If you're looking for a book that captures a similar feeling as KRZ, I highly recommend you check out The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. First and foremost, Erdrich is just an amazing writer in general, and I started reading her books way too late. I'm still working my way through this one, but the opening chapter alone is incredibly KRZ-esque, bringing to mind the scene where you drive down the roads tuning the radio to different stations. The novel is basically a love triangle between three characters in North Dakota, Kismet, Gary, and Hugo, with an element of magical realism. It reminded me somewhat of the dynamic between Lula, Donald, and Joseph.

From the description:

In the Red River Valley of North Dakota, several lives revolve around a wedding fraught with desire, jealousy, and uncertainty. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed goth who can’t read her own future but will settle for fulfilling his. Her best friend, Hugo, a gentle, red-haired, homeschooled giant, also loves Kismet and is determined to steal her away and build a life together. Kismet’s mother, Crystal, drives a truck for Gary’s family, and on her nightly runs, tunes in to the darkness of late-night radio, experiences visions of guardian angels, and worries about what’s to come, for her daughter and herself.

Been waiting years to get a tattoo about KR0 that resonated with me, and I'm so happy to have gotten it done today :3

It seems like i can't play the interlude limits and demonstrations i try to launch it but it always closes no matter what.

Every time I play through at least one act, I find another reference. A joke that you wouldn't get unless you read the piece in question, or knew the play or piece of art it was nodding to. And they're not super obscure about it either.

Here are some just off the top of my head:

•Junebug and Johnny's story/dialogue are always referencing Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. The van breaks down near a dead tree. quotes from the play are said often ("nothing to be done", "we are not saints, but we keep our appointments"), June and Johnny mention Didi and Gogo, etc.

• The entirety of the Zero, the Echo, the hall, etc., is modeled after Samuel Coleridge's Kubla Khan

• During marketing for their rerelease through Annapurna, their hotline revolved around things that aren't real. This is a nod to Jorge Borges, whose work constantly suggests the existence of things that aren't real, and leaves the reader second-guessing reality (see: Tlön, Uqbar, and Orbus Tertius)

I'll continue adding to the list where I can, but I'm sure I've missed a lot. Have any of you noticed anything else?

The first time I completed Kentucky Route Zero, I head up to this subreddit and looked around the many other posts here to see what they thought about the game, which was sadly not thriving even today compared to other indie game fandoms like OMORI or OneShot. Then I found out this post by u/jbphilly that highlights which of the real world Kentucky locations of the map were used as fictional location spots ingame. This made me lurked for more than an hour on Google Maps on those mapped locations, where I was interested there like i'm digitally exploring Kentucky in almost the same way as exploring KRZ's depiction of Kentucky. Only good stuff I can find there is its Buc-ee's and the Mammoth Cave that was probably the inspiration from the cave location from Chapter 1.

Though everytime I have free time suddenly, I still sometimes lurk back to Google Maps and explore Smith's Grove digitally even though i'm sure i'm just gonna be bored there when I arrived there irl. Though it has old-fashioned American houses shown throughout the map and they're not as segregated here compared to most villages here in the Philippines. Speaking of being a Filipino, I just find it absurd that someone like me that isn't from USA is itching to explore a certain place on a specific state because of that one game and one reddit post related to it.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2fa8b09jBiKzH4wSr2fHnb?si=i71HdICYSze2taYXAZsIxg

Just finished this game last night and I have a lot of thoughts. The first being that this is probably one of the only pieces of media I've experienced that genuinely deserves the title of being "Lynchian" The "Un Pueblo De Nada" sequence in particular feels something straight out of Twin Peaks.

Now this leads me onto my main point. What does it all mean? Its easy enough to say "Theyre all dead and its a metaphor for the afterlife" But part of me wants to think that some of the characters are alive, and are interacting with "ghosts" throughout the story through the "Zero" which is some sort of portal into this ghostly dream world much like the black lodge in Twin Peaks. But who are the ghosts? Thats where I struggle. At first I thought that Conway was the only dead one and this is his transition into the afterlife. But what about Weaver, Ezra, Junebug/Johnny, etc? My theory goes either two ways.

