Kentucky Route Zero headlines four new indie adventure releases

Written by Jack Allin — June 15, 2013 at 12:00

It may be a slow time for big-name adventures right now, but that hasn't stopped the indies from cranking them out this month, with no fewer than four new releases in recent days.

Kentucky Route Zero: Act 2

After leaving us scratching our heads but desperately craving more with its surreal debut installment, the five-part Kentucky Route Zero picks up right where it left off in Act 2. This "magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in Kentucky and the mysterious folks who travel it" once again casts players in the role of Conway, an antique furniture deliveryman simply seeking to make his final delivery, along with his rail-thin old dog in a straw hat and a TV repairwoman he picked up along the way. But nothing is as it seems on Route Zero, and the group will find themselves navigating a bizarre new set of dream-like environments and obstacles.

Available exclusively as part of a full-season purchase for PC and Mac, Kentucky Route Zero: Act 2 can be found at official website, which offers both DRM-free downloads and Steam keys.

Jack Haunt: Old Haunting Grounds

Adventure gamers know better than anyone that being dead isn't the end of the world. In fact, it's often the start of a glorious adventure. In the lighthearted '50s-era supernatural pulp mystery Jack Haunt: Old Haunting Grounds, players will control the eponymous character, a long-dead ghost who now has just one night to "unravel the house’s ghastly tale, discover whodunit, raise the dead, find your remains and live out the fantasy of being a dime-store novel detective. And if you can’t find your body before the sun goes down? Then it's lights out for good for ol’ Jack the Private Investigator."

Jack Haunt: Old Haunting Grounds can be purchased for $5 from the developer's website, exclusively for PC.

The Perfidious Petrol Station

Leisure Suit Larry may still be dragging his heels, but the titular star of The Perfidious Petrol Station is already out prowling the streets. No, not like THAT! All Nancy's really trying to do is tank up on her way to the "Big City", but she quickly "discovers more than she bargained for in this gruesome gas station. Relying on her wits and the help of her best friend and crack-fiend, Susie the Drug Addict, things start to go from 'bad' to 'weird' as she must not only find vital fuel for her car, but also put a stop to an armed robbery, defeat an ancient and evil (but extremely polite) cult, and show a young man that becoming a hippy is never the right answer."

Originally released as part of last summer's Summerbatch indie sale, this comic adventure has now been upgraded with full voice acting and released as a standalone adventure. You can download The Perfidious Petrol Station for PC from Desura or FireFlower Games for $4.49 or €3.99, respectively.

Alone in the Park

The adventure genre is full of games starring likeable characters who meet memorable characters on epic, heroic quests... Alone in the Park is not one of those games. Promising a "slow-paced, low-octane blend of text and graphical adventure gameplay", here players control "a rather misanthropic gamer who finds herself lured away from her computer to embark upon a real world quest: finding hidden treasure in a National Park. Annoyingly, doing this requires her to locate and reassemble pieces of a treasure map. And instead of being populated with cool creatures like giant vampire squid bats or something, the park's forests, lakes and mountains are home to the lamest NPCs imaginable."

Originally released as a browser-based freeware adventure in 2011, Alone in the Park has received a "major revamping" for its commercial release for PC, Mac, and iPad. The iPad version is available now for $3.99 on the App Store, and the $5 PC/Mac versions will be launched shortly on the official website.