Kona (2017)

Kona doesn’t ask if you’re ready for a murder mystery in the frozen Canadian wilds. It just drops you in, hands you a pack of smokes, a revolver, and a creeping sense that something’s not quite right… and then lets you stew in it.

You play as Carl Faubert, a middle-aged private detective hired to check out some petty vandalism in the dead of winter. Naturally, things spiral. One icy crash, a missing client, and a town full of half-frozen clues later, Carl finds himself knee-deep in a town that keeps pulling at threads... even when a few unravel entirely.

From the very start, Kona nails atmosphere. The world is oppressive but serene, harsh but oddly beautiful. You feel the cold. You hear the wind. And it’s all brought together by an omniscient narrator who sounds like he was pulled straight out of a vintage radio drama. His dry, slightly amused delivery gives even mundane moments some personality — though whether that personality works for you may vary wildly.

The game blends walking sim DNA with light survival mechanics. You’ll need to stay warm, keep your stress down (via very era-appropriate cigarettes), and manage health in basic ways. Technically, it’s billed as a survival horror game, but it’s more about snowy solitude and investigation than survival in any meaningful sense. The cold, constant narration, and isolated setting might remind players of The Long Dark, but this is far more linear and story-driven.

You’ll explore abandoned cabins, dig through people's belongings, snap photos, and drive from one desolate stop to the next, piecing together what happened in this ghost town. And that moment-to-moment gameplay can be strangely relaxing... at least when the UI isn’t getting in the way. There’s a sense of tactile immersion when you're flicking light switches or digging through shelves, and the flashlight/lighting mechanics are a nice touch. That said, despite a few neat locations, most environments look and feel pretty samey after a while — snowy road, wooden cabin, repeat.

Kona tries to punch above its weight stylistically. The title cards that pop up for new areas have a fun, Tarantino-esque flair that fits the game’s 70s setting. But even with that flair, the game feels older than it is. Visually, it leans heavily into chunky assets and dated textures that might’ve looked more at home five years earlier (of when it was released).

The depiction of winter, though?

Chef's kiss.

Blizzards feel immersive, and the sound design sells the chill.

Where things get shakier is with the story itself. Kona starts with a grounded mystery and ends in supernatural territory that feels underdeveloped. The mix of ghost story and small-town crime never quite gels, and by the time the credits roll, the resolution feels more familiar than fresh. It’s a narrative that promises big intrigue, but ends up leaning on genre tropes you’ve seen elsewhere — and done better.

The narrator, while central to the game’s identity, is a divisive element. He’s always there: explaining the plot, clarifying objectives, and adding color commentary. But the writing often lacks punch, and in English, the delivery feels stiff and out of sync with the tone. It’s one of those rare cases where switching to the original French might genuinely improve the experience. At its worst, the narration undermines immersion instead of enhancing it.

And while the game doesn’t flood you with puzzles, the ones that are there can be unintuitive. One in particular was a real head-scratcher — and not in a clever way, just a “how was I supposed to know that?” way. It was the kind of design choice that doesn’t respect the player's logic so much as it punishes them for not having the same train of thought as the developer.

Still, there’s a sincerity to Kona that’s hard to ignore. It’s rough around the edges, sure. But it’s also clearly made with care — and if you're willing to meet it halfway, it rewards you with a slow-burn, one-of-a-kind experience.

👍 POSITIVES

• Chilling, oppressive atmosphere that pulls you in • Excellent depiction of winter and sound design • Stylish presentation touches (like those Tarantino-like titles) • Strong sense of place and tone

🤏 MIXED

• Narration is constant — some will love it, others will really not • Story flirts with supernatural ideas but doesn’t develop them meaningfully • Survival mechanics feel more decorative than impactful

👎 NEGATIVES

• One puzzle in particular is genuinely unintuitive • Narrator’s delivery in English may break immersion • Visuals feel dated even for an indie title • Loading times are surprisingly long even on modern hardware

First, as a KickStarter game, this is one of the better ones I've played. It feels solid and complete and it's flaws arent due to that. However, the game does have flaws:

It's hard to see stuff, the game is very snowy, and driving is kind ofa chore and hassle because your windows are so frozen over and visibiity is bad. When the game takes place during night time this is also bad (can be offset by boosting gamma)

It's not really a puzzle game but there are lots of little annoying item gates. Sometimes they aren't really an issue, other times its really hard to find something because you dont know where to look.

The Game world is pretty big and spread out... I wouldn't say it is overly big but if you explore every nook and cranny (like i did, it will take quite a while)

There are lots of extras, consisting in the form of items, notes, and more. For the most part you dont have to actually explore a large degree of this game. However, this is also how the story is 'told.' The game will rail-roading you along the core necessities but its somewhat elective how much of the story you choose to pursue, or focus on.

