RavensCourt/Parabole Screen: Mouse cursor is no longer visible
UI: Subtitles will no longer disappear after Alt-Tab
UI: Mouse prompt now shows by default in title screen
UI: Revamped design of the reader screen for documents
UI: Scroll bar is now visible in the reader screen
Controller: Can now open map with D-pad shortcut
Some minor bug fixes and optimizations
Known Issues
Controls Settings: Duplicate keys are possible in key remapper
Settings: Clicking on arrows doesn’t make a loop
UI: A notification can remain on screen when picking up items
UI: Controller prompt still shows by default instead of mouse when loading a save
Journal: Cannot click on tabs
Journal: Biography “unlocked” before update won’t show
Thanks again for taking the time to send us feedback! The final release is coming soon and we really appreciate you helping us making the final version better!
Have a nice weekend!
EDIT: Added a UI known issue.
Announcement Trailer
https://youtu.be/4tJFYnr36Os
Hey everyone,
Hope you enjoyed our new trailer! As you could see, this video announces that Kona will be released digitally on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox One and PS4 on March 17th, 2017.
As you know, a part of the game is already available here and if you already did everything there is to do in early access, you will be able to continue your adventure on launch day :)
Winter will be longer this year! See you on March 17th!
Cheers!
New Update, Partnership and Release Window
Hey everyone!
It’s Friday, and we have good news for your guys! For starters, a new update will go live in a few minutes. On top of adding text support for German, Spanish and Italian, the new build also contains hundreds of layers of enhancements as well as support for Steam Achievements.
Before moving further into the details of the update, we have something equally exciting to announce: Kona is finally coming to Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox One and PS4 simultaneously in March of this year, thanks to our new and awesome partnership with Ravenscourt!
“But you said no update until launch, you liar!”.
True.
Reasons for Update
IMPORTANT: PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR OLD SAVEGAME WON'T WORK WITH THE NEW UDPATE, as explained down below.
We had long talks about whether or not we should update the game on Steam and GOG, but many factors helped us make our decision.
Firstly, even if we did our best to avoid it, your existing save data won’t work in the final game. This is due to the large number of changes we made to Kona since the last update. However, any savegame you create in the new update will work on launch and afterwards. To us, this was the main reason to update. The last thing we want if for you to be penalized for having supported us early on.
Secondly, as we mentioned before, some story-related elements were stripped out of the game in order to keep some surprises for the final version. This was great six months ago, but with Kona’s launch just around the corner, we feel like you should be playing something closer to the actual thing, hence the need for an updated build.
Thirdly, on the business side of thing, the game base price will be USD $20 after launch. At some point we have to get closer to that price, but we can’t if we do not provide anything in exchange. With this update, Kona pricing will increase now from USD $10 to USD $18 (of course, if you own it already, you won’t have to pay extra).
The bottom line is that we did not want past and new Early Accessors to be disadvantaged on game launch. We wanted our message to be clear and consistent across Steam, GOG, press releases and trailers.
Content of Update
With this update, the game world and play time will remain the same as before. It simply is a more polished first hour (or so) of gameplay that won’t be erased in March when Kona finally launches. Still, you’ll find many drastic improvements.
You will also notice that all voices (French and English) are now in the game and that texts, subtitles and menus have been localized in Italian, German and Spanish thanks to Ravenscourt (Russian language is still part of the plan and we will keep you in the loop as soon as we are ready to add it to the game).
Finally, you can now use F to equip your flashlight and M for the map (it works in the car now). The key remapping feature for keyboards will come in another update we will publish soon.
Published by Ravenscourt
Everywhere outside of Steam, GOG and Humble store, Kona will be published by Ravenscourt. That is on Xbox One, PS4 and other PC storefronts. With a team of 7, we can’t handle them all, but we still believe being close to our audience is really important nowadays in the industry. On that front, our partnership with Ravenscourt is simply perfect. We get to keep talking to you all while bringing the game to new crowds.
Thanks (again) to All of You
That’s all for now, but again, we want to thank you all for believing in our project and for your patience facing the many delays the game had in the past. The real thing is coming and it looks great! Try it for yourself and feel free to send us your comments, as always :)
Talk soon!
Everyone at Parabole
Help Us Win People's Choice Awards for the Game Connection Development Awards!
As nominees, we also have a chance to win the People's Choice Awards and you can help us. How? Simple: like this picture on Facebook. That's it!
The game with the most likes wins, so if you have a few seconds to spare, it would really mean a lot to us!
Vote ends on October 22nd and the ceremony will take place in Paris on October 26th. We'll let you know how it goes ;)
Thank you in advance for the help!
Cheers!
