Pentiment should be roundly applauded for taking on a complex narrative in a unique setting. The wider history unfolding beneath the immediate plot is fascinating and I often found myself delving into the events and characters mentioned in the rich conversations you have around Tassing which are expertly depicted in an art style that is vivid and unique. Truly a one off. I can’t compliment it enough.

The narrative itself is very well constructed with a clear ‘Name of the Rose’ influence, though I would say from my perspective the actual culprits of this sinister plot were telegraphed far too clearly and despite the element of choice afforded to you I don’t think your accusations made any great difference to how the tale played out.

My primary criticisms are focused on pacing , gameplay, and technical concerns. I would have marked this as a 3.5 were it not for the fact I encountered game breaking bugs at the start of the third act. I had to reinstall the game as a result. Technical issues like this are entirely unacceptable two years after the release of a game with a fairly simple design. Furthermore, why is the game visibly loading every room? It even briefly cuts when you engage in a conversation. There were adventure games in the 90s that did not do this. It adds to the general sense everything is moving at a glacial pace. I understand the page turning motif but this loses its novelty quickly.

The larger problem perhaps is that Pentiment isn’t really an adventure at all. There are no puzzles, few different pathways, you only really fail in an objective by running out of time. By the end of my experience I was skipping past townsfolk because I knew their conversation would not further the plot in any way. That is entirely because there was nothing left to challenge me. There’s only so many times you can listen to people detail the delay of the local post.

Witnessing once great and important things become abandoned can be sad. This game was a mystical relic of the 90s, a puzzlebox of secrets, which showed you amazing claymation when the puzzles were solved. Now it's abandonware and its gamedesign is outdated, while all the cutscene-cartoons are up on Youtube, which means only a few will be keen to dig up this old junk.
When your game is centered around an animation gimmick, point-and-click adventure is the perfect genre for it. The world of the game is a product of a year of labor, meticulous plasticine craftsmanship and animation, and the player will be carefully observing and clicking it all while searching for the next key to progress. The quirky and psychedelic aesthetic makes it easy to lose yourself in this world, creating an unforgettable trip. The spotless black void in which the Neverhood is suspended, the weird Biblical/Silmarillion overtones in the story are juxtaposed against crass humor and slapstick, creating a mixture of fear and fun, similar to what Pendleton Ward described when talking about Adventure Time.
The puzzles will stand in the way of that though. Some of them are standart - sliding tiles, match two etc. Others require more abstract thought or keyhunting. At best they are cute or interesting. At worst they are aggravating, or not even puzzles at all, just progress blockers, like how you have to turn on the radio. To make matters worse, Klaymen, the main character, walks really slowly, backtracking is required, and that often means reiplementing puzzle solutions on top of that. All of this, as you might imagine, can be quite aggravating.
If you have special emotions associated with old MTV or Cartoon Network, or punky 90's pop culture in general, this is definitely worth your time.

I do not have any larger point here and I wouldn't necessarily argue it's indicative of any deeper issues (though obviously Fullbright turned out to have Deeper Issues), but I am just really stewing on this game's incidental world building detail that Elon Musk was President of (presumably) South Africa and that "the capital" was named after him in 2016.

First off, the year. Tacoma is set in 2088 and was released in 2017. The game doesn't really position itself as branching from an alternative history event/trend pre-dating its release, making the decision to set it right around release jarring. Judging from the fact that there was a preview build in 2015 with a different premise (in which player character Amy Ferrier is a crew member rather than someone there on a focused assignment) and the game was delayed, it's possible this was originally a "future" event that accidentally became a "historical" event.

Second, South Africa does not have a singular capital. It has three capitals: Cape Town, Pretoria, and Bloemfonteinone, each corresponding to a respective branch of government. Did no one on the Fullbright team know this? It is an unmissable fact if you google "South Africa capital". Alternatively, maybe the implication is that 70 years on South Africa has done away with its three-capital idea. But hang on it's still called South Africa? Basically the entire west coast of the US and Canada minus California unifies under the name "Cascadia-First Nations" (sidebar: if you wanted to speculate on a sovereign Indigenous state or confederation of nations, why would you still use the colonial term "First Nations", which expressly doesn't include Inuit people, who are implied to be part of this fictional country) but South Africa just stays the course name-wise?

