REKA Review

REKA is a base-building adventure game heavily inspired by Slavic legend developed by Emberstorm Entertainment, an indie game development studio in Berlin. REKA is the first game developed by Emberstorm Entertainment. Fireshine Games, a subsidiary of Enad Global 7, published the game. FireShine Games is known for publishing games such as Shadows of Doubt, Core Keeper, and Lies of P.

The first time the adventure genre was not overshadowed by other genres was in the 1990s and 2000s when games incorporated the elements of resource management, exploration, and story. Some innovative games, such as the Dwarf Fortress, were released in 2006 as a construction and management simulation indie video game, but the game that made the genre popular was Minecraft by moving its focus to creativity and sandbox gameplay. 

The genre has since developed in terms of narrative and survival to games such as Subnautica or Valheim, which retain players' attention with a combination of strategy, resource management, and exploration. REKA fits in well, although it isn't as survival-focused as the previously mentioned games and falls more under the cozy adventure genre. It removes the survival aspect and leans more towards a play-at-your-own-pace design. 

REKA is an open-world crafting game with a non-linear storyline, plenty of unique characters you can interact with, and an amazing housing system. In the game, the player's main goal is to learn from Baba Jaga to become a witch and restore a chicken-legged house that should become a worthy home for a pair of witches, both young and old. 

It can be described as a cottage–core style game, where players can roam through various wilderness territories, taking on and completing quests, gathering materials to improve their home, crafting things, and learning magic from Baba Jaga; however, some of the quests are more of a moral choice like finding a missing family member for one of the villagers and having to choose between telling them the truth of their fate or lying about it to spare them the pain. Another quest is trying to chase the crows away from someone who didn't pay a debt to Baba Jaga, as you have the option to leave them to their fate or get the crows to leave them alone. 

You start in the western part of the lands of Jawia, the first region in the game. There are a few NPCs who will give you straightforward tasks to help you get used to the game's controls in the small village of Kopnik, such as carting pumpkins from the field to the barn, finding a lost goat, and bringing it back to the herd. You don't have to complete these quests to move on to the next part of the game. 

You can pick up one of the baby goats and carry them home to keep as a pet once you've gotten the chicken-legged home, of course, as you'll get the option to keep the animal or let it go. You can also earn gold and furniture for your house by completing the side quests. It is worth completing them so you can spend a little more time exploring the map, but this can also be done after completing the main quest and bringing the house to life. After this small starting area, you will proceed to the main challenge: meeting an old woman in the forest who many believe is a witch. 

REKA is based on many different Slavic legends, such as Baba Jaga, the most prominent character in the game, and later on meeting the Leshy, who is a forest spirit who treats humans differently depending on how they treat nature. The game's main focus is on a young girl named Reka, which you find out from Baba Jaga means River. Reka comes across Baba Jaga and is given a task to complete by her, with Baba Jaga's crows keeping watch over Reka to make sure she does as she asks and to assist as needed. 

In many Slavic Folklore, Baba Jaga is seen as a maternal figure and a villain who would kidnap and eat children. REKA encompasses this by depicting Baba Jaga as the "Mother of Witches”." Baba Jaga asks for Reka's help in a ritual, although that's unclear initially. 

The ritual is to help bring to life the famous chicken-legged house you can build in REKA. As said before, the game references a lot of Slavic lore and old gods, and it's prominently highlighted during the ritual as Baba Jaga mentions Živa and Svarog. Svarog is the Slavic god of Fire and blacksmithing; he is essentially the Slavic equivalent of Hephaestus. Živa, or Siwa, is the Goddess of fertility and love in Slavic Mythology, which ties together the essential rebirth the ritual does. 

You initially start with a limited amount of wood to build your house, although you can only cut down trees for more wood after the Leshy quest. There isn't combat in the game, although you can send the crows to attack and destroy huntsmen towers to gather wood once you reach the second map. The house essentially acts as a portable plot of land that can be moved anywhere. You can build on the house whenever and wherever you want, and it also acts as a form of transport for players to move around the map and travel to new regions because the maps are pretty large. 

Not only is the concept of a walking house fascinating and closely tied to various folklore of Baba Jaga, but it also serves as a very practical tool for REKA. Players don't need to worry about building multiple bases or traveling far from their home base, as they literally have a base nearby and can explore in peace. REKA also generously provides a way to teleport back to the hut anytime, eliminating much of the inconvenience of gathering and exploring. 

A game where the building is limited to a minimal area, like the hut area, requires extremely precise placement to be possible, and REKA understands this well. The game features perhaps one of the best building systems on the market, especially with its flexibility, allowing players to rotate pieces, snap them into place, and precisely drag furniture and other objects across surfaces to achieve perfect placement. It's easy to imagine spending hours building the ultimate witch hut in REKA's sandbox mode. 

As Baba Jaga says in the game, "Folks think that witchcraft is mainly about rituals. It's actually a lot more about soup. Never underestimate the power of a full belly." A huge part of the mechanics besides base-building and resource gathering is cooking. You put together three ingredients and hope it creates a dish or a poison, depending on your ingredients.

It also encourages players to experiment, as you are never punished for trying out wild combinations. The game puts the player into the world of Slavic myths, and in this aspect, it's on par with the Witcher series, which has its portrayal of these myths and legends, just without the monster slaying.

The graphics of REKA have a stylized look, highly reminiscent of concept art seen in animated films such as Frozen and Tangled. This means the game utilizes shape, color, and lighting incredibly well, bringing the world to life. This is most easily in the color choice for characters like Reka and Baba Jaga.

For example, Reka, no matter how you change her appearance, as she is customizable, her colors are always warmer and more vibrant, which contrasts with Baba Jaga, whose colors are more washed out and darker, giving Baba Jaga's appearance compared to Reka's more lively colors. This essentially means that every scene in REKA looks aesthetically pleasing and could be framed if you wanted. 

The sound design of REKA is extremely well put together. It includes elements of traditional instruments, such as the Zhaleika and Balalaika, and orchestral elements that help give the entire soundtrack a mysterious, almost eerie atmosphere. The sound effects are crisp, clean, and satisfying, but they don't drown out the beautiful soundtrack. It should be known that REKA does not have voice acting; however, dialogue is still given an audio cue, which sounds like writing on paper that overall gives the feeling of the story you are playing through being written down like it was a fairytale.

It's hard to imagine a game that makes you feel more like a real, authentic witch, and this cottage-core-centric take on the adventure genre alone sets it apart from many others. The player isn't there to conquer their neighbors or the wilderness as they see fit; instead, it is more of performing ancient rituals and earning the favor of the forest spirits, thus being in tandem with nature and not against it. REKA is still in Early Access, but it already offers much value. For those interested in witchcraft and a cottagecore vibe, this game was made for you, and it's hard to think of a reason not to enjoy it.