Kona, a good looking first person adventure game now in Early Access, some thoughts

I've been sent over a key to 'Kona', a pretty intriguing Early Access first person adventure game. I've given it a whirl so you know what to expect.


I'm always wary of Early Access games, but I honestly think Kona is going to turn out to be something really amazing when it's done. It already has a number of positive reviews, and I will be no different. I think overall it's great, minus the issues I will outline.

You are Carl, a private detective tasked with figuring out what the heck is going on, and things quickly take a turn for the worst. You seem to be all alone too, and you need to stay warm.

I love having a good explore, and games like Kona with some lovely narration are easy to get lost in. The English narrator in Kona is excellent, and really helped set the game up well for me in the beginning.


While the story, and general atmosphere is really well done in Kona it does have one glaring issue to me. The weird hazy-white overlay the game uses, the entire screen is covered in a white mist at all times, and honestly it hurts my eyes and generally looks bad. This isn't a bug, but I sincerely hope they allow us to turn it off, or at least turn it down.

The art and animations in Kona are really quite good, it really looks like a game built by a much bigger studio. It's fluid, looks like it has a decent and consistent art style and the sound effects are really good too.

I laughed at myself at how long I was stuck on a certain point in the game, remember to zoom in a little (right mouse button) to see certain details on buttons and levers. Try not to overlook the little things, or you will end up wondering around in the cold like me.

There's a very small hint of a survival game too, as you get cold and have a temperature gauge to keep an eye on. You can make fires in certain places, and I haven't really seen my temperature drop very far—yet.

The save system requires you be near a heat source, so it has a form of checkpoint saving which bugs me. I never like checkpoint saves, as there has never been a game to make me feel it's needed.

Issues
Right now performance is a bit iffy, as I was getting below 40FPS on both High and Ultra settings on my 980ti, but I seemed to get pretty good performance on Medium (using the presets, with no adjustments). Although, even on Medium there are times it dropped below 30, presumably as it's loading in new scenes.

Looks like for now on Linux it needs a pretty good card, but even so on Medium the game is still great to look at.

I seem to get graphical bugs with the tops of trees turning white, and water flashing when switching graphics settings, restarting the game seems to fix it. There are other graphical bugs in general, like getting the map out inside the car results in this:

Update: They have told me it will be fixed in the next update.

At one point you cut a chain, and the cutters are invisible. Issues like that really detract from the experience.

Right now, I would say to hold off if you are interested in it. As it really does need some fine tuning and polishing, and being a story-based adventure game it could easily ruin your fun with it.

It's definitely looking like it will be something great though, so keep an eye on it! I will give it a more thorough review when it leaves Early Access.

You can grab Kona on Steam, Humble Store and GOG. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.