We Are Going to Spend The Next Months Finishing, Porting and Marketing Kona
Hey everyone!
Wherever you are in the world, we hope you had as many sunny days as we had here! Unless you’ve been playing Kona the whole time, of course!
Today, let’s not beat about the bush: we are going to push back the game release once more and spend the next months finishing, porting and marketing Kona. Plus, our Early Access build will, from now on and until launch, only receive stability updates.
It took us several attempts to word this message correctly, wishing for our post to be as transparent as possible for our loyal fans, just as we wish for your honesty. The following paragraphs will go through explaining our vision of Early Access and how that positively affected the game’s quality, but somewhat negatively on our release plan.
Time to Move Past Beta
Early Access is a great place to gather and address feedback from the community, which is really cool to improve a game. At some point though, we just need to wrap up the experience, which means going through the whole development, QA and localization process – this takes time.
We want all our early supporters to experience the game in its true, bug-free form. For Kona we wish for us and for you to receive what you paid for, meaning to release a game that has gone through the proper quality assurance procedures. We want all our early supporters to experience the game in its true, bug-free form.
In the next few months, we will be in “finish, fix and port” mode. This “mode” is unfortunately incompatible with Early Access’ “deploy, listen and improve” loop. We hope that you understand this, even if it means waiting a bit longer to get your hands on Kona. Trust us, we don’t want our title to be one of those “forever in Early access” games. We truly are looking forward to releasing it, but rushing its launch on the market after nearly three years of hard work will not serve any purpose.
In other words: from now on and until the official launch, we will keep sending updates for stability and bug fixes, but we won’t add new content anymore. It’s time to focus on finishing the game.
"Q1 2017" Is All We Can Tell for Now
Right now we can’t tell what the exact release date will be nor can we confirm all the platforms we will support at launch. For now, we can tell that it’s no later than Q1 2017, though watch this spot for news to be published soon!
Changes to Expect in the Final Experience
Without spoiling anything, here’s a quick list of the elements we’ll be working on as we move toward the game’s release:
Improved graphic design signature: we hired a graphic designer of 9+ years of experience in video game branding. While Kona will keep its identity, you can expect it to be much cleaner, from the boot screen to the ending credits, in the final game
No more placeholders: some menus, voices and animations may feel a bit stiff from time to time. They will be polished in the next few months
New beginning: from the moment you start the game, the experience will be different. We had to remove some elements from the beginning part of the game in order to avoid spoilers for the final release. We will now put them in there, and we encourage all players to revisit the whole game once it comes out
Improved voice overs (English): we scheduled three additional recording sessions in order to fix some spoken lines that users felt annoying or out of place
Larger map: the part of the map that is accessible in Early Access is about less than half the size of the full game environment
More languages: in addition to French and English, we will add German, Spanish and Italian subtitles for game launch, with Russian following soon after, if not at the same time
The snowmobile: yup, we kept it for the final release. Trust us, it’s awesome
Community space: that is still part of the plan, so you can expect some details in the next few weeks
And dozens of other surprises: obviously, we won’t list everything here as we’re trying to keep this article somewhat short.
Busy, But Still Here!
We will still be reading and answering all of your feedback, even if our news posts will be mainly around stability updates until the final release. The most important to us is our community and we love talking to you all! Also, as soon as we can tell you more about all of this, we will!
That’s it for the wall of text! Thank you so much for understanding and don’t hesitate to leave us comments if there’s anything!
Cheers!
Parabole Team
10,000 Times Thank You!
Hey everyone!
Today, we are really happy to announce that 10,000 copies of the early access version of Kona have been sold! This includes all backers who claimed their keys on Steam as well as copies we sold on the Humble Store, GOG and our own website.
Steam Statistics
For those of you who like numbers, here are some raw Steam Product Data from Kona:
Units Over Time
Units per country
Special mention to our Canadian friends for their support! For a country with a relatively small number of inhabitants, their share of the pie really is impressive!
Anyway! This is more than just numbers we are talking about here. Thanks to your support, the game has improved a lot since we released the first beta version. Here’s a glimpse about what we accomplished since the beginning of the beta:
Wolves
Players could see wolves passing by sometimes, but we decided to add some encounters to spice things up a bit.
Lee Enfield 303 & Other Items
With wolves around, you need something to defend yourself! There are many ways to deal with them, but adding a Lee Enfield 303 rifle in the lot can help… a lot.
Flow Improvements
We added a few puzzles and tweaked many areas to introduce players to some of the game mechanics without using boring tutorials or dialog boxes.
UI Styling
One thing we changed progressively during Early Access is the color palette and general look and feel of the UI. It is now more contrasted and can be seen on subtitles, location titles and so on. The UI has improved since we first posted this image and we will continue to work on it until the full release.
