A great mix of survival / walking sim / and point-and-click adventure elements. Kona has a very strong sense of place, immersing you in the time and setting of a remote 1970's Canadian town. It also has some of the best depictions of cold weather that I've seen from any game. Your desire to stay out of the elements and next to a warm fire comes through the screen really well. Using your truck as an item inventory stash is also a great idea which makes things feel a bit less "gamey". The puzzles and mysteries are well thought out and stay well away from moon-logic solutions. The whole experience takes less than 10 hours, even at a leisurely pace, and is very enjoyable to wonder around in, discovering the town and its story. The end comes rather suddenly, but it plugs directly into the sequel, so you can keep playing if you enjoyed yourself. Kona is worth the very reasonable full price, and doubly-so when it is on sale.

For Steam Deck users: Make sure to manually lock the game on a single Proton version, as it does not support Cloud Saves and may lose your progress during automatic Proton updates.

I bought Kona on sale at a deep discount so hate to leave a thumbs down review. I wish Steam offered an "ambivalent" option for cases where players have no strong feelings either way.
I liked the setting, graphics, and general quality of this game. The "feel" of trekking in Canada in the winter was achieved well.
Unfortunately, almost every minute of gameplay for me was spent in frustration of handling tedious actions that should have never even been a significant part of gameplay.
This game was a missed opportunity.
I wish the developers had spent a little time getting some feedback on their UI choices and gameplay mechanics, as well as the main script.
Complaints:
The inventory interface is not good. Using a wheel of choices doesn't work when you get beyond 8 or so items. There's no good description for what the item even is, other than a tiny icon, and item selection is extremely difficult when using a controller.
Driving a vehicle shouldn't be so hard. The acceleration is either 100% or 0. You spend most of your time traveling between locations in an annoying jilted manner, constantly hitting the breaks and running off road and into trees. Honestly, this game would be better implemented without vehicles at all.
Searching through houses is too tedious. You spend half of your search time opening and closing drawers that 90% of the time are completely empty. Cabinets and drawers should be eliminated from this game as well.
The few "gopher quests" in this game are very disappointing. You build up an inventory of numerous items only to find out you don't ever use most of them. And when you need to combine items for a specific "puzzle" it's inscrutable what items you need, and inexplicable as to why you can't use better suited items in their place. You will have to do an internet search for a cheat/walkthrough to figure out how & where to find the few keys items required. I don't enjoy games that are so inscrutable you feel the need to turn to online help in order to progress. This is unfortunately extremely true for the final boss battle.
I also wasn't a fan of the 3rd person narration throughout the game. It was tolerable, and something different from the norm, so it wasn't horrible; but the concept could've been improved upon in any number of ways.
Lastly, the main storyline was fine for a weak videogame, but the end resolution was extremely disappointing given the buildup to it. There is no "detective" aspect to this game, you're simply led linearly down a storytelling. You have no chance to guess what the mystery is. Only at the end is it all displayed for you in one big cutscene. You have no control over the outcome, and no ability to deduce anything during play. This game is more of a tedious, passive walkthrough of a weak "campfire ghost story".

I will not be playing Kona 2 given its description. It's too bad; the game engine and presentation showed promise, but simply failed to deliver any fun. Completing this game was a frustrating exercise in tedium for me.

I enjoyed playing Firewatch, and The Fidelio Incident, but was mistaken in thinking Kona would be similar in any meaningful way.

i feel like i couldve explored more but completing it in 4 hours was a very nice evening as i found it quite engaging with the narrator. I found i only needed help with one puzzle, but otherwise very enjoyable