Defamiliarization and Poetic Interaction in Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer, 2013) is an episodic “magical realist adventure game” (Cardboard Computer, 2014). Although the game is framed as a typical point-and-click adventure game, from the start there are indications that there is something weird about the game, not just in terms of the story content and art direction, which are indeed quite unusual, but also at the level of the language of interaction. Games have developed a specific language and vocabulary for interaction that game players have learned to recognize. When interaction and gameplay does not follow these conventions, players
may find it takes some effort to figure out how to play a game, or in some cases find it difficult to consider a work to even be a game.