Stress Gauge
The stress gauge was already there upon release, but the mechanic was only introduced a few weeks after, which adds a bit of difficulty to the game.
Visions
The first version did not have any goal. This quickly appeared in the reviews and in the forums, so we introduced something that was already planned, but just not anchored in the game yet: the visions and frozen inhabitants.
The Journal
Although it is still work in progress, it is now a lot easier to know about the areas you visit and what you can/need to do next.
Interaction System
While keeping the same game mechanic, we were able to change the interaction system to make it less confusing for players.
Optimizations
We managed to optimize performances a lot! Sure, it’s not perfect yet, but a few months ago, the game would take several minutes to go past the initial loading. It even crashed on some computers.
Bugs and Suggestions
So many bugs (like the missing cutters) were fixed during Early Access thanks to all the feedback we’ve had! We also received suggestions that we were able to add in the game, like the stash in the back of the pickup.
Behind the Scene Changes
Obviously, we’ve worked hard on stuff that will only be unveiled in the final version of the game, so you can expect many surprises in a few months :)
So that’s it! Again, 10,000 times thanks for your support! Let’s get back to work now, and we hope to say thanks a lot more times upon the full release!
Cheers!
Game Update: Introducing the New Interaction System
Hey everyone!
A few weeks have passed since our last update, so it’s time for a new one! Following your feedback in the forums, we added the version number in the top-right corner of the main screen and we fixed a few bugs.
Also, some of you experienced motion sickness while playing Kona. It usually goes away after a while or by changing some graphics options. However, someone suggested to add an option for a crosshair that could probably help a little. So we did! It is available in the controls options menu.
This week, we also introduce our new interaction system. I will avoid spoilers and if you write comments that include spoilers, please use the [noparse]Spoiler[/noparse] formatting.
Interactors
Most of the feedback we receive is about our user interface. We’ve decided to change all interactors to make things clearer. Here’s a preview of what it looks like:
From now on, every interactor you will see will be a little square (see image). When you approach, the square will turn a little and you will be able to interact with the object. If you don’t know what action it might trigger, you will see a brief description or a small image of what the interactor does after a few seconds.
No More Combine Menu
We decided to remove the combine menu. Instead, when you have all required items, you will need to hold the interaction key (usually the E key or the A button on a controller) until the bar is full. Since our game doesn’t really focus on crafting, why not find a simpler way to do so!
Known issues
Here are some of the known issues that we are already working on fixing:
The mouse scroll for texts works now. However, some the W and S buttons don’t work in all of them;
When you have the lantern equiped (and sometimes with the flashlight) and you smoke a cigarette, the lantern is still in your hands until the end of the animation.
So that’s it! And if you’re in L.A., come say hi at the IndieCade @ E3 Showcase!
Cheers!
Kona available through GOG Connect for the next 5 days!
Hey everyone!
For the next 5 days, anyone who bought Kona on Steam can add the game to its GOG library through the new GOG Connect program —for free.
GOG Connect gets you a DRM-free version of the game, 2 songs that will be part of the official soundtrack and other GOG features (for instance, GOG Galaxy allows you to play games offline).
We believe that each player should only pay once for a game and that he should be able to play on the platform he/she prefers. We can't always do it though for reasons that are out of our control, so GOG Connect is a great opportunity that you shouldn't miss!
Other games are available through the program. To link your Steam account and see what games are available, visit the GOG Connect website.
Cheers!
Kona Will Be Part of IndieCade @ E3 Showcase
Hey everyone!
Great news: Kona has been selected to be part of the IndieCade @ E3 Showcase on June 14-16, in Los Angeles!
What's IndieCade?
Known as "the video game industry's Sundance”, IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. At IndieCade, independent video game developers are selected to screen and promote their work at the annual IndieCade festival and showcase events, including E3 conference in Los Angeles.
A Game Update for the Event
For the event, we will release a new version of the game, featuring a major change to how the player interacts with the in-game world. We've read all the feedback we received from the community and one of the main concerns were the interaction system. The "combine" menu felt unintuitive to some players and environment interactions sometimes were unclear. We came up with a better and easier way for players to interact with objects in the game.
This new version will be available around E3 dates on Steam and GOG.com.
So that's it! Have a nice weekend!
Cheers!
Quick Update for Game Breaking Bug
Hey everyone!
Thanks to some of you guys, we found out a game breaking bug, so we're sending a quick update to fix it!
It's something that happened at the Lachance's house, so if you still haven't visited the place, don't read the hidden message below.
Here is what happened: You arrive at the house and go through the vision, but when you get out of it, interactors don't work anymore. If you left the bathroom door closed, you can't even get out of bathroom.
