Alum Creators of Kentucky Road Zero Featured in the LA Times

Earlier this month, the final installment of Kentucky Route Zero, a video game created by Jake Elliot (BFA 2011), Tamas Kemenczy (BFA 2007), and musician Ben Babbitt (BFA 2013) was featured in an article in the Los Angeles Times. 

 "When the nearly decade-long journey of Kentucky Route Zero began with a crowd-funding campaign in 2011, it was pitched as a surrealist road adventure with a retro look and a folksy tone, the sort of point-and-click-style game that went out of favor in the early 1990s but was finding new life as a niche independent product," says the article.

The game explores the harsh reality of life, particularly socioeconomic, through the lens and tone of magical realism. Balancing feelings of wonder and despair, the article explains the game as, “one of the most thoughtful, heartbreaking and yet fantastical looks at modern life in America." When asked about the content of the game as it has evolved over the years, Elliot shares, “There hasn’t been a moment where we had to change directions. This is a story about things that have been going on in America for a long time. It is not just a reaction to one moment.”

Completed with Annapurna Interactive, the fifth and final installment to Kentucky Route Zero is available now and released for PC, Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch.