kentucky route zero

There’s a scene in the game Kentucky Route Zero where the game’s protagonist, Conway, is touring a whiskey distillery run by glowing orange skeletons. Conway came to the distillery to ask for directions, but the skeletons there seem to think he is a new hire. There is a feeling of mounting dread as you guide Conway through the cavernous structure, following a skeleton who explains how all the employees of the distillery are each working off some sort of debt.

The tour ends back where it started, and the tour guide offers Conway a shot of the “top shelf” whiskey, as a sort of “welcome aboard.” Conway, who we have learned over the course of the game so far is a recovering alcoholic, tries one last time to explain that he is not here for a job, but the skeleton doesn’t seem to understand. Finally there is just one option for you to click on: “Drink.” As you try to move your cursor around the screen, looking for some other way out, the cursor is taken out of our control, pulled back to that final option.

Not only does it break the rules of video games, it breaks the rules of computer interfacing in general. The experience of moving your mouse and watching the cursor disobey you is surprisingly unsettling. When the first act of Kentucky Route Zero was released, the trend in video games was open worlds, endless choices, and multiple endings. In contrast, the inexorability of the “drink” moment hits like a punch in the gut. It made me laugh the way tense moments in horror movies sometimes make me laugh, and the game is full of moments like this.

Kentucky Route Zero is a game that was released in five acts over the course of nine years, starting in 2011. The concluding act was just released last month. It begins with Conway, a delivery driver making his last delivery, pulling into a gas station for directions. While the sun sets in the background, the attendant tells Conway he needs to take “the zero” to get to his destination. Night falls, weird things start happening, and it becomes apparent that the zero is not an ordinary highway. We learn early on that there was a bad wreck nearby, and it’s tempting to jump to the conclusion that Conway died in that wreck and is now a spirit in some sort of limbo. But that’s not it. There are no such easy answers in this story.

What unfolds is a journey through an otherworld. The zero doesn’t appear to be the afterlife--it’s more like an axis running through different planes of existence. People are known to travel back and forth along the mysterious highway, between here and another place. At one point another character tells us that the people in this other place are like us, but different. Glowing orange skeletons aren’t even the strangest things you encounter on your quest.

Playing Kentucky Route Zero feels like playing Myst when I was a kid--the weird mixture of curious wonder and hair-raising uneasiness. I can’t decide if I’m longing to visit this place or if I’m dreading what’s around the next corner, but I want to go deeper. Like Myst, there are people who went before you into this place, and you need to find out what happened to them. Like all great surreal adventures, it’s more than a series of “OMG WTF” moments--there’s a thread running through it all. The themes of people struggling with debt, losing touch with family, and trying to find home are all recurrent, and deeply poignant for a story that started shortly after the great recession, and is ending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s hard to play a game like this in the evening, then get up in the morning and try to work--especially when I do both at the same desk. But it’s worth the struggle to experience a truly groundbreaking example of video games as art.