Kôna: Day One opens with an omniscient third-person narrator detailing where Carl, the main character of Kôna: Day One, is and why he’s there. With nothing but a notebook, flashlight, a couple Marlboro cigarettes, and a Polaroid camera, Carl sets off on a trip that will quickly escalate to one of mystery and supernatural intrigue. This quick establishing of the story in Kôna: Day One is what makes the rest of the game’s adventure game puzzles and survivalist systems feel rewarding and not merely an obstacle.
The hook of Kôna: Day One is that it is a detective story but without the ability to interrogate other people as they’ve all seemingly disappeared from a small town in Northern Quebec, Canada. All you have to rely on is your detective skills as you scan the environment for clues to what happened in this suddenly snow-covered town. Well, town is a bit of a stretch – there are about ten houses in all of this area, and I unfortunately only had access to a couple of those homes in the beta. But those few homes were enough to keep me satisfied as I rummaged through drawers, finding notes and secret safes that would lead me to understanding what exactly has happened in this town.
Kôna: Day One is the first of a four episode structure that Kôna will be released in, but the game will have four separate episodes, which allow players to pick and choose which episodes they would like to play. I can only speak definitively on Kôna: Day One, but as a first episode, it does a great job of setting up atmosphere and introducing gameplay mechanics that will clearly become more of a concern down the road. I almost froze to death once as I kept running into wolves that would immediately scurry in another direction once they noticed me, and even almost had my pickup truck stuck on a cliff. The systems at play in that first episode tease something grander, but teasing is about the extent of what happens.
The most interesting mechanic incorporated in Kôna: Day One is the idea of freezing to death. You are wandering around in a very cold climate and not exactly dressed for the occasion since the road suddenly turns to snow and ice. The game won’t even let you save in the cold, presumably because then more exploration would happen and the consequences for doing so would feel less dire. Instead, players can only save in areas where heat is readily available. Saving in your pickup truck is also frowned upon, despite it being a haven for heat as well. I found while playing the game that a lot of it is travelling to different houses and then getting back in my truck for some much needed warmth. This mechanic could easily feel like a chore, but you soon get the ability to create fires within homes and along paths. This is when slight resource management comes into play, as players scavenge for wood, matches and fire starters.
Unfortunately, the game introduced an ax that wound up serving no purpose; I couldn’t even cut trees down or cut logs that I stumbled upon frequently. Hopefully, the game’s final release will not limit the player in such a way, or if it is going to, it makes some logical reason for why an ax cannot be used to cut wood. When picked up, it implies that it could be used as a weapon, but the moment never occurred in the game when I would require a weapon. As mentioned, wolves are present, but all run away from the player once seen. The other item that can be equipped is a crowbar, but I also never found a moment when the game would let me use it. I found mailboxes that were shut, which I could not open despite being able to open one previously. I also found many doors that were locked in which an ax or even a crowbar would have easily opened. Instead, I was forced to go hunting for keys (which were usually nearby and in obvious places) even though there was no sense that anyone would be returning to their homes.
Those two items are mere missteps in a game that manages to make a case for more games like itself. Gone Home is a fairly apt comparison to Kôna: Day One, with a very similar atmosphere of something ominous having happened. There are personal stories to discover, but the area is so vast that you might learn something by just following a wolf’s tracks in the snow to some remote camping spot, or by visiting another person’s home. You’re simply a stranger who has driven into this town but has no idea what everyone’s relationship is to each other. There is simply more detective work to be done because it is a small town where everyone knows everyone, but everyone has secrets too. Hell, the game even has hand-written notes similar to Gone Home, but these notes are all written in French due to the setting. Fortunately, English-speaking audiences will find the translation option extremely helpful as an overlay of the translated text appears over the note.
Adding to the atmosphere is the music created by Quebec folk band Curé Label, who add a level of subtle mystery to the game with a very minimal score. A lot of the game depends on everything aesthetically coming together to provide a feeling of intrigue and emptiness, which the game handles extremely well. Utilizing the Unity engine, the game looks great and has some nice flourishes when certain statuses are met. For example, the screen slightly freezes all around when Carl is beginning to get too cold and needs to warm up. Even just the option to take pictures in-game with an actual camera and then see the developed photo immediately makes for a great sense of immersion both in the time setting and the environment. You truly feel like you are visiting this area rather than a detective simply wandering around trying to find ways to beat the game.
There seems to still be a lot of mechanics to watch out for in Kôna, and whether those appear in Kôna: Day One or one of the other episodes is the question. The point which I seemingly ran out of things to do was when the game required me to find something warmer to wear or a vehicle that could get along vast areas of snow with speed. It is clear that the mechanic of being cold is prevalent within the game design, and there are a lot of usable items that I simply never needed to use such as nails and the previously mentioned ax and crowbar. There were even things that needed fixing, most of which I simply didn’t have all the tools for but could tell that they were probably in an area blocked off by the beta.
I am a huge fan of adventure games like this, though, and especially ones that are able to go beyond just telling you a story and instead making you an active participant. The fact that players will have to watch out for getting too cold, or using too many resources too soon, is exciting to me. It adds a level of resource management that is frequently non-existent in games like this. The idea of a third-person narrator also helps adds to the atmosphere of the detective story, where the player is not only the main character of the narrative, but also the audience.