere.”
    • “Clicking through banal dialogue that's just absorbing time, instead of further building up on the atmosphere that act 1 had just crafted.”
    • “The game aims for an atmosphere of aimless wandering to match the vagrant nature of the protagonists, but instead of a lazy roadtrip, the game feels more like a somewhat too long piece of avant-garde theatre, or like going to an empty museum of modern art near closing time.”
    • “I played the game for an hour, and not a single thing appealed to me - setting, characters, writing, atmosphere, artwork, etc. It also felt dreadfully slow.”
  • gameplay
    397 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero features minimal traditional gameplay, focusing instead on slow-paced, point-and-click exploration, dialogue choices, and narrative immersion. While some find its mechanics abstract and sparse, the gameplay is designed to enhance the atmospheric, surreal storytelling rather than provide challenge or puzzles. This approach may frustrate players seeking conventional gameplay, but it appeals to those interested in a reflective, story-driven experience.

    • “A perfect cohesion of atmosphere, writing, and gameplay.”
    • “Some very cool mechanics used when telling the story at times; as if choices and story being told is from 3rd person; another showing the progress of time.”
    • “The whole game feels magical: every act feels special in its own way and every new chapter is different from the one before in surprising ways, not only by adding more to the story, but by also changing some parts of the gameplay.”
    • “The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design: "show, don't tell." You'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written visual novel text because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.”
    • “Gameplay is where this game falls off hard.”
    • “What little gameplay there was was weak and it would have been better if it was clear that this is just about storytelling.”
  • emotional
    129 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero delivers a profoundly emotional and unique experience, blending haunting music, surreal storytelling, and poetic writing to evoke feelings of melancholy, hope, and nostalgia. While some players find its dreamlike pacing and ambiguous narrative challenging, many praise its touching characters, evocative atmosphere, and moments of genuine heartbreak. Overall, it stands out as a deeply moving and memorable journey that resonates long after playing.

    • “The most emotionally moving experience I have ever had in my entire life, genuinely permanently altered my worldview. Play it as blind as possible if you can help it.”
    • “A masterpiece of modernist storytelling, equal in emotional impact to the best novels or movies about the human experience; it is without question one of the best meditations on mortality and art produced in the last forty years.”
    • “It will make you want to cry, it will make you chuckle, and it will, in the best way, make you think of all the things that you love, hate, fear, and long for in this world.”
    • “You start at a trying to get to B, the one person who knows the way is at C, but when you get there they're not there and you get a boring story about debt. Then you have to go to Q, who sends you to R, then back to C and the person is there, but they don't know the way after all. It's so boring. Why do they force you to sit through a tedious multi-act amateur play between chapters which adds nothing to the plot and just goes on and on?”
    • “This game has an interesting but boring story, and halfway through Act 4 (the last part) the story only starts to come together. There is mystery to the story, but it is so out of context that there are many questions with minimal answers.”
  • humor
    49 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The humor in this game is often surreal, subtle, and intertwined with melancholy and poignancy, offering moments that range from quietly whimsical to darkly hilarious. While some find this offbeat, literary, and sometimes confusing style charming and emotionally resonant, others may see it as droll, pretentious, or frustratingly slow and lacking traditional comedic payoff. Overall, the humor is distinctive and polarizing, appealing to those who appreciate quirky, poetic wit but not to those expecting conventional laughs or action-driven fun.

    • “The writing is beautiful, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and the atmosphere lingers long after you’re done playing.”
    • “So much meta commentary and humor, heartbreak, sadness, joy, glee, and poignancy.”
    • “And you continue to play it, and it reveals itself as a world so carefully intricate, and perfectly detailed, and sad, and funny, and beautiful, and with a symbolism and depth of meaning that you never could have considered at the beginning when you were chuckling to yourself about an office of bears/Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
    • “It's not funny or witty the way you may be seeking if you're an old point-and-clicker fan.”
  • grinding
    49 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Grinding in the game is widely described as slow, tedious, and unrewarding, often feeling like aimless backtracking and drawn-out sequences that add little meaningful engagement. Many reviewers found the gameplay boring and frustrating, with the illusion of choice failing to alleviate the monotonous pacing and excessive exposition. While some acknowledge occasional artistic or poetic merit, the overall consensus is that grinding significantly detracts from the experience.

    • “However, the puzzles get very monotonous and about halfway through there's a puzzle where you have to use 6 agents to manipulate 3 factors through 3 modalities and after banging away at it for too long I suddenly asked, 'Hey, can I get that last hour or two of my life back?' The prospect of having to do this for meaningless puzzles and then facing more grinding time-waster puzzles has killed this game for me.”
    • “You start by trying to get to point B, the one person who knows the way is at point C, but when you get there they're not there and you get a boring story about debt. Then you have to go to point Q, who sends you to point R, then back to point C where the person is there but they don't know the way after all. It’s so boring, and why do they force you to sit through a tedious multi-act amateur play in between chapters that adds nothing to the plot and just goes on and on?”
    • “The bottom line is that it felt like the developers were just grinding stuff out to get it over with and I felt I was just grinding through it to reach the end.”
  • optimization
    28 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Kentucky Route Zero's optimization is characterized by smooth and buttery performance with modest graphics that enable it to run on low-end devices, though occasional glitches, typos, and graphical hiccups can disrupt the experience. Its artistic, theater-like presentation prioritizes a seamless audiovisual performance over traditional gameplay mechanics, resulting in a unique but sometimes plodding and occasionally frustrating user experience. Overall, the game performs well technically but may feel slow and uneven due to its unconventional narrative-focused design.

