Kentucky Route Zero: PC Edition news & patch notes

This patch fixes an issue on Windows 7 and 8 that could cause a crash, black screen, or a missing cursor. Stay strong, paleo-computers! Your refusal to upgrade in the face of planned obsolescence is an inspiration to us all.

This patch works around text rendering problems in both Chinese languages, including some characters disappearing and some appearing garbled, which have come up on some Windows computers. We are still working on some refinements to rendering Chinese text. A related issue happens on some Mac M1 computers & we'll address that in the next few days. Thanks for your patience!

We're excited to share with you our first major update to Kentucky Route Zero since the release of Act V in 2020. This update includes a major overhaul of the user interface, called "Modern" mode, new language support and improvements to existing translations, and a sprawling rhizome of bug fixes and improvements. The new "Modern" interface is designed to be more flexible and readable on a wider variety of devices, including tablets and the Steam Deck. But we've also overhauled and improved the "Classic" interface from the original release, and its lo-fi companion, "Retro." With these interfaces co-existing, overlapping and criss-crossing, deconstructing the grands récits of human-computer interaction, and destabilizing the linguistic locus of the text through multiplication of translations, we could only call this event "The Postmodern Update". We plan one more update in the near future, in which we plan to add line rendering improvements for high resolutions, and full multi-touch input on the Steam Deck. Features and improvements: - Switch freely between "Modern," "Classic," and "Retro" modes. - New translations: Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish. - A new Japanese translation. - Steam Cloud sync. - Zoom in on details in the scene by holding the right mouse button or gamepad trigger, or pinching the screen. - Improved touchscreen support makes the game 100% hot dog compatible. Special thanks to Echo River Translators for the Chinese translation and Tsuchiya Ayumi for the new Japanese translation. We're always-already grateful for your support, thank you for playing! -jake+tamas+ben Technical Note: This update also moves the save/settings location, as writing data to the "Documents" folder has become problematic in recent operating system versions. Your save and settings data should automatically be copied to the new location when you run the game. See README.txt / RELEASE_NOTES.txt in the game's folders for more detail. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/4526707/bb30c76dab6d57444b431a538490ad933482d749.gif

Act V of Kentucky Route Zero is now available! This major update also includes all of the 'interludes'; free, experimental games which we published between acts & fill in the story and characters from different perspectives. We've also made many enhancements to the game, including localization into French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Korean & Japanese; full audio captions; and adjustable text size. This update also adds Steam Achievements for the first time! The three of us (Jake, Tamas & Ben) started designing this game in the middle of 2010. We published Act I in the beginning of 2013, and have been updating the game with new acts or interludes regularly since then. So it's been a long road! We are so grateful for the opportunity to have worked on this game at our own pace, giving it the time and resources it's needed, and to you all for being such a great audience over the years. Enjoy the game! -jake+tamas+ben

We're so happy to share that Kentucky Route Zero will be updated with the conclusion of the story, Act V on January 28, 2020. This huge update also includes the free 'interludes' we released between episodes, localization (French, Italian, German, Spanish (Lat. Am. & European), Russian, Korean & Japanese), and many other fixes and improvements. Thanks for being a great audience. Enjoy the new trailer!

Hi y'all -- Just wanted to pop in and share an update about what we've been working on lately. First, here's the poster art for Act V: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/4526707/bd5af959f7b6502ffa732784a881fc77a6b8ad07.png Work on Act V continues at a good pace. It's hard to imagine moving on from this project, but we're eager to share the concluding episode with you when it's done. Earlier this year, we published the free interlude between acts IV and V, "Un Pueblo De Nada." Definitely check that out if you missed it! http://kentuckyroutezero.com/un-pueblo-de-nada/ That's the news from us. If you'd ever like to reach us directly, you can email us at [email protected]. News usually hits our Twitter page @cardboardcompy first. And you can also follow us on Patreon, where we've been sharing some articles about our process and printing up some postcards & other art clutter. We also run an email newsletter if you prefer -- there are instructions to sign up for that in the game's steam install folder, in a file called "subscribe_to_mailing_list.txt" We're a small crew of only three people without contractors, and we're all working on the game -- no community manager or PR person -- so we don't keep up on the steam forums or other sites' comment sections, etc. Those links above are the best places to contact us or keep up to date on development. More soon, thanks for reading! -jake+tamas+ben http://twitter.com/cardboardcompy http://patreon.com/cardboardcomputer

