One of my favorite games of all time is coming to Netflix
If you haven’t had the joy of playing it just yet, a game that’s coming to Netflix might be reason enough to keep your subscription a little longer. Later this year, a mobile version of the point-and-click magical realist narrative game Kentucky Route Zero by developer Cardboard Computer is coming to Netflix exclusively, with all five amazing acts available to play right from your smartphone.
I don’t want to spoil the game or its many amazing interludes with too much description, but the butchered and oversimplified premise is that you’re following a handful of people that come together on the path of the magical (and, at times, depressing) Route Zero — a fictional… let’s say “road” somewhere in southern Kentucky.
A trailer for the PC version of the game.
I’m not sure how the mobile title might vary from how things work on other platforms, but the PC version of the game uses vector-based graphics in a point-and-click navigation scheme, with incredible music, atmosphere, and a deeper-than-expected narrative. Outside of moving your characters around various scenes throughout the game’s five acts, much of the interaction and advancement is dialogue-based through the options you choose. The game is less pointy-shooty and more thinky-deepy, with themes and ideas that touch on a broad range of human experience, and some of the act’s various interludes have been pretty incredible —one required dialing a number from your own real-world phone.
Fans of more experimental forms of entertainment may be as enraptured by Kentucky Route Zero as I was, and I consider it one of my top five favorite games of all time.
The news of a Netflix-exclusive mobile port comes from Netflix’s Geeked Week virtual fan festival. It wasn’t mentioned inthe showcase video(that I can find), Cardboard Computer hasn’t mentioned it on its site orTwitter account, and it wasn’t included in the announcements on Netflix’s site, but a short teaser includes it:
PR confirms that the mobile version of the game will be exclusive to Netflix, though it’s not clear how long it might be exclusive for. We’ve reached out for additional information.
Subscribers can also look forward to other Netflix games, but one is available right now. Poinpy is a new vertically scrolling platforming game from Devolver Digital and the developer behind Downwell — but this time, you’re moving up!
But that’s not all; two other games by Devolver Digital are also coming. There’s Reigns: Three Kingdoms,a sort-of card game with a Tinder-swiping spinset in the Han Dynasty and the fifth entry in the somewhat formulaic but fun series. Terra Nil,previously a PC game also published by Devolver, is a city-builder focused on responding to a climate crisis, now coming to mobile.
There’s also a new narrative RPG called Shadow and Bone: Destinies, a game based on the Netflix reality series Too Hot to Handle, another based on the Money Heist series called La Casa De Papel, a Queen’s Gambit chess game, a platformer based on Japanese Folklore called Lucky Luna, a turn-based strategy game called Desta: The Memories Between, and a management game called Spiritfarer. It’s a lot to take in, you can peruseNetflix’s monstrous list of game announcementsand see individual trailers there.
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