    • “Performance is buttery smooth, and its art-style and soundtrack are exceptional.”
    • “The graphics are one of a kind - yet modest - allowing the game to run smoothly literally on a calculator.”
    • “As for performance and issues, apparently the bugs and crashes have mostly been patched out.”
    • “As for the gameplay and the visuals: between the performance issues, noticeable graphics hiccups, aliasing on the text, and just plain glacial pace, it's a frustrating experience to play.”
    • “As for performance and issues, apparently the bugs and crashes have mostly been patched out, but I noticed a fair amount of typos and incorrectly spelled words which after 4 years in development is plain silly.”
    • “That said, it does seem like multiple playthroughs involving different choices might allow the player to learn more and different things about the mysterious characters, but I do not find the story so exciting or the characters so intriguing that I am chomping at the bit to engage the plodding point-and-click interface for a repeat performance.”
  • replayability
    26 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Replayability in the game is mixed, with some players appreciating branching dialogue, multiple characters to follow, and side content that encourage multiple playthroughs, while others find that many choices do not significantly alter the story or paths. Overall, replay value tends to be moderate—enough to warrant a few replays for a deeper experience, but not extensive enough for infinite replayability.

    • “Like many other games, choices you make affect what the game reflects to you of yourself, and this adds to the replayability and the content you see.”
    • “There's enough side stuff in the acts to find, and branching dialog choices that there's a decent amount of replay value.”
    • “Great replay value since, as more characters are introduced (acts 3 and 4) you sometimes have to choose which ones to follow in certain parts.”
    • “Unfortunately the replayability is not that high since most of the decisions don't result in different paths (unless you're a perfectionist, trying to get all of the achievements).”
    • “Since there is no replay value this is terrible.”
    • “The replayability isn’t much to talk about.”
  • character development
    19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Character development in the game is a central and praised element, often driving the narrative through player choices and emotional storytelling, particularly in later acts. While some find the development slow or lacking traditional plot depth, others appreciate its mood-driven, thematic approach and the opportunity to shape characters' personalities and backstories. Overall, it emphasizes exploration, atmosphere, and intimate character journeys over fast-paced action or conventional storytelling.

    • “It doesn't rush or hold back its character development; which actually you, the player, make choices for and play as, giving you a more intimate understanding of the characters.”
    • “From the music and artwork, to the storyline and character development, this entire game was brilliant and one of the best point and clicks I've played.”
    • “Krz is an adventure game focused on exploration and character development; the main crux of the gameplay is exploring the Kentucky backroads and the enigmatic Route Zero, and having a hand in shaping the cast's personalities and pasts along their journey.”
    • “It sure feels like theme is far more important to these designers than character development.”
    • “Beautiful but very boring, with terrible plot and character development.”
    • “Whenever the plot progression would slow down, I was hoping character development would pick up, but was let down almost every time.”
  • stability
    6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    The game features generally pleasant graphics and an impressive aesthetic, but it suffers from some bugs and glitches that can disrupt gameplay, including causing skipped acts and controller issues. While these stability problems are noticeable, players have found workarounds through community forums.

    • “After mauling through the content, some of which was actually buggy and caused skipping whole acts, I ended up completing Act 2 in 1.9 hours.”
    • “Definitely not 'full controller support' if it does not work or, in my case, glitches the game.”
    • “The game is a little bit buggy as well, but there are ways to work around them if you look in the game's forums here on Steam.”
  • monetization
    3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative

    Monetization is criticized due to misleading advertising of a five-act game while only three acts are currently available, leading some players to feel scammed. Additionally, external story content is not clearly integrated or promoted within the game, making it difficult for players to find. Delays in release and lack of communication have further fueled negative perceptions around the game's value.

    • “It is some folks' opinion that you should wait until the game is completely and totally finished before you bother with the first three acts, as the developers are totally attempting to scam us all by falsely advertising a five-act game while only delivering three.”
    • “Most of that external media is still out there if you want to see it--and you should, because it's really cool--but it's harder to find now if you don't know what you're looking for: the social media/news outlet posts advertising it are buried further by the day, and the game itself never clues you in on the fact that more story exists outside the main software (aside from being able to find one of those hotline numbers I mentioned).”
    • “Despite initial advertising with a 2013 release schedule, the game's individual acts have been delayed for personal reasons of the developers, and quality concerns.”
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87%Critics’ scoreBased on 7 critic reviews
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6h Median play time
6h Average play time
9h Main story
14h Completionist
5-8h Spent by most gamers
*Based on 9 analyzed playthroughs
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Frequently Asked Questions

Kentucky Route Zero is a action game with drama and thriller themes.

Kentucky Route Zero is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam Deck, iPhone and others.

The main story can be completed in around 9 hours, while the entire game is estimated to take about 14 hours to finish. On average players spend around 6 hours playing Kentucky Route Zero.

Kentucky Route Zero was released on February 22, 2013.

Kentucky Route Zero was developed by Cardboard Computer.

Kentucky Route Zero has received positive reviews from players. Most players liked this game for its story but disliked it for its grinding.

Kentucky Route Zero is a single player game.

Similar games include Kentucky Route Zero, Dear Esther, What Remains of Edith Finch, Virginia, Harold Halibut and others.