Third, President Musk. Unpack that for ten seconds: first white president post-apartheid, presumably through his own party (he could never win the ANC leadership), and that close to the present day at the time of release? I know public perception of Musk was fairly different in 2015-2017 (there was that awful Star Trek: Discovery name drop around then, not to mention The Messenger positively referencing Jordan Peterson like a year later), but even so like...why would this happen, and why then? There's not enough runway. It smacks of the sort of juvenile logic where The Troops would make the best football team and Deadpool should host SNL. Maybe it's a coup? That would explain the name change; it wasn't a reflection of his popularity, but rather his megalomania.

I understand that this was probably a conversation of less than half an hour between at most three people. There's the idea for the crossword, the idea to toss in world-building, someone's like "if space travel is so big, maybe it's because someone like Elon Musk became president", someone else is like "wait he can't be president of the US though, wasn't born here", third person is like "well he's president of South Africa then", and that was the end of it. Then I come along 6-7 years later and get annoyed because I know too fucking much about that stupid fuck, and the idea of him being an implicitly politically important part of a future optimistic enough to include commonplace space travel/residence/industry and actual Artificial Intelligence before the end of the 21st century just boils my brain.

I was not being ironic, I genuinely have no larger point.

KONA REVIEW
Note: I give spoiler warnings for spoilers.

While looking through stuff leaving Game Pass in March, I found myself intrigued by Kona's pitch as "an episodic and narrative-driven interactive tale". That sort of thing definitely appeals to me - not to mention the reportedly short length - so I decided to give it a shot.
Unfortunately, I was left unimpressed.
The game just feels half-baked. Most of it is, at best, mediocre and boring. Even that basic stuff it sells itself on isn't executed well. The plot is dull and disjointed. The narration is unnecessary. There's very little interactivity. And it's not even episodic!
But I believe answers as to WHY Kona feels unfinished - and downright bad at times - lay in its development history.
While researching for this review, I found myself skimming its Kickstarter page from 2014 - and interestingly enough, it WAS originally supposed to be divided into four episodes... but there's no indication of that still being the case within the final product. In fact, each of those were supposed to be 1-2 hours long, and the finished game is around 5. And while I do think Kona feels half-done, it does still have a distinct beginning and end; I don't see it being returned to in the future.
Now, keep in mind that it was released in 2017. And if you look in the comments of the last Kickstarter update (posted in June of 2018), they mention they're going to e-mail backers about episodes and rewards. Then, in August of 2018, all of their social media goes completely silent. The Kickstarter, the blog, the Facebook page, the Twitter - none of them are updated anymore.
That is, until September of 2020, when they responded to a tweet by saying that they're currently working on their next project.
My guess is that the team realized the scope of what they were promising, created what they could, and then bowed out. It was kind of a doomed project from the beginning, honestly - they hadn't even made enough money from the Kickstarter itself. About half of their budget came from the 'Canada Media Fund'. And with the team now moving on to something new, I think it's safe to say we'll never see any of the other supposed episodes.
In the end, it's unsurprising that Kona isn't all that impressive, given that it seems to be only 1/4 of what the developers had in mind. And it's sad to say, but I don't have much faith that their future projects will be better. I'd love to be proven wrong, though.


