![]() While it can be hard to spot in any creative endeavor, sometimes there is a difference between a problem and a choice. “It was an inappropriate workload with just the two of us. ![]() With the company still a two-person team at the time, “it was way too much to take on,” says Kemenczy. However, getting Act 2 into the hands of players so quickly came at great personal cost to the team’s quality of life. “We felt that we had made a commitment to a certain timeline, and we really did our best to stick to it for that one.” ![]() The four-month turnaround on Act 2 built on the team’s newfound momentum - an anomaly in hindsight. “As our lives have changed in different ways, the project has always kind of been there. “Act 2 was really intense,” says Elliott. Whether or not Cardboard Computer was ready, too, is another story. The act’s final and haunting shot, of Conway’s delivery truck being quietly swallowed by the fleeting maw of Mammoth Cave, left players hooked and ready for more. The only way there was through Route Zero. Where it sent him, and players, was on a Rubik’s Cube of a road trip. They were enough to get Act 1 done by 2013, and the game made an immediate and lasting impression.Īs the sun set on Equus Oils, a midcentury gas station nestled in the hills of Kentucky, the game’s protagonist, Conway, was just stopping for directions. The Kickstarter funds would only go so far as to support necessary and costly software licenses, allow the team to expand on the game’s existing art assets, and buy some time. It received roughly an additional $2,000. Kentucky Route Zero found an audience before it was available, thanks in part to a Kickstarter campaign that ran in 2011. Kentucky Route Zero screenshot Image: Cardboard Computer/Annapurna Interactive Where it all started, and then nearly stopped ![]() So what did it take to finish Kentucky Route Zero? “This is definitely the ending we wanted to make.” “We’re really happy with Act 5 and everything else about how the final version of the game has come together, though,” says Elliott. “We just found a bug, even just today,” he says, speaking a couple of weeks before the release. Call the studio’s “Development Status Hotline” at 1-858-WHEN-KRZ, and you can hear it for yourself.Įven as the bearer of bad news, Kemenczy sounds unphased. Now at the end of its magical highway, Cardboard Computer is reflective with a similar calm. Most are just passing through, but many call it home. Rum-soaked bureaucrats peer into the abyss of its limestone halls. Yet within the hollowed-out earth beneath Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky, the flow of time is unhurried. Like tours of Emerald City, there’s so much to see, but so little time to take it all in. Perhaps that’s because of how precious everyone’s time on Route Zero truly is, leisurely as each trip has gone. Many others spared themselves the agony, opting to wait for the complete set. “It just always walks to them.”Īs the wait between acts has unspooled from months to years, many fans wondered what to make of it all. “No matter where they go, this thing follows them,” recalls Kemenczy. The trio, quickly and jokingly, notices a parallel with the 2014 horror film It Follows. “Whatever kind of life changes have happened, it just kind of has followed us, wherever, whatever,” says Elliott. In the face of such tectonic shifts, both the survival and evolution of Kentucky Route Zero hinged on its elasticity. And as of today, Act 5 is finally here.įor Cardboard Computer, among the biggest changes were two kids and more than one relocation. Set mostly within and inspired by the real-world Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the enigmatic title has rolled out over five distinct but serialized acts. Indicative of their collaborative spirit, each is credited with the game’s design. Writer and co-developer Jake Elliott and musician & sound designer Ben Babbitt make up its remaining two-thirds. Responsible for their game’s eye-catching aesthetic and its visual programming, Kemenczy makes up one-third of the team behind the critically-acclaimed point-and-click adventure game. With the conclusion of their nine-year production - and seven since the first episode’s release - the three-person game studio is finally ready to discuss what it took to see it through. Up until the very end, the creators of Kentucky Route Zero might still surprise you. For the past nine years, Cardboard Computer has been careful about not tipping its hand. ![]()
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