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Kôna / Kona: Day One (Playing detective in frosty 70s Canada)

Dexter

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October, 1970. Another long and cold winter is beginning in Northern Quebec, Canada. The local Cree community clash with rich industrialist W. Hamilton, copper mine magnate in the region. The Crees accuse the latter of destroying sacred lands for the sole purpose of increased profits. Suspiciously, Hamilton’s summer residence and hunting manor is subject of vandalism and thefts. Convinced that the Cree are responsible, Hamilton calls Carl Faubert, a war veteran turned private detective, to handle the affair.

Carl never refuses an easy case, especially when the client has such deep pockets. He jumps in his faithful pick-up truck and heads up north to meet with Hamilton. Unable to find his client at the meeting point, Carl starts to search for him. After knocking on some doors, the detective finds not only the rich man is missing... but the whole area is deserted.

Where is the local population? What happened to Hamilton? Are the Cree involved?

Welcome to Kôna, an episodic game about investigation, exploration, survival and the mysteries surrounding the disappearance of W. Hamilton and the neighboring inhabitants.

Started with a KickStarter back in August 2014: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/studioparabole/kona-a-survival-adventure-game the first Episode of this series is set to release in Q1 2016, and it looks pretty good so far.




There's a Pre-Order for $7 on the devs site that grants access to a Beta version on February 8th: http://konagame.com/preorder/
 

Dexter

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Did you try it?
Not yet, it's still not a "complete game" since they are still working on it and they only have like the first quarter of the game or so playable for people to point out Bugs and stuff. I got the GoG Key and later Steam key per mail: http://store.steampowered.com/app/365160/ but I'm going to wait till it's out of it's "Early Access"/"In Development" phase and till they re-implemented VR support a few months down the road.

You incarnate Carl Faubert, war veteran turned private detective. You are hired by the rich industrialist William Hamilton to investigate vandalism made on his property. But when you arrive at the rendezvous point, he’s not there, and you feel like something is not right.

In this beta build, you can:

  • Explore up to 30% of the full map for 1-4 hours of gameplay
  • Collect items by exploring houses and solving puzzles
  • Survive and enjoy the cold!

Cheers!
 

Burning Bridges

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I have this on the radar since they showed the first demo Playing a lot of TLD at the time and a similar theme with French voiceovers instantly clicked for me. Would just suck if it turns into a not-game like Firewatch. Otoh I hope that Kona will be the game that Firewatch should have been had it not been designed by complete morons. (i.e Fireplay instead of Firewatch)

Have to try the EA version actually.
 

taxalot

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It's out. Very interested in this. I was hoping Twin Peaks meet Fargo, but it actually looks like Firewatch in the snow.... ?
 

Zombra

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:necro:

Somewhere I got a free copy of this and finally decided to give it a spin. It's flawed but good, and short enough that it's worth playing too see the good stuff despite the meh.

So is it actual game with puzzle and crime solving logic elemen or one of those shitty pretentious walking simulator?
This is not a detective game so much as an adventure game with a detective in it, but it is fun finding all the diaries and assembling them together in your journal. There is certainly some adventure game silliness like find the magnet to get the key out of the hole. Mostly it's breaking into every house in sight looking for journals to read. There is also a very silly limited inventory system that means you can carry two guns, 6 generic spare hardware parts, a hammer, two first aid kits, heavy bolt cutters and 4 spare fire logs, but try to pick up a 5th fire log and you're fucked, which adds nothing except walking back and forth from your truck in the middle of an investigation. You'll get "puzzles" like an old timey cash register which requires a code to open like no real one ever did, and the code is "hidden" in a place no rational person would ever put it, although it wasn't too hard.

Most damningly, one of the first things you find is a (spoiler, but it's so early in the game it's not a big deal)
dead body. The protagonist takes one look at it, sees who it is, and throws a blanket over it. No looking through his pockets, no looking for a cause of death. It's a body, and that's the only thing you need to know. Uh what?

Soon after that you find evidence that
a magical ice wizard of some kind is attacking the townspeople
and
you immediately go into a retrocognitive dream world where you watch ghosts act out past events.
Sooooo yeah, treating this like a case that you're supposed to figure out based on the evidence .... not happening.

My last criticism, I tried to follow the evidence logically to build a picture of what happened, but reached a dead end almost immediately. Very soon in the case, my only option was "I guess I'll go around and break into random houses until I find something else." Make no mistake, this is an adventure game and you are gonna search the whole town for puzzle pieces, even in places it makes no sense for you to go. Just go there. Oh and don't forget to dig through every trash can you see.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I almost forgot - you have a flashlight in the game but flashlight batteries are not a thing. You just have a flashlight you can shine on things and it makes them lighter. So this game gets +a million points for that.

Lazy link to Steam review.
 
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Spukrian

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I played this a while ago and I liked it.