Overall, I liked the story in this, and I thought the ending was brilliant. The setting was also cool and kinda unique.

However, I found the gameplay to be somewhat of a chore. Loot wasn't really interesting but I felt that I had better force myself to find everything almost everything out of fear of missing something.

This game has a lot of very racist dialogue and connotations in it's writing as it describes tribal clashing between white and indigenous natives of Quebec (I think it was) IT takes place in an older era and I think that might have something to do with it. On that note, as I played it i felt that I wasn't sure it was as necessary to be as prevalent as it was, however the setting is one in which basically everyone hates everyone in a small community for a number of reasons, so it goes with the overall theme of the game. I found this a bit off-putting at first, but by the end I began to view it in a more expository way when learning what had happened to the town. However, I would have taken a more cautionary approach here and offset this with a narrator-protagonist who clearly did not share the same opinions of the townfolk. (I'm not knocking the game for these choices, I just think it would have been a good move to have done it that way, if exploring such things since in this case, the protagonist-narator is highly opinionated and you hear all his thoughts)

All in all it was a pretty neat and cool idea, but it honestly wasnt that engaging or fun. Exploration was only a means to an end. You have a map, so you know where the 'main' areas are. Finding everything isnt really satisfying or 'worth' the time it takes. It makes up for this with an interesting story of drama and strife and a unique setting. Feels like a strange mix of influences such as Ethan Carter, (but without puzzles that are satisfying or the same level of intrigue) Everyone Gone To the Rapture (but far less mysterious or engaging) and something along the lines of Gone Home or Dear Esther (but with much more wandering) If you like stuff like those you'll probably find it at least worth a few hours.

After Carrion, KONA was the second game I played as part of my horror marathon for October. I honestly didn’t know much about this one. I got it on a deep sale and had it sitting on my backlog, until I realised this game was touted for its eerie atmosphere and we were in the month for games with eerie atmospheres. After finishing it in about 5 hours I can definitely see why. KONA throws you into a bleak, creepy and desolate experience deep in the icy cold of 1970’s Northern Canada, where you are tasked with piecing together a mystery that gets more mysterious the more you uncover it. The game excels at giving you very little direction in terms of where to go, and it’s up to you to explore the environment as you see fit, as well as to reconstruct events with the information you gather. I wouldn’t necessarily say this game is hard, but it did leave me temporarily scratching my head at a couple moments. The premise here is simple though: the more attention you pay to the information around you, the more you’ll be able to understand what you need to do.

The sense of isolation in KONA is fantastic. Playing though the game, I had moments when I felt almost like a ghost, wandering through the world without seeing anyone else for hours. After a while, I started embracing the loneliness yet feeling more creeped out by it at the same time, because even though I probably wouldn’t class it as a horror game, KONA does a great job at eliciting a sense of uneasiness almost from the get go. There are virtually zero jump scares: everything is achieved through atmosphere, visual affects and sound, all of which are great. To top it all off, the narrator’s voice, which follows you throughout the entire game, is magnificent, both in tone and in how much it contributes to your experience. It is there to nudge you in the right direction here and there, to reflect your thoughts back at you, and sometimes even to provide some timely comic relief that works as a valve to release a bit of tension. I initially thought the voice would become annoying as it went on, but I’m glad they absolutely nailed this aspect in my opinion. The story is also quite interesting, in the sense that it keeps you guessing just what exactly is going on, but although I liked it from start to finish, I can’t help but feel it wraps up a bit too abruptly.

Gameplay wise, KONA is just okay. It feels a bit clunky at times and it’s definitely not as polished an experience as you’d like it to be, but it’s still very doable. Its most annoying aspect, however, is the constant loading moments the game throws at you out of nowhere. All of them last a few seconds and interrupt the flow of the game, and this lack of optimisation is a bit frustrating. I don’t know if the PC version has this problem too, but at least both main consoles suffer from it. Mechanically, there isn’t much to KONA, but I did appreciate the simple yet effective and logical survival mechanisms: you have to make sure you keep yourself warm whenever possible, otherwise you may die of hypothermia; you need to keep your mental state in check, which can be achieved via tobacco or alcohol; wildlife is also a threat, and the game gives you several ways of dealing with it. As a fan of survival games, I really appreciated this aspect.

Overall, I would definitely recommend KONA. Even with it being as short as it is, the game fully justified the money I spent on it. Its atmosphere and sound effects are impressive for an indie game, and because of the things it does well, its flaws aren’t enough to ultimately affect the enjoyment you get out of it in any meaningful way. A 7.5/10 game for me.

