![]() In particular, making Act II changed their schedule, as Kemenczy developed a repetitive stress injury from programming that inspired the team to rethink their pace. “To us internally we made like 10 games,” developer Tamas Kemenczy told me. They found new ideas to explore, programming tools got updates that required overhauls, and they struggled to find a sustainable pace for such a small team. The developers, a three-person team called Cardboard Computer, told me in an interview last week that they initially thought the game would be fairly small and take a few years to finish releasing. Since then, the rest of the acts have dribbled out in 2013, 2014, 2016, and now 2020, along with free interludes that brought in new characters and mechanics. Kentucky Route Zero was first announced via a Kickstarter trailer in 2011, and Act I came out in 2013. If you’re completely new to the game, let’s back up a bit. It was nice to carry around with me, picking it up and putting it down as I would a good book. I’ve always considered Kentucky Route Zero to be quintessentially a PC game, especially given its roots in point-and-click adventures, but it makes sense on Switch. I only struggled a few times to get a character to navigate to the right place without using touch. On Switch, you can also use touch controls when you touch the screen, you get the lovely interaction of placing a virtual horseshoe that swings around a post and draws your character to it. It’s had gamepad support for a while now on PC, so the controls are intuitive. (I haven’t played it on Xbox or PS4.) The art translates well to the Switch’s small screen and scaled up fine when docked into my PC monitor. Let’s get the rest of the business out of the way: Kentucky Route Zero plays well on Switch. But having arrived at Act V after traveling with these people, either personally or second-hand, the end of the game felt right. I might have been disappointed about some of the questions it leaves unanswered, and it would have felt cluttered with characters I couldn’t remember. I don’t think Act V would have had the same resonance if I hadn’t gone through the journey of the entire game to get there. I’m glad I replayed the whole thing, and if you’re returning to the game, I’d advise you to do the same. On a practical level, I had a hard time remembering where I’d left off since Act IV came out in 2016. ![]() When I first got my Switch review code, I was tempted to jump straight into Act V, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The opening moments of Act V get their impact from how different they are from the end of Act IV visually and emotionally. One of the most compelling things about Kentucky Route Zero is being surprised by something weird or beautiful. I won’t spoil it for you, even with a screenshot. If you’ve played the previous acts, it’s unlikely you’re here just to find out if you should play Act V, but: you should play it. Kentucky Route Zero is sad, but also hopeful-not the hope that things are going to be better, but the fact that things keep happening, so at least there’s always someone to meet or something to see, something to remember or something to let go.Īct V is the only new content in Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition. But then I forgot all about where we were trying to go and got swept up in all the other things the game is about: big business, and trash, and ghosts, and regret, and longing for lives you used to live or never got the chance to, and all the ways you can spend your time and also all the ways you can’t. I made a valiant effort to get that guy to make his delivery, at least in the very beginning. ![]()
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