Kona Reviews
Kona is a wonderful and lovingly crafted accomplishment. It's charming, magical, and smart enough to instill real motivation in its players and layer its cast in realist ways. Kona might be the first of four planned games, but it also happens to be a great standalone adventure that'll have you reaching for the thermostat in no time.
Spanning several hours and sporting a number of more traditional game features, Kona feels far meatier compared to your average walking sim. The combination of nonlinear design and survival mechanics certainly help to dispel some of the issues I have with the genre. That said, the vagueness surrounding some puzzles, frequent backtracking, and a somewhat dissatisfying finale left me with mixed feelings despite introducing some welcome changes to the formula.
Kona is a well crafted experience thanks to a good history accompanied to a simple but effective gameplay.
Review in Italian | Read full review
An interesting adventure that saddly becomes as cold as its plot in terms of gameplay. This game is a new walking experience through almost empty but with lots of items in order to make our research. Good ideas, weak development.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It may not be the best in the genre, and it certainly has its problems, but you’re given an intriguing mystery to solve in an interesting and unique setting.
It's tremendous at creating its distinct atmosphere and then drawing you deeper in. It's witty, spooky, and achieves an ideal sense of urgency. Weird, clamant and intriguing, this is well worth a look.
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.
Review in Russian | Read full review
The debut title from Parabole shows us that a good, well written story and a fascinating setting aren't enough to create a convincing narrative first person adventure. The derivative gameplay is often sloppy and confused, resulting in an experience far from engaging or satisfying. Technically more than modest, it's a game we could not recommend, not even to the fans of the genre.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Overall Kôna doesn't inundate the player with a complicated story, and Parabole allows this captivating narrative and stellar graphics to speak for themselves.
Kona isn't a bad game, it has several qualities like its atmosphere, its narrative and its survival aspect, except for the exhaustion system. But, Parabole�s game has too many weaknesses to captivate us, like a slow rhythm seconded by a feeling of filing. You should eventually discover it in a moment of scarcity or to take a break between two AAA games, which might be difficult considering how this first trimester is exceptional.
Review in French | Read full review
KONA wants to tell an interesting story within the construct of a survival-adventure hybrid game. It succeeds more greatly at doing the latter but even the story provides enough intrigue to merit seeing the brief game through to the end, as ultimately off-the-mark as it becomes. If you're a fan of either genre by which it's inspired then you'll find something to enjoy in the snow-topped Canadian forests of KONA, but pack lightly — it'll be a short and somewhat forgettable stay.
An inventive and relentlessly atmospheric detective effort, Kona's last minute stumbles and clumsy combat system don't considerably detract from an effort that breathes some fresh life into the first-person adventure genre.
While the overarching story in KONA will no doubt leave you cold, the tense atmosphere at the centre of its snowstorm setting will warm your desire to see it all the way through to the end. It should also be applauded for trying to add a surprising number of mechanics to what's ostensibly an adventure game, and while the survival gameplay ultimately feels superfluous, it at least works well in service of developer Parabole's presentational aspirations – which is more than can be said for the pointless combat and distinctly average collection of puzzles.
Kona offers a successful mix of Survival, Mystery and Crime elements and whets the appetite for the next parts of the series.
Review in German | Read full review
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 an excellent survival game. It knows how to stand out from the crowd with his mysterious and captivating story. Too bad it suffers some technical weaknesses that
Review in French | Read full review
Kona is an interactive thriller set in a cold, hostile and surreal place, but its interesting gameplay mechanics are limited by a linear progression.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Kona is a first person game focused on exploration and survival where the narrative is very relevant. Kona is an interesting title to the supernatural lovers with a very good OST and a perfect quality-price ratio.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
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 than just surviving; it's a means to an end.
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 solve the puzzles or arguing against using a crowbar to fend off wolves when you have a gun in your possession (although that it is very sound advice).