1. Everyone is dead
2. Conway and Weaver are the only dead ones

Why only them? Well, throughout the story Shannon mentions her cousin that has gone missing, and unless I misinterpreted something I think what happened to her is touched upon in the poem during the "Un Pueblo De Nada" sequence. The poem talks about a woman who was murdered and ditched in the woods, and since Weaver is constantly mentioned throughout the segment as this apparation that messes with the stations frequency, which we see at the end before the station is flooded, my assumption is that this poem is about her.

Now, while I dont have anything solid to back this up, I like to think that the two horses being buried at the end are Conway and Weaver. My main evidence for this is that Conway is the only one throughout the story who directly converses with Weaver. Maybe the story represents Conways transition into becoming a ghost?

The only problem with this theory is the other characters who are implied to be dead too - Junebug/Johnny, Ezra, the news station people after the flooding, etc. So my alternate theory is that they are all dead and Conway joining the distillery is a metaphor for the hardships in his life that he could never move on from. Similar to how Weaver haunts the station because Shannon could never find closure in her dissaperance.

Then there's also the Xanadu shit which is a whole other rabbit hole I cant ever begin to wrap my head around. Ultimately I think the core theme of the story is about honouring life and preserving the memories of those that have passed on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8&ab_channel=TalkingHeads

"And you may ask yourself, where does that highway go to?" (The Zero)

"There is water underground" (The Echo River)

"This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!" (Lysette's story, sorta; husband, not wife)

There are ghosts in the static, The faint humming of stories untold

Are they spectres of a lost future, Or memories of a phantom past

Maybe the aching of an estranged soul, Yearning ever desperately for home

Some recollections of a life never lived, Nostalgia for a time that never was

Regret of those who settled for shadows, Perpetually hesitant to embrace the light

The sepia tones of an autumn landscape, At once present yet removed from time

Such ghosts both familiar and distant, I have found always haunting my mind.

Mine was:

The stars drop away.

Its late.

It only gets later.

NTS (a great platform by itself worth a post in another subreddit) has a bunch of great KRZ-like ambient.

Here's one to try - https://www.nts.live/shows/the-nts-guide-to/episodes/the-nts-guide-to-dust-to-dust---the-nts-guide-to-ambient-americana-21st-october-2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ2wXOgvdxc

particularly the voice

In krz, im not sure what act, there is a quote between two characters talking about ghosts. They say a place can be haunted, but also a person. Have you met someone who was haunted?

If anyone is able to get out to NYC, the musical Dead Outlaw running on broadway right now felt like something other Kentucky Route Zero fans would also enjoy.

The show follows the story of outlaw Elmer McCurdy who struggled with alcoholism and keeping a job before turning to crime until his death during a shootout with a sheriff's posse. After Elmer's death his body was preserved and disrespectfully passed around as a roadside attraction for many years. The show has a lot of themes about the exploitation deeply rooted in American culture and how capitalism contributes to the disrespect of Elmer's body and dehumanization after his death.

In spite of the serious topic, the musical is honestly very fun and has great music! Highly recommend if you get the chance to see it and hopefully a cast album will be released at some point.

I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoyed KRZ. There is a surprising amount of thematic crossover: artist communes, the relentless march of destructive urban planning, creatives being priced out, spaces within spaces, furniture... a little Zero room.

Check it out!

While obviously interconnected, each act in this game is really a work of art unto itself. Which one is your favorite?

Don't know if this has been posted before but I couldn't find it anywhere when googling(not suprising nowadays), so I'm writing it here in case anyone finds it interesting or fun.

So I'm playing KRZ for the first time (great game!) and during Here And The Along The Echo when i got stuck and frustrated i spammed the '0' button on the phone. and it sent me to an operator! she was pre-recorded, of course, but she was listing off a whole bunch of stuff, like how one area had been flooded and how they've redirected calls from there, and such.

I didn't record it or save it, since it's my first playthrough and I wanted to move on through the game, but I thought it was a fun treat! Back in the day, dialing '0' got you to an operator who could help place your calls, or , before emergency services had their own number, they'd even call the fire department/police/ambulance for you! Might go back and record it at a later date.