Kona

About Kona

Kona is the first game by Parabole, a studio from Quebec, released on PC in March 2017 and published by Parabole with Ravenscourt; the Switch version followed in March 2018, and the PlayStation Store lists December 2021 for its PS4 and PS5 edition. It opens in October 1970. W. Hamilton, a rich industrialist who owns a hunting manor in northern Canada, has hired the private detective Carl Faubert to find out who keeps vandalising his property. Carl drives north into a sudden snowstorm and reaches Atamipek Lake to find neither his client nor any other living person.

You play in first person, driving an old Chevrolet pickup with a map of the area between houses, a general store and lakeside cabins, reading letters and notes and piecing together what happened to the town. A journal keeps track of what you have learned and of the townsfolk you hear about. The story is told by an omniscient narrator with the voice of an old storyteller, which gives the game a dry humour beside its unease. The music is by the Quebec folk band CuréLabel.

The store calls the village eerie and the events surreal, and it plays on that: empty homes left mid-meal, the wind, and signs that something in the storm is not natural. Critics found the feeling of being watched and followed central to it, and its threats are the cold, which you fight with fires and supplies, and wolves, some of them ghostly, that you shoot, club or distract with meat. It is not a game of constant scares: reviewers describe dread and low-key jolts in a mystery close to The X-Files.

Kona suits players who like slow investigation in a cold, lonely place, such as Kholat or The Pale Mimic, and want folklore and unease more than monsters at every turn. A sequel, Kona II: Brume, followed in 2023.

How to play Kona

1. Buy Kona on Steam, GOG, PlayStation, Xbox or Switch and start a new game.
2. Drive the pickup along the snowy roads around Atamipek Lake, stopping at houses and buildings to search them.
3. Read the notes and letters you find and look closely at objects; they point to the next place to search.
4. Watch your warmth: light fires and carry what you need, as the storm wears you down outside.
5. Keep ammunition and meat for the wolves you meet in the storm, and push on to find out what happened to the village.

Tips

• Search every drawer and table in a house; key items and notes are easy to miss in the dark.
• Do not wander far into the blizzard with no way to warm up.
• When you are stuck, reread the notes you have found; they usually name the next house or person to look for.
• Distracting a wolf with meat can save a bullet.
• Check the journal when you lose the thread: it sums up what you have found and who each villager is.

Questions