SHORT REVIEW

Visuals: 2/5
Sound: 2/5
Story: 1/5
Gameplay: 0.5/5
Worldbuilding: 1/5
Achievements (Does not count toward overall game score.): 1/5
Overall game score: 1.5/5


IN-DEPTH REVIEW

Visuals:
The heavy snowstorm makes for an intriguing setting... for the first 20 minutes or so. After that, the largely unchanging landscape becomes pretty tiresome. The only thing that really shakes it up are the houses you visit, and even then, those are all spread too far apart. I think the game would've benefitted a lot from either downsizing the map, or implementing a fast travel system. That way you spend less time getting through the samey stuff, and more time exploring the places that are actually sort of interesting to see.
The graphics are okay. I like the interior of the shop/houses; they feel realistically lived-in. Once again, I wish they weren't buried under minutes of tedious traversal.
[SPOILERS] I also thought the design for the creature you encounter during the climax was neat. It unsettled me for a minute. I liked the ice wolves, too, as well as the frozen people. I wish this supernatural stuff had been utilized more. It provided some cool visuals. [SPOILER ENDING]
On a much more sour note, one of the things that REALLY brought the experience down for me was the UI. All of your items are displayed on god-awful, unintuitive wheel menus. This is particularly annoying when looking through the documents, especially if you collect a lot of them. You have to carefully hover over the tiny slivers to read their names (which are usually useless anyways.) I think this is especially egregious in the detective genre, where evidence like notes and files can play a big role in piecing things together. They could've just had a menu with the documents alphabetized, or sorted by the location you found them at.
The map is unhelpful, too. Its small icons were a problem for me; you have to zoom in to see the names of them, but doing so gets you way TOO close. On top of that, there's no easy way of knowing where you've already been. I wish icons were either automatically marked, or able to be marked, to keep track of their statuses (like if you're done there, need to return, or still have to visit.)
For the most part, Kona is not a bad-looking game. There's a solid foundation here that could've been turned into a cool setting. Unfortunately, it's mostly just boring; there's very little to keep you engaged while you travel from one place to the next. Plus, the poor UI brings down my opinion a lot more.
Overall, 2/5.

Sound:
There's not a lot of music to be found. The main audio accompanying you on your journey is the narrator, whom I was not a big fan of. He wasn't BAD, but his delivery was often unimpactful. His repeated cues annoyed me after a while, too; having to hear the same line over and over whenever my warmth meter was low became very grating.
I feel like the storybook narration was unneeded. Again, it's not awful, but it ended up ruining my immersion a bit. I understand that this type of story needs some exposition, but I just don't think this was the best solution. The game could've benefitted a lot from going a more traditional route, and letting the portagonist be the one to provide it. It would've created a much stronger connection to both him as a character, and the plot itself, because it would have put you in his shoes more. Add onto that a real soundtrack, and the entire experience would've been more enjoyable.
Overall, 2/5.

