Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition
What to Know
Average Score
- January 28, 2020
- Cardboard Computer
- Adventure
Critics Consensus
- January 28, 2020
- Adventure
Critics Consensus
# Reviews: 42
Kentucky Route Zero is a bizarre tale unlike anything you've played before. Although it is slow and introspective, it's also an exceptionally engaging experience.
Critic Reviews for Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition
Reviews
Silver TIER
26% of scored reviews fell within the range of 80 to 86 / 100
Tom Marks (IGN)
8/10
“Kentucky Route Zero is a beautiful poetry generator in the body of a point-and-click adventure game.”
Oli Welsh (Eurogamer)
Recommended
“Cardboard Computer’s elusive adventure game gets a final episode and a console edition, but don’t wolf it all down at once.”
Nick Gillett (Metro GameCentral)
8/10
“An arrestingly surreal triumph that blends point ‘n’ click and text adventures with a unique style of storytelling and gameplay that was well worth the extremely long wait.”
Outlet | Author | Score | Date | Quote | Read |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
3DNews | Александр Бабулин | 10 / 10 | 02-15-2020 | A melancholic magical realism adventure, and a funeral song over the coffin of the American dream. | Read review |
COGconnected | Paul Sullivan | 95 / 100 | 01-30-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a brilliantly told story that takes chances, and unapologetically is what it is. Sounds suspiciously like art to me. Damn good art. | Read review |
Daily Dot | AJ Moser | 4.5 / 5 stars | 01-27-2020 | At the end of a tumultuous decade, it’s only natural to reflect on the years gone by. And here comes a great game to cap the previous decade—and signal the start of something new. If I hadn’t already spent the last several years being told that Kentucky Route Zero was a special game, I’d have known it immediately. | Read review |
Digital Chumps | Eric Layman | 10 / 10 | 02-02-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is lost in the illusive premise of the American Dream but found in the elusive dream logic of its weird, wild, and wonderful prose. Through it all are characters who conceal pain and loss with whimsical musings of hope and escape and locations engulfed in a meditative haze where brutal reality is indistinguishable from isolated reverie. At the end lies a paradox that suggests a circuitous path was the shortest course to an inevitable destination, and the assurance that Kentucky Route Zero's seven-year voyage knew its direction all along. | Read review |
DualShockers | Cameron Hawkins | 7.5 / 10 | 02-11-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a one of a kind storytelling experience, but I'm not entirely sure what story it is trying to tell. | Read review |
Eurogamer | Oli Welsh | Recommended | 01-28-2020 | Cardboard Computer's elusive adventure game gets a final episode and a console edition, but don't wolf it all down at once. | Read review |
Everyeye.it | Claudio Cugliandro | 9.2 / 10 | 01-31-2020 | Cardboard's work is an incredibly rich, complex, personal experience, but for which it is very easy to feel empathy, since it manages to tell from the popular and human perspective bigger events of each of us. A piece of video game history. | Read review |
Game Informer | Joe Juba | 8.5 / 10 | 01-27-2020 | Though it seems to be a traditional adventure game at first, this is an enticing and bizarre tale unlike anything you've played before | Read review |
Game Revolution | Jason Faulkner | 3.5 / 5 stars | 01-27-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a coffee table book of a game. I don’t feel like you’re really supposed to try and take it all in as a whole. Instead, KRZ, with it’s myriad of references and views, seems like it’s supposed to be taken a piece at a time. Some players are sure to absolutely love that, while others, like me, would prefer something more grounded. | Read review |
Gameblog | Filipe Da Silva Barbosa | 8 / 10 | 02-05-2020 | Developped during nearly a decade, the last episode of Kentucky Route Zero has finally arrived, and with it the complete edition of the game. It can almost be considered as an interactive fiction, but with a real attention given to the player and the meaning of its actions throughout the game. As a subjective experience, it also questions the connections between video games and other forms of art. | Read review |
