Canada is woefully underrepresented in games, which is strange, considering all that wilderness is the perfect setting for strange things to happen. The Long Dark is one of the standouts, leveraging all that isolation and natural beauty to give us a top-notch survival sandbox as it works on its narrative. Arriving in Early Access today, Kona (now without the accent that capped the originally-announced title) might beat it to the punch.
Set in the Deep North, Kona sets detective Carl Faubert onto a case of vandalism, but as a strange blizzard engulfs the shores of Atamipek Lake he finds himself utterly lost. You take charge to figure out what's going on.
We've cast a critical eye on Kona a couple of times—once in the middle of last year, when Christen Bejar found its intense quiet and abandonment reminiscent of Silent Hill, and again in our new UK issue, out today. I won't spoil it for you beyond Andy's enigmatic declaration that it left him "intrigued but confused."
Kona is set to be the first of a four-part series, though I always question how well narrative adventures fare in Early Access. Dev Parabole seems to have borne spoilers in mind, however, because it states "we don't want to spoil the ending and therefore the world is limited to around half of its final size."
If that sounds like your cup of tea, well, it's supposed to be live now on Steam, but something appears to have gone wrong—there's the conspicuous absence of a 'purchase' button. (Update: The problem has been fixed, and Steam purchases are now live.) Kona is also up on GOG, currently £6.50.