Story:
There ARE some interesting ideas here - an interactive detective game with supernatural elements sounds cool on paper. Unfortunately, I just don't think any of it is actually done well.
First of all, it's weird to me how much of an emphasis Kona puts on indigenous culture, and specifically how white people have affected natives... but it seems like it's just there to be a plot device. Their mistreatment is only ever really brought up to further the narrative. There are no named native characters, and there are only a few documents written by them. They're strangely absent in general, with no indication of where they might be. It sort of feels like these aspects were included solely so the game could borrow a legend from the culture.
Furthermore, it seems like the Cree were originally supposed to be a red herring for Hamilton's murder (according to the Kickstarter) - but that's never mentioned within the finished product. Given that information, I think the indigenous people were initially supposed to have a bigger, possibly more direct role within the story... and I think this is one of the things that was cut. It's just strange to me that this is what they decided to leave out, given that a large part of the plot is based around indigenous culture and mistreatment.
I'm also iffy on the way Hamilton is framed. He's a greedy rich guy destroying Cree land and abusing miners, but it never feels like Kona takes a hard stance against him. The townspeople who are attempting to stand up to him are shown as being unfit to do so - which would be fine, if the game took other steps to say definitively that what he's doing is wrong.
I believe a big part of it is that the main character, as well as the narrator, never really sympathize with the Cree or the workers. Of course, that's not to say that your protagonist has to be a perfect human being, or that narrators have to have distinct thoughts... but since they're nearly the only personalities actually present, it sets the entire tone as a little too centrist for my liking.
And as for Hamilton's actual murderer, the entire plot thread is pretty predictable and quite boring. There's no attempt to throw you for a loop. You're just pointed in the right direction pretty quickly. It's way too linear for a detective game.
The murderer's motive is at least somewhat interesting, and shows a little bit of sympathy for the Cree (nearly the only compassion given to them by anyone, minus small note snippets.) However, I feel that - like almost everything else here - it could have been expanded upon and shown in a much more compelling way. It's barely discussed at all, leaving it feeling like just another pointless plot thread that has little impact.
In regards to all of the side characters and stories, some of them are almost engaging, but they're largely throwaway. Almost none of them matter in the slightest, or are compelling enough to leave a big impression. They all feel half-finished, with no sort of conclusion. I expect this is another thing that was left unfinished. (Also, [SPOILERS] what happened to that guy Pierre? His death is very mysterious but it's never explained at all. [SPOILER END])
The final encounter is actually pretty cool (for the first minute or so.) It's a decent climax. But the bad controls - which are important during this part - end up ruining it. It's disappointing, because this is the only really intriguing part of the game.
And right at the end, you [SPOILERS] escape on a boat. While you're doing so, you can look back to try to spot the creature. But I'd gotten aboard so fast that he wasn't within my line of sight. I think this escape would've felt much more impactful if he were standing closer - but since he walks at such a leisurely pace, he wasn't anywhere near me. If there were a small puzzle to complete, or an item you had to use to progress, this sequence would have been much better. The creature would have time to get closer to you, and as a result, it would've felt like you were getting away by the skin of your teeth. [SPOILER END]
Finally, as it closes out... the game directly tells you its message. It's such an unsubtle route, but it basically HAD to take it, because it wouldn't be clear otherwise. Only a few select plot threads have anything to do with this theme, and even those are left too vague.
Overall, 1/5.