If the game had gone deeper into survival gameplay (hunger, thirst, sleep, etc...) I would've liked it even more.

At the end I was a bit disapointed... I had hope that there would be a few Alternative Endings, but there doesn't seem to be...
 
Last edited:

Outlander

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I played this a while ago and I liked it.

If the game had gone deeper into survival gameplay (hunger, thirst, sleep, etc...) I would've liked it even more.

At the end I was a bit disapointed... I had hope that there would be a few Alternative Endings, but there doesn't seem to be...

Devs said all the way back in 2017 that they had another 3 games planned in the same universe. Guess that didn't happen.

If you like this you might want to try out Kholat. Gameplay is more bare bones than Kona but the story is more captivating in my opinion. It's based on the Dyatlov Pass incident.
 

Spukrian

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Yeah, I guess the game didn't do well enough to warrant a sequel.

I played Kholat a while back but I haven't finished it. I'll get back to it eventually.
 

Rean

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It was okayish, got kinda boring after about 3 hours. Never got to finish it.
 

Zombra

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Yeah, I like everything I've heard about the sequel so far. In this thread the developer says that they threw out the idiotic inventory system from the first game, and also improved the pacing and design so you don't feel like you're just wandering around breaking into houses randomly in case there are clues there - there is more of a story to follow.
 

Rean

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Cool, the first game had some interesting ideas with the free exploration and crazy notes, hopefully they keep building on those while making it easier to get around.
 

Rean

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Not too far into Kona II, but holy moly, I just love how this game looks. Both the environments and the custom textures for everything are very pleasing to the eye. Not too sure on the other elements yet.
The English narrator sounds good, but he commits the capital sin of pronouncing Québec as Kwuh-beck, which is pretty embarrassing considering the game takes place there.
 

Rean

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Done with Kona II.

It was definitely very much unlike the first Kona, which felt more like an arthouse experience back when I first played it. It's a much more focused game - whether I liked it more I'm actually unsure. Kona II is a lot less frustrating than its predecessor, but lacks the things that made the first game special.

Kona II is a puzzle-y first person game with some occasional shooting parts and thrown-together survival mechanics (those were also its weakest segments, they are almost completely inconsequential and trivial). There's also a lot of walking in the snow and some running back and forth. It didn't feel frustrating, but it's there.

The game has one very strong thing going for it and that's the setting. There are very few games taking place in 1970s Québec, which is not just recreated faithfully, it is almost 1:1.

The voiceovers themselves are kind of awful. I don't know who they found to voice the few characters that speak, but all the native French speakers sound completely disinterested.

The texture work, on the other hand, is beyond fantastic: Kona II might just have some of the best props I've ever seen in a game. Even little things like the authenticity of the cereal boxes and the way the reins tied to the sled dogs move is insanely detailed. The graphics have left me amazed and will have a lasting impression.

There needed to be a better focus on a specific type of environment, as it keeps taking you from place to place. I felt the mansion was its strongest point; 'abandoned mansion' has been overdone as a setting, yes, but not in snowed-in retro Canada.

The story is kind of a mess. I don't want to be too negative about it, but it doesn't really follow from what they built from the first game and doesn't make a lot of sense, even up to the low energy ending.
 

OSK

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The English narrator sounds good, but he commits the capital sin of pronouncing Québec as Kwuh-beck, which is pretty embarrassing considering the game takes place there.

Isn't that the English pronunciation? That's how I've always pronounced it.
 

Rean

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The English narrator sounds good, but he commits the capital sin of pronouncing Québec as Kwuh-beck, which is pretty embarrassing considering the game takes place there.

Isn't that the English pronunciation? That's how I've always pronounced it.

Kwuh-beck is phonetically wrong. It's meant to be Keh-beck.
Many of our Founding Fathers spoke French, so this mispronouncing is more of a recent education thing. Either way, I don't usually mind when French is getting butchered, but when the whole game itself is taking place in Québec, hearing that creates a kind of dissonance.
 

OSK

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The English narrator sounds good, but he commits the capital sin of pronouncing Québec as Kwuh-beck, which is pretty embarrassing considering the game takes place there.

Isn't that the English pronunciation? That's how I've always pronounced it.

Kwuh-beck is phonetically wrong. It's meant to be Keh-beck.
Many of our Founding Fathers spoke French, so this mispronouncing is more of a recent education thing. Either way, I don't usually mind when French is getting butchered, but when the whole game itself is taking place in Québec, hearing that creates a kind of dissonance.

I live in Wisconsin where the first Europeans here were French. A lot of the cities and towns here have French names, but almost none of them are pronounced in a French way.

https://www.wpr.org/ouisconsin-why-so-many-places-wisconsin-have-french-name

I think Kwuh-beck is just the anglicized pronunciation, and since they were speaking in English they just stuck with the English pronunciation.
 

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