A year or two ago I interviewed an actual, practising witch, the wonderful Damien Crawford of Purgatory Dungeoneer fame, about how videogames represent magic. I badly need Crawford’s thoughts on Emberstorm Entertainment’s Reka, published by Fireshine Games, which has just been slapped with a Steam early access release window of Q2 2024.
In this curious, moody survival-ish adventure, you’re an apprentice witch who travels about the land in a chicken-legged cottage loaned out by your mentor, the Baba Jaga. The cottage isn’t just mobile – you can expand it with second-floor extensions and decorate the interior with jaunty wooden furniture. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be an option to employ gingerbread during construction, nor can you currently fly about on broomstick, but perhaps all that’ll be added on the road to 1.0. Here’s the latest trailer.
The X+Y description of Reka is that it’s Valheim meets Black Book. Aside from building up your cottage, you’ll roam the world taming creatures, learning nature and earth-based magic, and gathering ingredients for potions and other herbal concoctions such as beeswax candles. Quests are doled out by villagers: you can heal and help them, or deploy curses and poisons to live the dream of being a vicious hag in the woods.
The forest landscapes themselves appear very atmospheric, with sun shafts winking through foliage and spectral deer to encounter, but they’re also procedurally generated, which makes me feel less bad about the idea of treading on them in my giant avian bungalow. It’s not clear whether there’s combat, and I think combat would be out of place in Reka, but I do like the idea of going toe-to-toe with a rival enchantress in their own walking house. I’m not up to speed with the Baba Yaga legend, but perhaps there’s some overlap here with Armored Core? What I’m saying is: can I mount harpoon launchers on the roof and perhaps give my chicken-house spurs for close encounters?
I also like the looks of the game’s potion-brewing UI, which involves an actual hearth fire with a chopping board and nicely illustrated pull-out recipe cards, though the recipes so far don’t seem very occult. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to be a witch to make porridge. I mean, I made porridge just this morning. Hang on – have I secretly been a witch all this time? Let’s try it out by putting a quick burping hex on Geoff Keighley.
Emberstorm are a young indie team based in Berlin, who met while studying game design at university. They aim to make games that are “inclusive, fun to play and beautiful to look at”, and this certainly seems to tick a couple of those boxes. Rachel (RPS in peace) was similarly impressed when she wrote about the game during RPS Magic Week in February – there are plenty of other games on that list that deserve attention.
If you’re reading this, Emberstorm – hello! I like the cut of your jib, or the cut of your tailfeathers or whatever. Best of luck getting this ready for early access.
