'Kentucky Route Zero' starts at this Equus Oils gas station, where Conway looks for directions to 5 Dogwood Drive. — Annapurna Interactive/TNS
When the nearly decade-long journey of Kentucky Route Zero began with a crowdfunding 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-styled game that went out of favor in the early 1990s but was finding new life as a niche independent product.
There was no way of knowing it was to become one of the most thoughtful, heartbreaking and yet fantastical looks at modern life in America.