I gotta be honest with myself early on this one and just admit to myself I'm not gonna finish. Not because its bad, I would like to see how this mystery wraps up, but I'm to excited to finally start Fantasian tomorrow so I know I won't come back.

Fun little atmospheric mystery set in Canada though. Some genuine creepy moments and a nice little sandbox to search around in. It's not to big for what kind of game we got going here it feels just right.

You'll definitely be searching around for some items to help you progress further and I wish they were a little bit easier to find, but the game does want you to search them out and it's pretty well done.

If you like creepy mysteries and enjoy searching for clues and finding items to progress this could be a fun little game for you. There's definitely better out there, but this is by no means bad.

Critics' Score:

Metacritic: 73/100

I've had Kona in my library for a while, it had convinced me with a cool poster and the setting, a lost village in 70's Northern Quebec. I thought it might be an amazing indie experience, sadly while it wasn't bad at all, at any moment could elevate itself above average.

Although you play as a private detective, there's little "detective-ing" to do. In any way you do you elaborate your deductions, neither do any sort of real investigating. Sure, you walk around and open documents and stuff. As a detective story, which was the main reason why I wanted to play it, is a complete failure. The VO is incredibly boring, not the actor, but it does the detective work for you. However, to be fair, the game developers intended to do a "narrative" experience. So, let's rate the story.

It isn't bad, it isn't good either. As I said, it's a very average "gamish" story. Supernatural elements don't take too long to emerge, ruining what could have been an odd detective story with supernatural undertones. That's what probably killed the game off tonally for me. And the dialogue, in which the game relies a lot, you only talk with one living character, the whole experience is narrated via VO... Is bad, sometimes pretentious and shallow.

So what does the game do well? The atmosphere is very intriguing, and me, a scaredy-cat, found it created a very tense atmosphere of that "fear of the unknown" and because, we gamers when faced with things such as that, is in our nature that we... WE HAVE TO KNOW. So that was the main reason why I pushed through the story. I also enjoyed driving around in the Chevrolet.

I am a bit disappointed. I didn't expect a huge masterpiece, but I think the game has some cool ideas and if it had leaned more in its "detective" story, had created perhaps other AI-character to speak with, the game would have been better. Alas! Probably for short budget, it didn't happen. Anyways, graphically isn't bad, so I would be interested in what Parabole -the developer- comes up next.

Score: 55/100

I played this over about three sessions of playtime and the last one was quite a bit later than the first two due to life, so forgive me if my review isn't particularly accurate. I thought this game was interesting and engaging, but only if you are pulled in by reading things you find around the map and exploring the town without much direct guidance. I think it was a wonderful reveal of narrative, though I am sure I missed parts of the story due to not being thorough or not going back to places where I hadn't finished parts of the mystery before ending the game, but I think I got the gist of it.

My biggest qualm was the ending, though I think it was a setup for a future game and that is exciting! I just wish there was a bit more to the game because once I got REALLY into it, it ended.

I was searching around for some discounted games on GOG cause I've been on a gaming kick lately. I saw this game and the trailers gave off a sort of Firewatch & Longmire vibes.

As for the gameplay, this game just dodges the bullet of a pure walking sim like Firewatch. It does have that walking sim trope where you're in an abandoned area where everyone has disappeared or is dead. Though in a bit of a surprise there is one other NPC alive in the game you have a basic interaction with. It's the local old timer who has survived everything & is too old & stubborn to leave his cabin. Meeting Old Rosarie was a highlight for me. There's the other walking sim staples of wandering around and reading notes or seeing visions to piece together the past. Luckily you're given a truck to drive around the town with. It's cheekily called a "Chevloret" and in some of the spookier moments of the game there's a certain relief returning to your truck.

Where it goes beyond the walking sim mold is that you have some basic survival stats. The only one you have to really baby along is your warmth rating, the other two only come into effect with combat. That's another thing that adds a little gameplay to Kona, there's some simple combat mechanics. The only thing you fight are wolves, and I was terrified to approach them after dealing with the downright ferocious wolves of the Long Dark. These Kona wolves are much easier to deal with, most go down in 2 hits and don't completely wreck your day. They are easy to avoid as well, until you get into the last part of the game.

One thing that turned me onto this game is the promise of good music. The GOG listing mentioned a soundtrack composed by a Canadian folk band. This conjured up memories of the great folksy soundtrack of Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, but I was a little disappointed. Most of the ambient music is basic sorta spooky, winter mystery. It's not bad music at all, just not what I was hoping for. There were really only two folksy songs in the game that are used for radios and record players left in the town. I'd have appreciated the soundtrack reflecting more of the backwoods Canadian music of the area.

The player character is a mute and everything is conveyed by an omniscient narrator who has a great voice for a detective story set in the Great White North. He usually plays it pretty straight, but he does have moments of dry humor. Why they didn't just make it the detective's internal monologue & give the game a film noir vibe, I dunno.

