A story-driven survival game set in 1970's Quebec in which Carl Flaubert, a private detective sent to the fictional Atamipek Lake to investigate a deceptively simple case, must solve the mystery surrounding the region while surviving the harsh Northern Canadian winter.
There's a lot more going on in this “walking sim” than is apparent at the start, both naturally and supernaturally. This contradicts the fact that, aside from the animals and the ghosts of the past, you are alone. Kona works hard to create a sense of isolation, making the experience much more effective if you're not surrounded by people helping you...
Kona is a walking simulator that makes an admirable attempt to increase the usual level of interactivity and player agency. While not all of those attempts pay off, and it suffers from some disappointing technical issues, it remains a highly absorbing and atmospheric adventure-survival experience.
Kona is a good game that shows where the indie developers and walking simulators genre should go. Sadly, developers didn't have enough money and energy to tie the ends of disparate episodes into a really worthy final.
What's interesting about Kona is that it brings together two seemingly incompatible approaches, and uses them to motivate and explain one another. The survival systems work to keep you on a narrative path, while the adventure-type investigations and puzzle solving give shape and motivation to the survival aspects. In Kona, there's more to the world...
Overall Kôna doesn't inundate the player with a complicated story, and Parabole allows this captivating narrative and stellar graphics to speak for themselves.