GameCrate | Nicholas Scibetta | 8.3 / 10 | 02-28-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero tells a story unlike anything else you'll find in gaming. It uses a point and click adventure format that's pretty basic, but hits high notes with its dialogue, themes, and music. | Read review |
GameSpew | Becca Smith | 7 / 10 | 02-03-2020 | More than being a video game, Kentucky Route Zero is a work of art | Read review |
GameSpot | Justin Clark | 9 / 10 | 02-05-2020 | After seven years, Kentucky Route Zero reaches the end of the road, and the full portrait it paints is melancholy and sorrowful but also absolutely beautiful. | Read review |
Gaming Nexus | Randy Kalista | 9.5 / 10 | 03-31-2020 | Part point-and-click radio play, part adventure game audiobook, Kentucky route Zero is as much of a journey in sound as it is a meditation on surrealism. I'd nominate it for the Booker Prize in literature before I'd hand it a Keighley statue at the Video Game Awards. | Read review |
Geeks Under Grace | Michael Mendis | 7 / 10 | 04-24-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero tells fascinating tales about its world and the people who inhabit it, but fails to connect its many threads into a cohesive whole. | Read review |
God is a Geek | Nicola Ardron | 9 / 10 | 02-12-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a masterful piece of interactive storytelling. Mysterious, mercurial, and exquisitely beautiful. | Read review |
IGN | Tom Marks | 8 / 10 | 01-27-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a beautiful poetry generator in the body of a point-and-click adventure game. | Read review |
IND13 | Rahul Shirke | 5 / 5 stars | 02-17-2020 | With its sombre mood, innovative narrative design, and deeply poetic writing, Kentucky Route Zero is one of the most unique and important games ever made. | Read review |
Jump Dash Roll | Rob Kershaw | 7 / 10 | 02-26-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a maddeningly obscure visual novel, both beautifully dull and mundanely fascinating. It will no doubt split opinion, but if you enjoy an abundance of metaphor and some quirky introspection, it will definitely tick your boxes. | Read review |
Kotaku | Riley MacLeod | Recommended | 01-27-2020 | I’m mainly a PC gamer, so the thought that there is no longer more Kentucky Route Zero to expect is strange. But if you primarily play on consoles, it’s possible you’ve never played, or even heard of, Kentucky Route Zero before. You’re in for something special. It’s a game that reminds you that you can only do so much, but there will always be things—maybe too many, maybe not enough—left to do. | Read review |
Metro GameCentral | Nick Gillett | 8 / 10 | 01-31-2020 | An arrestingly surreal triumph that blends point 'n' click and text adventures with a unique style of storytelling and gameplay that was well worth the extremely long wait. | Read review |
New Game Network | Alex Varankou | 45 / 100 | 02-06-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is an incredibly dull and over-embellished text adventure that fails to engage, entertain, or provide much value to anyone but perhaps the uppermost art connoisseurs. | Read review |
Nintendo Enthusiast | Dan Thompson | 10 / 10 | 02-08-2020 | A work of art that I can’t recommend enough. | Read review |
Nintendo Life | PJ O'Reilly | 9 / 10 | 01-27-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition is the full and complete Kentucky Route Zero experience. A magical realist point-and-click adventure that takes you on a beguiling journey to a place that exists both below and beyond. It's a trip to be savoured, ruminated on; no need to rush. | Read review |
NintendoWorldReport | Joe Devader | 9.5 / 10 | 02-03-2020 | Those looking for a challenge or something a bit more action packed won’t find what they’re looking for here, but those looking for a surreal and mysterious tale will have come to the right place. | Read review |
PC Gamer | Unknown | 87 / 100 | 02-12-2020 | A compelling story about rural America that is both surreal and thoughtful, if a little disorienting. | Read review |