Gameplay:
Every mechanic is downright awful. Not only does nothing work in conjunction with anything else, but every gameplay element ends up disrupting what little flow Kona does manage to have. The survival system is flawed and boring. The terrible traversal methods make exploring the world a chore. The controls and menus are dreadful. And the combat and collectibles should've just been cut, given how underdeveloped they are.
There's a lot to get into here, but I'll address the control scheme first. A handful of questionable layout decisions really threw me off while playing. And the worst part is that there's no option to remap anything. I could be more forgiving if there was.
First and foremost, crouch is on LB and jump is on RB. I think that this is a pretty weird design to begin with (for this game, at least.) Even weirder, though, is that you can only jump when standing, and there's no indicator as to whether you're crouching or not. There were a few times where I forgot I had crouched; once, I thought I'd run into a glitch and just couldn't jump.
Even more egregious is the running. You do this by pressing down on the left joystick - which is a fine choice on its own, that's what I usually associate with the action. But my problem is with the balance of it. You can only run for around 5 seconds before you're fatigued, at which point you have to walk for 3-or-so seconds. And there's no indication of when you can run again. You just have to keep trying until it lets you. As a result, I was constantly jamming down on the joystick, which was really annoying and uncomfortable.
Using the weapons doesn't feel good in the slightest, either. As I've said, I think it would've been much wiser to not include combat at all. It's never very important anyways, aside from the final encounter. Removing it would've streamlined the game a bit, and taken out something that just feels unfinished and unnecessary.
Speaking of cutting things that feel unfinished and unnecessary... the collectibles (miniature totem poles) suffer the same issue.
To start with, they're never addressed in-game in any way. You only find out about them if you happen to spot the small holes in the ground (and there are only five of these spread out across a pretty big map.) You also have to complete a dumb object combination puzzle to be able to retrieve them.
There's no way to track how many you've found, either, aside from achievements. To my recollection, you're never even told how many there are. I never felt a sense of satisfaction from getting them - partially because I had to use a guide (there's no way I'd find them on my own), and partially because there was nothing driving me to keep at it.
The only purpose they really serve is to give you small meter bonuses, but I never even noticed that. Apparently the meters do pop up to tip you off, but they're so small - and I was so used to them appearing randomly while they were increasing/decreasing - that I never registered it. I only ever found out about this because I ran across one of the devs saying so online.
Those meters aren't fun, either. I'm not big on the survival genre, but even I know that there are better ways to execute this kind of thing. The campfire mechanic is obviously supposed to add a layer of tension, but it's just an annoyance. Having to search one out every few minutes in the large, boring map is nothing but a chore - doubly so when you need certain items to actually use it, and triply so when it's your only way of saving.
And, finally, my last point. traversing the world is the most unpleasant, tedious thing in the entirety of Kona. Running around, getting from place to place, it's all such a chore (especially if you want to 100%.) As I've said, there's no good way of knowing when you've completed an area, either. This means that you're probably going to have to backtrack - which just makes the flaws here even more apparent. There's also nothing to keep track of where you need to go next, or what objectives you need to complete. I mean, come on... it's a short exploration game, it's still an exploration game! This stuff would've helped a lot.
The truck does make things a bit better. However, you can only use it on main roads, and getting from one place to another with it can still take minutes. There's also a snowmobile available, if you find all of its components around a specific house/yard; you can use it to travel anywhere on the map. While this is theoretically much more useful, and I appreciate its inclusion, there are two major flaws with it.
First off, according to achievements, not many people actually got the snowmobile. It's an extremely helpful item that - again, theoretically - makes the game more enjoyable. But because of it being locked behind an obtuse search puzzle, few players got to use it. Personally, I had to look up the location of some of the components, so this doesn't surprise me. I think that it should've been made much more accessible, given that it completely changes how you get around the world (particularly since it's a short game with a big map.)
And despite the snowmobile helping you get around faster... it ends up being next-to-useless, because you can't open the map while you're on it. You have to completely stop and get off. I often ended up driving in the wrong direction, because breaking and watching the animations to get off and back on just sounded miserable, so I would try to guess instead. I'd often find myself even further from my destination than I originally was.
This is another reason why I believe a fast travel system or a smaller map would've helped a lot. Cut out a lot of this tedious traversal, and you have a much more streamlined game. By the credits, I'd felt like my playthrough was 10-11 hours long. I was surprised when I found out it had only been 5 1/2. That's how lengthy and boring it felt. Every minute drags on because of the lack of good settings, controls, or exploration methods.
Overall, 0.5/5.

Worldbuilding:
While some of the characters do have a few intriguing traits, it's not nearly enough to make them feel fully realized, especially when none of them are actually in the game. As I've said, there are a few kinda interesting side plots going on - but most of them don't have any sort of conclusion, and are only mentioned once or twice.
Including the indigenous stuff is a neat idea, but as I've said, it barely has an actual role. It would have been cool to see how the two cultures within the setting interact and clash; instead, the white people have all fled, and the Cree are mysteriously absent.
From my research, the devs seemed really uppity about Kona only having supernatural elements that 'make sense within the story'. I honestly feel like the game would've been much, much better if they had leaned into this side of things more. Feeling like you were being watched/stalked while exploring would have added a nice atmosphere. It would've built up to the ending in a better way, too.
Overall, 1/5.

Extra Category - Achievements:
Definitely not worth 100%ing. Searching for all of the campfires and documents tacked on even more needless roaming, which just made me even more tired of the world. But the most frustrating part is that you'll have to complete a playthrough of the game on-foot (meaning no vehicles past a certain early point.) I was using a guide, and I still had to do a lot of running around to find all of the required documents/items before I could progress to the last quarter.
At least some of the achievements are easy to get and kinda creative, though.
Overall, 1/5.

Overall game score: 1.5/5. While there are one or two cool ideas at Kona's core, it's not nearly enough to carry it. The detective story isn't good. The survival elements are annoying (and every other gameplay element is awful, too.) The world is boring. There's little-to-no interactivity. A lot of things (such as collectibles, combat, and side plots) feel unfinished - and probably are.
The few halfway enjoyable moments in the game aren't worth sitting through everything wrong with it. Invest your time into something else instead of this rushed, half-baked mess.

