Kona

Cliffhanger unsatisfactory ending, combat is barely existant and half the time a joke, expect this to be more of a walking sim detective supernatural mystery story with gameplay elements rather than survival combat emphasized walking n surviving with story like the long dark. You have a truck at the beginning, but later a snowmobile. You walk or drive, shoot, lure with bait or kill (wolves), and solve puzzles. That´s all in the gameplay loop. The characters are well shaped and written, your drive to uncover this mystery will overcome your frustration that the game has no gameplay to offer besides some micromanagement for heat and a few wolves. It´s more like a small open worldish exploration game with a strong emphasis on story. Very much so with a fine atsmophere on top. Intriguing woods at night or political and racial or also spousal minor conflicts on top the bigger layer, nothing too modern though, classy. It shows that black hates white like everything does anything if there´s a given reason. Enlightenment doesn´t fix human flaws. Puzzles also sometimes are a bit too pixelhuntish, keys and that sort of stuff. But even though I had to use a walkthrough once or twice, I still found this urge to fill up my journal and find all clues. Overall graphics and system performance, optimization etc yada yada, alt tabbing, this game has it all and it offers it all. Works absolutely flawlessly for me. On top, easy to run performance. We are talking easy 1800p60+ maxed with a 1080ti on standard clocks. Most of the time you just toss all the loot in your truck and take out what you need to advance. No brainer gameplay. Only 10 min max combat in a 8 hr game. Don´t bother with seeking combat in this. Imagine if the vanishing of ethan carter had a baby with the atmosphere of the long dark but with the gameplay approach to open world design of a metro exodus but with combat like an asset flip from steam greenlight. the game itself is wholy unique though artistically.

Most of the game is mediocre to "ok" but... the end is truly horrid. The game has a mixture of different elements including exploration (fine), adventure game segments (not as good), driving (bad) and combat (atrocious). The graphics are good, but sparse. I'm not going to spoil the end, but it devolves into nothing but the badly done combat style of play, with zero payoff. I suppose describing the end as "combat" is sort being generous here though... which you will figure out for yourself if you manage to slog though it to the end.

Kona is the kind of survival game I can enjoy. It has a lot of similar features as other survival games but it doesn't take them to a masochistic level. You have to manage inventory weight, cold, stress, and health but at no time was I pulling my hair out dealing with them. The story is very well done although I do think it could have done a bit better of explaining it near the end. Despite that I really liked the direction the story took. I think that the fact the game doesn't have a stated goal is good and bad. The game usually did a good job at letting you know what things need to be done without listing it on the screen or having a quest marker. I found the journal to be fairly useless at keeping track of things though. The map was great although it would have been nice if it listed which places you had visited. The graphics were decent but not spectacular. Nothing from object detail to clothes, faces, etc were mind blowing but they were not an eye sore either. I will give a shout to to the fact that your footprints in the snow stay a while. Many games don't go through the trouble to even have footprints in the snow. The sound effects were very well done. Everything from the sounds of feet crunching on snow to the sounds of doors, the truck, the snowmobile, etc were all great. The music was decent but repetitive. The game did employ invisible walls a couple times which is a cheap way to block your path. Other times they properly find good reason why you can't go somewhere so not sure why they didn't other times. I found it a tad weird that you can't view the map while driving the snowmobile while you can in the truck. I've never driven a snowmobile before so maybe this is realistic. My System: Intel i5-12600K | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Gigabyte RX 7800 XT 16GB | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | Artix | Dasharo 1.1.1 | Mate 1.28.2 | Kernel 6.10.10-artix1-1 | Mesa 24.2.2-arch1.1 | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165Hz

This was one of the best looking games I finished on my old rig so far and I'm still amazed it ran so well on highest settings. It took me only about 7h but those were well invested and I really want to see a second part. The genre is hard to define, it's a mix of adventure, walking sim and (only very slightly) fps with a survival element. I don't want to spoiler it further but can recommend it. What annoyed me was, that because of the latest Unity updates giving all Linux users problems with Fullscreen, I had to change a simple configuration setting in a file every time before running it but that's also happening in other Unity games lately. 8/10

A wonderful game! Reminded me of Firewatch.