PlayStation Universe | Alan Strawbridge | 8.5 / 10 | 02-07-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a game for those who are happy to slowly digest the measured nuances of a text heavy, but visually stunning and thought provoking adventure. Narrative weirdness abounds but it is anchored by a cast of charming and gentle characters who you will grow to love. | Read review |
Push Square | Graham Banas | 9 / 10 | 01-30-2020 | Even with a downright cavalcade of triumphs, Kentucky Route Zero's strongest asset is its ability to redefine itself from episode to episode. The deeper your journey goes, the stranger things get, but the more they make sense too. While the game will definitely be a bit too bizarre and densely obtuse for some, this is a game unlike anything you've ever played before. | Read review |
Rock, Paper, Shotgun | Alec Meer | Recommended | 01-30-2020 | For it was – it is – unforgettable. | Read review |
Skill Up | Ralph Panebianco | Recommended | 02-26-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a videogame. Probably. Maybe. | Read review |
Slant Magazine | Steven Scaife | 5 / 5 stars | 02-01-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is about America in a way few games aspire to be and fewer still succeed at. | Read review |
SomHráč.sk | Jakub Bjaček | 70 / 100 | 02-29-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a work of art that rests solely on its literary qualities and atmosphere. Good thing is that both of these aspects are very solid and the long wait for the final act was worth it. A worthy conclusion of a remarkable video game. | Read review |
TechRaptor | Samuel Guglielmo | 7 / 10 | 02-11-2020 | I tried so hard to love this game, but in the end, I only really liked it at best. | Read review |
TheSixthAxis | Aran Suddi | 9 / 10 | 02-07-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a game that I'm still thinking about days after reaching its conclusion. Though it's slow (maybe too slow for some) and introspective, it's also an exceptionally engaging interactive experience. If you are into the slow burn kind of story then this is definitely for you, but if you're not then you may bounce off of the Zero. | Read review |
Too Much Gaming | Joseph Choi | 9 / 10 | 06-24-2020 | Because it is rather obtuse at times, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone, but if you’re anything like me and you love carefully-constructed, paradoxical art that is enlightening and entertaining, haunting and hopeful, melancholy and magical, perceptive and pointed, you might really fall in love with the existential irreverence of Kentucky Route Zero. | Read review |
USgamer | Caty McCarthy | 5 / 5 stars | 01-27-2020 | All considered as the sum of its many, equally magnificent parts, Kentucky Route Zero is a game I won't forget for a long, long time. | Read review |
VideoGamer | Joshua Wise | 8 / 10 | 02-11-2020 | Those intoxicated by the game's dreamy brew may argue that there are no detours—that, like the Zero, you're either on it or you're not. If you're anything like me and Conway, however, you'll be somewhere in-between. | Read review |
Wccftech | Dave Aubrey | 9.5 / 10 | 01-30-2020 | Kentucky Route Zero is a fascinating story with a thick atmosphere and themes which will leave you thinking longer after playing each act. It's one of the best stories I've ever played or read in a video game, and I implore everyone to play it. Kentucky Route Zero is something special. | Read review |
We Got This Covered | Eric Hall | 4 / 5 stars | 02-10-2020 | Although its moment to moment gameplay might not always hit the mark , the captivating story and colorful cast of characters make Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition a journey worth taking. | Read review |
Game Info
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 or challenges of skill.
RELEASE DATES:
DEVELOPER(S):
- Cardboard Computer
PUBLISHER(S):
- Annapurna Interactive
GENRES:
- Adventure
SERIES/FRANCHISE:
- n/a
GAME MODES:
- Single player
GAME ENGINE:
- -
DLC:
- -
BUNDLED IN:
- -
DIRECTOR(S):
- -
PRODUCER(S):
- -
DESIGNER(S):
- -
PROGRAMMER(S):
- -
ARTIST(S):
- -
WRITER(S):
- -
COMPOSER(S):
- -
GAME MODES:
- Single player
GAME ENGINE:
- n/a
DLC:
- n/a
BUNDLED IN:
- n/a
DIRECTOR(S):
- n/a
PRODUCER(S):
- n/a
DESIGNER(S):
- n/a
PROGRAMMER(S):
- n/a
ARTIST(S):
- n/a
WRITER(S):
- n/a
COMPOSER(S):
- n/a
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