Reading The Game: Kentucky Route Zero

For years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we've been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games. So we're running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective.

There are games where the story exists only to knit together gameplay elements and action set-pieces. There are games where story is an afterthought entirely. There are games where story is the point, which live on the screen as vehicles for telling tales and offering players agency or immersion or both. And there are games where the story is something you invent yourself, taking the lead role in a movie written in every button-press and roll-dodge.

And then there's Kentucky Route Zero.

It took seven years