Kona

Kona is an “open world” investigation survival game/“Carl” simulator developed by Canadian studio Parabole, a studio which was founded by Alexandre Fiset, who used to work at Activision’s Beenox Studio working on Spider-Man games. However he ended up founding Parabole based on the lack of Quebec representation in video games. The original vision for Kona was to create four 1-2 hour episodes with two playable characters, one being Carl (who you play as in this game) and another character named Tereza who doesn’t seem to be anywhere. However limitations involving Steam’s two-hour refund policy, the lack of popularity with publishers, time and money would lead to a lot of features originally intended for the game to be changed (such as the addition of the “Ice Wall”). Some other features that would be drastically backed up include “more wildlife, more combat, more horror moments in the game and also more time spent driving the snowmobile” according to another Reddit AMA. Parabole would also go out of their way to release a Kickstarter page, where it would make 44,000 Canadian Dollars out of the 40,000 Canadian Dollars goal, though this was a bit of a rough estimate as 26,000 was the m…

A potentially intriguing and interesting mystery, ruined by narration and uninteresting gameplay. A 1970's detective story during a blizzard sounds amazing, mysterious and has massive potential yet all of it is ruined by the narration which is actually the first time i've had this happen. You have a story that takes itself seriously while the narrator sounds straight out Stanely Parable with the amount of times they talk, everything you do they say something such as an item that is shown through environmental storytelling, notes, anything mysterious is just gone because the narrator tells you how it is and it really doesn't allow you to have moments to think and put the story together, overall it really pulls you out of the experience of what is shown to be serious, immersive story. The atmosphere is fantastic, immersive and animation's (first person animations) are incredibly well done to the point where it reminds me of Fire Watch and that's a great thing however gameplay is just uninteresting? most of the time it's just driving from area to area, spending little time in each location with puzzles that don't feel like puzzles since again the narrator gives clues on what to do. …

Love the old country atmosphere

A very very ok game. Upon reading other reviews it felt other may have not enjoyed the ending. However, the ending is what leads me to give this a thumbs up. I think this game has very fun highs and very low lows. It felt really good figuring stuff out yourself and piecing together the mystery but then it's easy to get lost on what you should be doing next. Overall this game was quite mid but I thought the ending tied all the pieces together in a way that made a lot of sense. I think I went into this expecting a more grounded mystery but nonetheless it wasn't a bad game. 6/10

Solid atmosphere and unique setting but slow, tedious exploration makes for a dull game overall Additionally, it claims to be "Verified" on Steam Deck but achievements are not earnable at all - extremely frustrating. Will be using an achievement manager to resolve this because a second, full playthrough like the one I've done, is not something I wish to do again.

couldnt go to sleep before finishing the game!!