Walking simulators can be really great or really terrible. There is usually no in-between, but somehow Kona manages to accomplish this unremarkable achievement. You follow Carl Faulbert, a private investigator, who arrives in a remote other Candaian town to discover something is lurking around and killing its residents. The plot itself is mostly uninteresting, and details are really only explained in found notes. There is a narrator who explains things throughout, but he mostly just asks questions and never answers anything for us.

The game starts out fairly simple, and it's an illusion of how the rest of the game is. You walk around in first-person view, interact with objects, and drive your truck. You can pull out your map in the truck to figure out where to go. You have an inventory system and can pick up objects to store, such as duck tape, hardware, flares, matches, etc., but most of these items are useless, and you don't ever use half of the consumables. The game isn't open-world, but there is a giant area to explore. You can wander off the beaten path or main road to find campfires to light, objects to pick up, documents to read, and various other things, but this is purely for achievements only. Wandering around the town is a chore due to the slow walking speed and short sprint speed. You have heat, sanity, and health; however, the heat meter helps drag the game down further. Yes, this is a remote area in the cold, but needing to find a specific object to obtain a jacket from a person you may never find without a walkthrough is pretty annoying. Once you get the jacket, your heat meter never becomes an issue. There are wolves spread out in the wilderness off the main road, and these can harm you. Hit them with a hammer or hatchet, or shoot them with a gun, and they're gone. There's an option to throw steaks at them if you want to hunt for achievements too.

The game always feels clunky in some way. Having to constantly pull out your map to check your surroundings gets tiresome, and never knowing exactly where to go will make people quit early on as well. You just wander into each house marked on the map and hopefully figure out how to make your way north until you reach the end of the game, which isn't satisfying and doesn't make me excited for a sequel. You can only save at campfires, and if you don't have matches, a firestarter, or a log, you can't save. Your inventory space is limited, so you must drag your items around in the back of your truck, and then if you need something, it's a hike back.

You have a camera and can take photos, but again, this is mostly for achievements. Achievement hunters would love this game, but outside of that, the gameplay is mostly repetitive or pointless. The visuals are great and hold up well even today, but you are mostly seeing just white and log cabins. There isn't anything artistic or unique about this game, which makes it a very boring game to look at. The narrator does a good job, but what's the point if he doesn't help progress the story? I only kept pushing forward to see if the story got more interesting or had a really awesome ending that made all of the mind-numbing walking worthwhile.

Overall, Kona has its place for a certain crowd. I love walking simulators, but many often waste my time with forgettable stories, boring settings, or mind-numbing gameplay. Kona has more gameplay than any other walking simulator has a right to, but if you cut all of it out and only let the player drive down the main road, that effort put into all the extra exploration stuff could have been put into a better story. As it stands, Kona doesn't do any one thing particularly well.

At the end of the game (I’m not spoiling anything I promise) there’s a message that asks the player “How did this game make you feel?” And my only answer is… content. I didn’t need this game’s message about the nature of death or anything like that. Nor did it change my life. It just made me feel really content. Which is something I really appreciate. And it also has a really fun combat system. The combat of Everhood was truly one of a kind, it’s simple in its idea, but its execution is very complex. It leads to very interesting battles that I was always invested in. In short if the combat looks fun to you. You’ll like it… probably.

The only objective problem I had with the game was the amount of flashing lights which almost made me refund the game. Thankfully there are ways to mitigate this, there are settings to adjust to make this less of an issue. A more subjective problem is that the replay value that this game offers isn’t necessarily something I enjoy. Lots of “Do this fight but without getting hit” and stuff. Those sorts of things don’t personally interest me.

BUT DON’T LET MY FEW NEGATIVES DETRACT YOU FROM BUYING THIS ONE

Everhood is a delightful game that made me feel content with its story and the role that I played in it and… Maybe it made me feel a little content with myself too.

It’s worth your time. I promise you. 4.5/5