Kentucky Route Zero's final episode is coming soon

(Image credit: cardboard computer)

Indie developer Cardboard Computer is responsible for Kentucky Route Zero, an episodic game of magical realism, secret highways, and strange Americana. The first episode of a planned five was released on January 7, 2013, and now there's a countdown suggesting the final episode could be out this week.

To access that countdown you'll need to be in the US and call the Kentucky Route Zero development status hotline on 1-858-WHEN-KRZ. You'll hear the following message: "The current status of Kentucky Route Zero is preparing for publication. More detailed information will be available shortly. You may wait with us if you want to. Please hold."

After chilling out with some hold music for a minute you'll be informed that your estimated wait time is three thousand and something minutes, a number that goes down if you stay on the line. The sleuths of Twitter and the Kentucky Route Zero wiki have recorded this message and done the math to calculate that it should hit zero this Tuesday, January 7, exactly seven years after the first episode was released.

If you'd like to learn more about Kentucky Route Zero, here's Joe Donnelly's making-of feature from a few years ago.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.