Stories about road trips are never really about the journey. They’re about the places the trip goes, the people who live there, and how they change the passengers along the way. What may be the greatest road trip game ever made is celebrating its fifth anniversary, and it feels just as relevant today as it did when it was released on January 28, 2020.
I should actually say finished, not released. The point-and-click adventure game Kentucky Route Zero tells its story in five episodes released at an astonishingly leisurely pace (the pace all good road trips take). Episode 1 arrived in 2013, the second episode came quickly after the first, and then the gaps between them grew longer until players waited more than three years for the final installment. Kentucky Route Zero is now available in one collected edition you could rush through in a week, but it’s a game that deserves to be savored slowly.
