Kentucky Route Zero: Act 4 opens with a giant, robotic woolly mammoth perched on a boat, and gets stranger from there. The weirdness serves as a valuable storytelling tool, not a gimmick, and is tactfully employed to offset presuppositions we don’t even know we have. Though the imagery is fanciful, it opens the door to this short but excellent adventure game episode’s exploration of truly serious themes: the desperation of poverty, the nature of friendship, and the impending threat of death.

A giant mammoth on a boat.

“ Like Huck and Jim, the Route Zero protagonists follow the endless current toward an unanticipated destination: self-discovery

The Mucky Mammoth

“ There’s no hard line between player character or NPC party; at any moment you might be asked to change roles in a scene

Characters standing in the shadows.

“ Act 4 keeps finding ways to change up the talking and keep things from feeling stale

A roaring prehistoric beast.

In previous Acts, the subterranean journey down Route Zero has felt intrinsically rooted in the hill-and-cave country legacy of the Kentucky highlands: coal mines, distilleries, bad jobs, gospel music, poverty, apocalyptic spirituality, and mystical backwoods folklore wrapped in the twilight of magical realism. These elements are all still present, but Act 4 broadens the scope of the storytelling and embraces the rich, esteemed legacy of literature’s river stories. The journey down the Echo and the striking, somber encounters along the way seem inspired by an Americana as old as Mark Twain. Like Huck and Jim, the Route Zero protagonists follow the endless current toward an unanticipated destination: self-discovery and a renewed understanding of their purpose. Though I appreciated the tranquil and maudlin tones of Act 4, it’s the first episode in the series that didn’t scare me. It’s deeply consequential, but the de-emphasis on menace took a little away from the shadowy mystique that penetrates every aspect of the gloriously realized artistic vision.Like previous episodes in Kentucky Route Zero, Act 4 regularly places you in control of multiple characters in the same conversations, constantly shifting your perspective and control in discussions. There’s no hard line between player character or NPC party; at any moment you might be asked to change roles in a scene. The clean and simple interface kept this unusual dynamic from becoming confusing, and thanks to a clever script the constantly changing perspectives built up my empathy for the characters.And then came wonderful, surprising moments where I suddenly lost control of a character and they stepped out (quite literally) on their own, autonomously making decisions that, whether coincidentally or by design, usually lined up with a behavior I would have chosen for them. These moments are few and far between, but when they happened they always made sense and added an air of comedic shock and genuine tragedy to the story. I happily discovered the sparks of independence made Conway and the other characters feel more like people and less like avatars and instruments of my will. Even when I disagreed with their choices, I respected them.Act 4 is a short affair, easily completed in a couple of hours, but there’s a surprising amount of variety in the storytelling method during that time. Route Zero is mostly a game about people talking, and Act 4 keeps finding ways to reframe that mechanic. One creative party encounter was experienced entirely as a series of security camera video tapes viewed by people I’d never met, long after my party had passed by. Another was played out in a haunting, beautifully written river-raft tour through a subterranean wildlife preserve, and a third through the playful and thoughtful journeys of a wandering child capturing sounds on a handheld tape recorder. There’s plenty of standard walk and talk, but Act 4 keeps finding ways to change up the talking and keep things from feeling stale.All these scenarios and portrayed in a lovely, minimalist graphical style that makes tremendous use of carefully chosen muted colors and shadowing to create a sense of surreality. The camera work is especially well implemented, with constant subtle zooming and panning that brings a sense of life and motion that’s unusual in adventure games. The simulated flatness of the art is so well executed it lulls me into forgetting the characters are moving through a 3D space, and more than once this is startlingly exploited as the perspective twists or zooms to reveal the layered reality of the setting.Thematically, the transition comes at a perfect point in the broader Kentucky Route Zero story, as our heroes begin the chapter in a meandering, listless wandering, and through their encounters along the river, their way toward surrendering to who they are, or changing to become who they want to be. As one character observes: “All people need is enough to pretend they’re home, and we can make it anywhere.”