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Act IV is finally out! I've been waiting for this for ages, and it hasn't disappointed.

Anyone else playing this beautiful, elegiac masterpiece of interactive storytelling?

jake elliot taught my game design class, is helping a lot in feedback on developing it's snowing hard and beautiful, and is basically my game design mentor i guess.

i havent played act 3 or act 4. i'm waiting for act 5.

!!!
I'm so stoked

It's truly one of a kind with many imitators now, including me if I were talented enough to figure out how they do certain effects.

Act IV was great and while Act II is my favourite so far they just keep topping themselves on the technical and staging and dialogue side of things.

I don't understand people that are waiting 6+ years to play it all at once, each act feels like a self contained story arc that just shares the same characters. The characters have a very specific goal of getting to one location and that's the only through-line between episodes imo, that and the world building which I think is more effective over long periods. It'd be too overwhelming all at once I think.

what school did you go to? apparently he taught a quarter at mine and i didn't find out until last year when i found out my roommate took the class.

school of the art institute of chicago. he doesn't teach there anymore, moved away to, well, kentucky, with his girlfriend iirc

fwiw i also know ben babbitt (the krz composer) and took two classes with him including analog synthesis. he's a great guy but he's also as art school as they come, very much someone who's uninterested in anything even vaguely populist. but i learned a lot from how he worked with the emu modular and it helped a lot with my own sound approach, so

Yeah, I agree. KRZ really shines as a piece of long-form, serialized storytelling. The narrative is carried mostly by theme and feeling. Having a little bit of distance between each act lets things settle and get a bit fuzzy in a way that I think adds to the sense of myth. It's an unintentional side effect of their freeform creative process, I'm sure, but it's not entirely unpleasant. And besides, anticipation is a wholly under-appreciated emotion.  :)

I wouldn't even play the whole game from start to finish without also playing the (free, I might add) interludes that were released inbetween. Especially since each one is stranger and more inventive than the last, and impresses itself a little more closely into the real world. There's one really lovely event that happens in Act IV in particular that only makes sense if you've called the Echo River automated telephone guide (270-301-5797).

That said, I'm definitely going to do a second (and third) pass once it's all out, to do a closer read of the text and try to pick up on all of the threads and allusions.

They really have been outdoing themselves with each additional entry. The quality of the writing is head-and-shoulders above most of the other video game writing I've experienced, and uniquely theatrical, too; you can tell that the team has an excellent grasp on dramatic technique and setpieces. The game really captures that same sense of intimacy that a great play does, too.

In my Top 10 Videogames of All Time and it's not even finished yet.

Would definitely recommend this now all the acts are out.
Playing it for the first time and enjoying it so far.

They are? I can't find any news about Act V anywhere.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh wait you are totally right.

"The game is split into five acts. Acts I, II, III, and IV are available now. The remaining act will be released when it's completed. Taken as a whole, Kentucky Route Zero is roughly the length of a summer night." (http://store.steampowered.com/app/231200/Kentucky_Route_Zero/)

I got the season pass version in the Humble Bundle, it says 'Act V' in the game itself but I guess it's not playable.