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/4526707/583ad41489e1da2dd80c0397bd24261b857444e1.png Hi y'all! We've been busy working on the last leg of Kentucky Route Zero. Something new is coming very soon; you might have a sense of what to expect if you've been watching the airwaves. If not: just keep your eyes open. Meanwhile, we're writing to tell you that we have started working together with Annapurna Interactive to produce a console port of the game, which we're calling the "TV Edition." It will be available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We'll release it at the same time as we update the PC version with Act 5, which we're planning to do in the early part of 2018. There are some nice enhancements to the game that are coming as part of this TV Edition, and all of these will be ported back to the PC version also -- the two versions are basically identical other than the platforms they run on. Wanted to make sure we were clear with you all about that! Nathan Gary from Annapurna was actually one of our earliest kickstarter backers, way back in 2011, which was roughly a hundred years ago. Now, they're helping us by managing the process of submitting the game to consoles, and funding & organizing some other help for console-specific development & localization & misc. media work, so that the three of us can focus on finishing Act 5. It's important to us to be clear with you all about that as well -- we're totally focused on finishing Act 5! Working with Annapurna on this allows us to finish the game while console work happens in parallel. Annapurna is also helping us to localize the game in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. We've gotten so many requests for localization over the years, and it's always been something we've wanted to do, but never had the bandwidth to spen We want to write you more about this process; it's been interesting. Look for that in a future newsletter.d time on really getting it right. The group doing the localization for us has been great to work with -- it seems to be going well. Thanks again for your enthusiastic patience <3 More soon! -jake+tamas+ben PS -- Remember, you can always reach us at [email protected] :]

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/4526707/583ad41489e1da2dd80c0397bd24261b857444e1.png Hi y'all! We've been busy working on the last leg of Kentucky Route Zero. Something new is coming very soon; you might have a sense of what to expect if you've been watching the airwaves. If not: just keep your eyes open. Meanwhile, we're writing to tell you that we have started working together with Annapurna Interactive to produce a console port of the game, which we're calling the "TV Edition." It will be available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. We'll release it at the same time as we update the PC version with Act 5, which we're planning to do in the early part of 2018. There are some nice enhancements to the game that are coming as part of this TV Edition, and all of these will be ported back to the PC version also -- the two versions are basically identical other than the platforms they run on. Wanted to make sure we were clear with you all about that! Nathan Gary from Annapurna was actually one of our earliest kickstarter backers, way back in 2011, which was roughly a hundred years ago. Now, they're helping us by managing the process of submitting the game to consoles, and funding & organizing some other help for console-specific development & localization & misc. media work, so that the three of us can focus on finishing Act 5. It's important to us to be clear with you all about that as well -- we're totally focused on finishing Act 5! Working with Annapurna on this allows us to finish the game while console work happens in parallel. Annapurna is also helping us to localize the game in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. We've gotten so many requests for localization over the years, and it's always been something we've wanted to do, but never had the bandwidth to spen We want to write you more about this process; it's been interesting. Look for that in a future newsletter.d time on really getting it right. The group doing the localization for us has been great to work with -- it seems to be going well. Thanks again for your enthusiastic patience <3 More soon! -jake+tamas+ben PS -- Remember, you can always reach us at [email protected] :]

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/4526707/84baff321f7db373926ee87e226aa4f18efa59a8.png Howdy! We’re happy (and more than a little relieved) to let you know that Act IV is done & ready to play. This has been a challenging process for us, but we’re excited about the work and eager to share it with you. Here’s an observational trailer for Act IV.

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/4526707/84baff321f7db373926ee87e226aa4f18efa59a8.png Howdy! We’re happy (and more than a little relieved) to let you know that Act IV is done & ready to play. This has been a challenging process for us, but we’re excited about the work and eager to share it with you. Here’s an observational trailer for Act IV.