Now onto the story, the point of these indie walking sim games. This means there be spoilers beyond this point. The story isn't really long, just a few hours. You can extend it, like I did, by being a completionist and exploring the whole town. You're a private eye called to a small secluded town in the northerns of Quebec that has been all but bought out by a business magnate. The tycoon, Hamilton, had his mansion vandalized & you're supposed to find out who's responsible. This quickly changes when you find your employer dead. With a heavy snow storm settling in, it's up to you to find out who killed Hamilton. The ensuing investigation does have some spooky moments I wasn't expecting, especially when you're deep in the ice caves. There's no real jump scares, but some of the cabins you visit set up some thick tension. It doesn't help that there's something weird going on as you find a few townsfolk frozen solid in ice, Mr. Freeze style.

Each cabin you visit shares a little vignette of the family that lived there and they are distinct enough. There's a very Catholic family with some issues, a park ranger and his educated wife, and a UFO conspiracy theorist, to name a few. Most have fled the area for the Northern part of the Lake, but some of them tie into the larger plot of Hamilton's death. Those ones usually have a frozen body that reveal visions of the inhabitant being attacked by an unseen force. And this is where I had a bit of disconnect with the game. You start to piece together some possibilities of what happened to Hamilton and what is freezing these people. You don't know exactly what has happened, but there's talks of Wendigos and a possible murder cover-up, then once you hit the northern forest it just all comes to a quick close. You find out there was a hunting accident that led to the death of a Cree woman & her boyfriend's heartbreak and anger turned him into a Wendigo that sought vengeance on the town. Hamilton, however, was murdered by the town doctor for reasons that are explained. I'm used to LA Noire style detective cases and I figured there'd be a few more steps in the investigation, but it goes from the 1st act to the 3rd. There's also a chunk of the map in the north that isn't explored that I was excited to visit.

The ending of the game takes place in the woods of northern area. Hopefully you've repaired the snowmobile or really enjoy walking cause your trusty truck can't go off-road. The north also has ice wolves that attack you, no matter what. You can't run them over with your snowmobile and if you don't stop to kill them, they chase you and drain your sanity survival meter. I also got disoriented in the woods, because it's hard to see the trails and reading your map takes more effort. The last level is where you encounter the Wendigo, and while they change the lore of the creature a bit, it does have an accurate look when considering some of the folktales surrounding it. You have a chase scene where you have to run from the creature. He also summons ice wolfs in your path and if you're going for the no-firearm run, this section is a real bitch, cause this game's not built for good combat. You run past some more frozen townsfolk, which I don't know if that means all the people who fled north ended up getting killed as well or not. You run to the docks and take a boat outta town, escaping the Wendigo.

All in all, it's a decent little indie game that doesn't last as long as I would prefer it to. The setting is nice and the story keeps you hooked with a few spooky moments. If you liked Firewatch, you'll like this. It makes me want to replay Firewatch actually.

This is a nice game! I stumbled upon it only two days ago and it took me around 4-5 hours to finish it. It's set in Northern Quebec, which isn't an area I've ever seen in any game. It's quite atmospheric and the puzzles and the mystery are thrilling. I enjoyed playing through it a lot.

There are two reasons why I deducted one star: a) the loading times between some areas can become quite annoying sometimes and b) the ending. I won't spoil it here but I had hoped for something different. I'd still recommend the game because it's the first three fourths of it are insanely entertaining, especially if you like exploring deserted towns with a touch of mystery. Dip all of this in a snow blizzard and you have Kona.

Rating: 7.5/10

Pretty cool game, literally, since it takes place in snow. Being from Canada I know Snow, and I always love seeing snow be a large part of any kind of fiction due to how beautiful yet oppressive it is. When there's snow everywhere it often lends a sadness to the atmosphere, and trying to do detective work during a blizzard when everything is engulfed in the white stuff is poetic in ways.

Aside from that, it's a walking simulator in some regards because you explore, but there are things to fight and puzzles to solve. The fighting is a little wonky, and the ending isn't quite as neat as it could have been, but solving the mystery is generally entertaining and feels like you're actually solving a crime. Plus the story is interesting.

There are some bad loading issues on PC that make traversing the environment --especially when you have to backtrack--incredibly annoying. But I do like the music and how the survival elements are very light. I think making them more serious would have been annoying.

Spoiler, but this is the end of the review so you won't miss anything about my thoughts... I'm just using this to explain the ending. Look away. So the beast appears and it should have been scary, but there wasn't really any dread. It felt a little lifeless and not intimidating. It sucks because it builds up to it and when it comes it's not as good as it could have been.