At Home with the Ghosts: Kentucky Route Zero’s Reworking of Capitalist Space

At Home with the Ghosts: Kentucky Route Zero’s Reworking of Capitalist Space

Equus Oils is a gas station like any other. There’s a superintendent, a general store, a few tanks, that strange sloped roof and a giant metallic horse. A sculpture of craftsmanship, of individuality, not given a name. When we move Conway into the basement of the station, the writhing mess of wires and pipes unveils a secret world. It is still haunted by its prior inhabitants, still echoing with their voices. The horse’s head has a body, a soul, but it is still shaped by the business it embodies. (more…)

Busy and Poor: The Gentle Violence of Kentucky Route Zero

Busy and Poor: The Gentle Violence of Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero is not a violent game: it has no swords, no guns, no combat. It’s not a traditional horror game, either, with no jump scares or gore or monsters. And yet… it is a game about violence, and a game that uses horror elements to drive its themes home. (more…)

Why I’ve Loved Waiting for Kentucky Route Zero

Why I’ve Loved Waiting for Kentucky Route Zero

According to Steam, before this week I’d last played Kentucky Route Zero in 2014. I was a different person in 2014: fresh out of college, working at a terrible job, my dreams of writing but a twinkle in my eye. I played games, sure, but it wasn’t until the next year that I’d start writing about them, really considering them as cultural objects and not just fun ways to pass the time. (more…)