Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition is Coming to Xbox One

When we started working on Kentucky Route Zero, we thought we were making a pretty conservatively-scoped game — a short, moody, non-violent game about exploring a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky. As the three of us got deeper into the project, we kept finding new tunnels and stumbling over new ideas, and the game grew in scope & scale. We split it into five episodes (acts). Then we started making interludes, small standalone-but-related games, between each act. We wrote a play, set up an interactive phone line, recorded a pop album…

And now here we are, approaching the end of the project, happy to share that Kentucky Route Zero will be coming to Xbox One. We’re calling this version the TV Edition, and it includes the complete game — all five acts and the interludes that support them — tuned just for our favorite domestic appliance: the TV.

Maybe you’ve already played Kentucky Route Zero on PC, and are just excited to play it on your Xbox One because it’s hooked up to the tiny black-and-white set your grandmother bought in the 1970s that you can’t seem to part with because everything on that screen just looks better, more vivid, more alive. That’s great.

But if you haven’t encountered Kentucky Route Zero before, the TV Edition is a great place to start. You can sit down and run through the whole story (from the antique furniture deliveryman arriving at a country gas station at sunset, across the nocturnal highways of Kentucky, into Mammoth Cave and the mysterious Route Zero, along the storied Echo River by ferry, and finally …) all in a protracted, surreal night. Or you can break it up, like a TV show, or a series of chance encounters with someone you’re sure you recognize but not sure from where.

We take a “when it’s done” approach to release dates, but we’re expecting Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition to be available in early 2018. Hope to see you then!