Kona is an adventure survival game developed by indie studio Parabole. Set in 1970, you play as Korean War veteran and private detective Carl Faubert out on his latest job.
A rich industrialist and magnate hires Faubert to investigate the vandalism of his summer home in a small town out in the northern Canadian wilderness. However, when a blizzard suddenly hits, you soon find out there is much more going on in this eerie and surreal village.
Kona bills itself as an atmospheric, narrative-driven game. If you’re like me, then Kona has already raised every red flag for you. Every indie game calls itself an atmospheric narrative, but the majority just end up being “walking simulators.”
Games like Dear Esther and Firewatch have inspired countless developers to slap together games with unique artstyles, label the stories as “deep” and ship them off to Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter. Gamers are rightfully wary when a game like Kona comes along, but after hearing praises from early access players, I decided to give it a chance.
Firewatch is a good place to start when comparing Kona, which looks and feels like a snow-ridden Firewatch. It’s as if the developers put Firewatch and the Coen Brothers’ film “Fargo” into a blender. Narratively, they diverge on how they treat their stories, but the basic premises are the same; you begin uncovering a deeper story than originally presented.
Kona separates itself from other games with its courage in letting the player explore the village however they want. After a front-loaded, exposition-heavy first 10 to 15 minutes, the player is free to roam. There is no fake non-linear gameplay here either: You can truly tackle the game however you choose.
While the storyline of investigating the vandalism guides you at first, there are several other mysteries to explore at the same time. However, it was not initially clear how, and if at all, these storylines connected. Combined with the freedom the player is given, the story felt disjointed.
For a game that calls itself narrative driven, I didn’t feel like the story was driving my actions at all — I was just completing whichever task I happened to stumble upon.
The small cast of characters is not fleshed out enough to make me care for them. Lacking any emotional connection made it more difficult to bring me into the world of Kona.
Gameplay consists of exploring the village, solving puzzles, discovering the story through letters and journals and uncovering the supernatural elements of the game.
There is a combat system, though wolves provide the only enemy type, and the fighting feels clunky. The blizzard setting also offers more than mere aesthetics, as you must manage your warmth and stress by creating fires and finding shelter from the frigid northern Canadian weather.
I never felt threatened in this game, though. I never died from combat, and the survival system was easy to manage; this means the only gameplay I was ever focused on was exploring the village, collecting clues and solving puzzles, which was serviceably entertaining, if not sparse.
Luckily I loved the artstyle of Kona, so I didn’t mind running across the map. The snow-covered town encapsulates a feeling of isolation and loneliness. Other times, though, standing in the woods during a snow flurry can feel majestic and wonderful.
However, the developers still have some work to do with animation, as the wolves roaming the town are not fluid enough in their movement. Parabole was able to get away with it this time with so few modeled characters in-game.
Kona could have greatly benefitted from a better sound design and sountrack. The sound desgin captures the nuances of the snow cruching under your feet and the howl of wolves but still left something to be desiered in the sound of the weather and rummaging through houses. The opening track was great, but the rest of the soundtrack fell flat and quickly became repetitve.
My biggest complaint is the game’s performance. The loading is some of the worst I have seen in a long time. New areas are loaded by freezing the gameplay while a loading icon swirls in the middle of the screen — similar to Netflix buffering a video. Even on PC, this process can take up to 10 seconds and happens frequently, sometimes even multiple times within one minute when travelling over multiple load areas.
This becomes a real problem when going from one side of the map to the other since the sudden freezing of the game is so violent and jarring that it rips you out of any immersion you had in the game.
Besides the loading problem and one hard crash, performance was fine. Framerates are stable and I never saw any glitches or bugs.
Which brings me to the part of the review where I talk a moment about the developers.
Kona is the first feature release for the Québécois studio Parabole who, per their LinkedIn account, consists of only nine employees.
Putting Kona in the context of a game made by such a small team, it’s quite the accomplishment. Even though the game was years in the making, every aspect of a video game — graphics, story, gameplay, sound design and performance — is well polished for a debut game with only a handful of people working on it.
Parabole shows a lot of promise as a young indie studio. If they can fix the technical issues and improve their writing of story and character, then the sequels to Kona — which they claim to already be working on — have the chance to be great games.
While the $20 price tag is a little too expensive, I’d recommend anyone try out this game once the price comes down.
Kona, an adventure survival game by Parabole, was released March 17.
