Last year, Telltale Games’ “The Walking Dead” gained a lot of attention (including a few game of the year awards) for its choice-based gameplay, offering more “choose your own adventure” than puzzle or action mechanics. It was reasonable to assume that this formula’s success would be followed, but certainly not in such a bizarre form as “Kentucky Route Zero.”

Originally a 2011 Kickstarter project described as a “magic realist adventure game,” “Kentucky Route Zero” definitely puts its own spin on player-choice storytelling. None of the choices you make greatly affect the world. The first choice you are given is to name the hat-wearing dog that lazily follows you around. One-sided “conversations” with that dog will reveal a back story about Conway, the player character, as you choose whether to discuss your employer (an elderly antique-seller) or your past drinking problems.

This novel way of uncovering background info comes in handy, since “Kentucky Route Zero” drops you into the world with little fanfare. The sun sets over a small, ornate gas station as a sputtering old truck pulls in from the highway. A man with glasses watches from a chair beside the gas pumps as a tall man in a flight jacket and a lanky old dog exit the truck. The tall man surveys the scene, waiting for you to click something. Only by speaking to the man at the pump do you learn that Conway, the tall man, is a truck driver making a delivery that requires him to find The Zero, a mysterious underground highway.

Underground highways, though, are among the most normal things you’ll encounter. There are people playing board games in the gas station basement, a young mathematician who asks too many questions and may or may not be a ghost, and you might even find an empty church echoing with the sounds of tape-recorded hymns.

Everything is presented in a clean, minimalist, angular style, successfully blurring the line between 2-D and 3-D. Between locations, you’ll be taken to a black-and-white road map screen with a tire representing Conway’s truck following your clicks through the back roads. While most games give players direction by painting big, colorful lines on their maps, the characters in “Kentucky Route Zero” merely give you landmark-based driving directions, telling you to “turn left at that old tree that’s always on fire.”

Should you choose to ignore these directions, you’ll come across small vignettes that have no bearing on your quest for The Zero. Most of these are told entirely through text and sound. The outdoor crickets will fade away as you enter darkened diners and shops, with screenplay-like descriptions guiding you through interactions with their melancholy inhabitants.

Similar to wandering the streets in Twin Peaks, “Kentucky Route Zero”is good for trying something totally different. Act One is about one to two hours long, and is available now at kentuckyroutezero.com for $7, or you can pay $25 to get all five as they are released throughout the year.