REKA Preview

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could light a candle at the snap of your fingers? Or what if you could magically forage for woodland ingredients effortlessly? Well, those are just a couple of witchy perks you’ll find in Emberstorm Entertainment’s upcoming cosy exploration game, REKA. In it, you get to become an apprentice witch to the legendary Baba Jaga, cultivating your magical craft as you explore the wilderness, connect with spirits or townspeople through quests, and build your cosiest (and quite mobile) home in a chicken-legged hut. With summer in the rearview and pumpkin decor on my desk, it definitely feels like that time of year when I need a little witchcraft in my life, so of course, I jumped at the chance to give this game a try!

Upon starting a new game in REKA, you’re met with a brief passage of text, setting you up to be a chosen one who can unlock a new future for witches and forge a great path ahead, tackling challenges along the way; from there, you’ll get right into customising your witch. For mine, I gave her a celestial hand tattoo, light freckles, moss-coloured eyes, and long braids — I think I achieved the whimsical, earthy vibes I was going for. When it comes to outfits and accessories, it’s a more traditional selection — no brooms or pointy hats here — showcasing long coats, embroidered dresses, headscarves, and more.

My first steps in the world of REKA led me to a humble, quiet village called Kopnik, surrounded by lush vegetation and filled with cosy cabins. This is where I got my first taste of quests, as many of the folks I met needed my help, such as harvesting pumpkins, finding a carriage’s broken wheel, or searching for a missing baby goat. The more townspeople I talked to, the more I heard about an old woman in the woods. Some described her as a dangerous relic of a dark past; others painted her as a monstrous being with fangs and blood-red eyes. As a young budding witch, I set off to find her cabin and came face to face with a relatively normal-looking, though somewhat eerie, old woman — Baba Jaga. She clocked my magical potential immediately and tasked me with gathering herbs and dealing with troublesome spirits.

Up to that point, my character felt as normal as could be, but then the witchy game mechanics kicked in, giving the experience a touch of whimsy. Gathering resources around the woods is particularly fun, as you just have to look at the item and hold down your left mouse button to collect nearby items and the right mouse button to have your crows get distant ones for you. Side-stepping any need for actual tools already feels magical, and that sense of enchantment is heightened when the resources turn into fluttering particles that swirl around your character as you gather them.

In these early moments of REKA, there’s quite a bit of back-and-forth questing as Baba Jaga has you fetching certain items one after the other, but the payoff is worth it, as you’ll be rewarded with your very own chicken-legged hut. I was pretty excited about this feature after seeing it in the trailer and screenshots, as it seemed so quintessentially witchy, and it fit right in line with the mythology of Baba Jaga. After transforming a hen into that folkloric structure, you’re introduced to base-building, as you’ll craft your hut right on top of the chicken-legged base. Building mode is easily accessed by the “B” key on your keyboard, allowing you to construct floors, walls, stairs, and ceilings, as well as place decorations that you’ve found in the world or have been rewarded with for finishing quests.

I’m happy to say the cosy witch cabin of my dreams is coming along quite well. I’ve created a two-story hut, filling it with pumpkins, herbs, vases, skulls, and, best of all, a cute orange cat. So far, the building mode has been pretty seamless to use, and it allows you to be precise with your item placements, as even a small piece of paper can be meticulously positioned on a shelf next to your other decor. Whether I was placing a cat bed atop a stack of books or hanging dry herbs from the ceiling, I loved how easy it was to shape my little magical cabin. Almost immediately, I was hurting for more wood, though, which triggered the next portion of this preview’s adventure: telling my chicken-hut to move. I simply had to sit in a chair that Baba Jaga gifted me, which allowed me to communicate with the cottage to get it to stand and follow my directions.

As part of REKA’s gameplay loop, you’ll travel to interesting places by moving your cabin to the fog at the map’s edge, allowing you to expand your witchy adventure with more quests and find new loot in other zones. While it isn’t a vast open world to explore, these are segmented open areas to traverse at your leisure in a non-linear fashion, allowing you to stumble upon tasks, characters, and resources in any order. However, once you move on from a zone, you don’t currently have a way to go back to it.

In the build I tried, I was able to travel to one additional area where I was given a trial to help a forest spirit, which would, in turn, allow me to harvest more wood for my cottage. That said, while much of your questing and exploration ties back into your base-building efforts, I found that you can impact the villagers you meet and the nature around you as well. This trial for the forest spirit, in particular, gave me a tough choice between freeing enchanted loggers or protecting the forest from them, considering they were originally thoughtless in their harvesting practices. At one point, I also embarked on a quest where I needed to return totems to a villager, but doing so would upset a group of spirits I met in the forest. As you can probably tell, there’s this constant push and pull between nature and society themed throughout this initial portion of the game, so it’ll be interesting to see what other decisions we’ll have to make and what consequences they bring about, as REKA develops more content and reveals more of the story in Early Access.

After spending quite some time with REKA, it truly feels like I’ve jumped into a witchy folklore book. The cosy cottage building, magical gathering, and autumn vibes are looking great thus far. Though, with the game being in its early stages, I did encounter some stuttering in areas with dense foliage or items not reacting when interacted with, but for the most part, it ran smoothly. If you’re looking for your next witchy game to play this autumn, be sure to give REKA a look as it embarks on its Early Access journey on Steam!