Sometimes, games will release in Early Access and I’ll say “oh, well that’s odd. There’s already a whole game here.” This is very much not the case with REKA, the debut title from indie studio Emberstorm Entertainment. While it is charming, delightful, and full of personality, there’s barely enough here to even call it Early Access. I don’t mean that as a slight; I feel strongly that a polished version of this game would be quite fun to explore. As it is, however, it took me only around 90 minutes before the well of content began to run thin.
In REKA, you’ll take control of a young budding witch named, what else, Reka, and explore a small village surrounded by a bewitched autumn forest. Something about the solemn but inviting environmental vibe of REKA evokes the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube, Hey You! Pikachu!, and sleeper hit Fatum Betula, all in the most positive way. I certainly don’t mind the artwork, and find it quite charming for a game like this. It exists perhaps somewhere between cell-shading and low-poly, and the lighting engine, while struggling, promises to cast beautiful shading when the game is one day finished.
One of my major gripes that I expect to be fixed in the finished version of REKA is the animations. Every single animation, from running to building to casting spells, is either stilted, janky, or flat out unfinished, and none of it feels like it carries weight. As silly as it sounds, in a game with no combat, the animation needs to be good enough to provide a little serotonin boost. There’s not much push and pull in REKA, and it really is riding on its visual style to carry it. A lot of it still looks like a tech demo at the moment, and hey, it’s in Early Access. That’s why we’re here. I look forward to some really cool animations in the future.
The player is not told much at all about the world they are entering in REKA, but that’s actually quite nice because none of the narrative in the game requires you to know much at all to follow it. You’ll organically learn that Reka doesn’t seem to have family to speak of, nor does she seem to have a place in this quiet forest village. Reka herself doesn’t really talk, at least outside of short dialogue prompts, so it’s hard to know much more about her than that she is a quiet outsider. This doesn’t hurt the game much, since it really seems to be focused on having players get to know the villagers around the forest rather than Reka herself. The villagers could use some work too, as they currently have no facial expressions and look more like wooden dolls than anything. Perhaps a stylistic choice?
While you explore, you’ll hear all sorts of horror stories about the Old Woman in the woods, who performs strange rituals and is seen at night dancing with ghosts. Simply ghoulish! The game pretty naturally guides you to her place, and you’ll complete menial tasks for her while she cackles about bones and such. After assisting her in a very poorly animated but conceptually cool ritual, the reveal! This is Baba Yaga, the legendary witch of the woods, and of course Baba Yaga is nothing without her iconic house that walks on giant chicken legs. Deeming Reka worthy after her assistance in the ritual, Baba Yaga takes her on as her new apprentice. Woo! I’m a witch!
Gameplay mostly consists of collecting items from the forest such as honey, berries, wheat and the like, and then crafting it into something else via potion making or rituals. There are also small tasks around town you can do for villagers, such as helping a woman move all the pumpkins from the garden into the farm or finding a family’s lost goat in the woods. There are a few villages out there, but I believe only two or three are accessible in this Early Access version. You’ll collect by holding down R2 and walking, which summons some magical ravens to collect items, or you can direct a raven up into a tree to grab an item out of your reach. There’s not much more going on in the way of gameplay.
There is a customization element in which you are able to build your own walking giant chicken house, brick by brick, board by board. You can also decorate the interior and craft with the materials you gather in the woods, and then from a 3rd person perspective piece it all together. Here’s the issue: this is absolutely impossible to do. This is the worst, jankiest, and most unresponsive building system I have ever seen in a video game. REKA’s building mechanics makes the launch version of Fallout 4, which is a pretty comparable city building style to this, feel as polished as a Nintendo game. I cannot get anything to go where I want, or to stick properly, and the menus were constantly unresponsive in build mode.
I should also mention that REKA frequently froze up on my high end rig, an RTX 3080 with a Ryzen 7 5800x. I had two crashes to desktop, one in the starting menus and one while in the building menus, which I don’t think were related to anything specific. I didn’t experience any frame rate drops or stutters, just total freezes, so it didn’t much affect my actual play experience. Note that REKA is not playable yet on Steam Deck but the developers hope to have it verified by the time it hits 1.0.
I didn’t really enjoy my time with REKA, but I didn’t really dislike it either. I think there could be a great little cozy game in here one day. However, REKA in its current state just isn’t enough of a game to pay money for. It isn’t even a little bit close to finished. I am scratching my head trying to figure out why this wasn’t a closed alpha test instead. I assume years of work are ahead for our friends at Emberstorm Entertainment, and I wish them luck. Keep this game on your wishlists, certainly, but I encourage all prospective witches to scope it out closely to see if they really want to park their brooms on the ground floor or wait until the potion has finished brewing.
Nirav reviewed the Early Access version of REKA on PC with a review code.
