REKA Takes You To A World Of Witchy Fantasy

Practice witchcraft in your chicken-legged hut

Be An Apprentice Of The Legendary Baba Jaga

Travel Central Europe And Take In The Nature

REKA takes you to an immersive alternative world deep in the forests of Central Europe, where aspiring and veteran witches alike are able to practice their witchcraft. Players will play as the titular Reka, who is an apprentice to one of the legendary witches, Baba Jaga. Forage for ingredients and practice your witchcraft to the best of your ability, while undergoing quests and solving puzzles. Along the way, you might just uncover the long hidden secrets of the grove…and your mentor’s own well-kept mysteries.

Every budding witch has their own enchanting atelier! Build and customize your witchy cottage to your heart’s content with the game’s base building mechanics. Expand your hut and make it a sweet home with tons of furniture and decorations, while also upgrading your crafting stations to become better at your witchcraft and potion-making. Not to mention, in very Howl’s Moving Castle fashion, your humble abode can even move at will with its giant chicken legs. Travel the lands of late 19th century rural Europe with your chicken-legged home!

As you travel and progress in your witchcraft journey, you will discover scattered settlements, and also learn how to craft stronger potions and medicine, as well as magical supplies that can help out a tired villager in need. Who said witches are all wicked and mean? Aid local villagers with their problems, and create a name for yourself as the good herb witch of the forest. Or…if you want to stay true to your roots as a villainous witch, you can even cause a little bit of mayhem instead.

Customization At Its Finest

Even if Reka is the name given by default, you can still create your own witch, just the way you imagined it to be! Not one Reka will be exactly alike, for the expansive and fully customizable character creation tools will be sure to help you create your unique forest witch. In fact, the developers have also taken to social media and sites such as Reddit to get opinions on character customization. Many interested gamers pitched in their ideas and suggestions, recommending more hairstyles and more nose variations, and even the idea to put in the option for wrinkles to cater to older gamers who might want to see themselves in game.

This freedom to adjust the game to your liking extends to the base building mechanic as well. Besides the “ultimate placement freedom” in the game to be able to make your little haven the way you want it to be down to the last inch, you can even recruit numerous wildlife creatures to come home with you! Fulfill that dream of becoming a cat lady out in the woods—now you’re not just any run-of-the-mill lady, you’re a witchy cat lady.

Patronage To Their Roots

Emberstone Entertainment is a young independent game studio based in Berlin, Germany, making their very first game, REKA. The studio is composed of a seven member team, working together on the title since 2021. This very same team met at university in the same city, where they all studied game design. After graduating, they collectively decided to start their own game studio, with the aim “to create high quality games that are inclusive, fun to play, and beautiful to look at.”

The name REKA stems from the river that runs through Berlin, named the Spree River. Although it has an actual name, most local Slavic people would often just call it Reka, meaning river in their language. With that said, the game is also heavily influenced by Slavic culture and mythology, with a mix of other European cultures as well. “REKA will primarily be based on Slavic myth, which hasn't had too much time in the spotlight yet. We want to take these stories and bring them closer to people who might not have heard of them yet; playing as a witch then is a natural fit. And we think a lot of people will like to live out their witch fantasy,” the developers shared with Game Grin in a 2022 interview.

“We wanted to do a house-building game. And then we stumbled upon the tale of Baba Jaga, or the many tales, I should say,” Emberstorm Entertainment founder and concept artist Julietta Grunewald told The Gamer in an interview at Gamescom 2023. REKA is then the developers’ interpretation of different cultures’ interpretations of Baba Jaga and the mystical world of witchcraft, all blended together in one melting pot that explores different ideas and themes. Baba Jaga herself has many interpretations, depending on the area. “There are so many different tales because they are all localised for different areas,” co-founder and technical artist Tobias Herman said. “There’s no one way to see things, but there’s a lot of different ways of the same thing.”

Melancholy But Cozy

As mentioned before, the developers wanted to create a game that centered on house building. Home-building games are usually bright, punchy, and warm, like the House Flipper series, for example. But REKA is anything but that—based on the trailer alone, it plays out with a dark and somber atmosphere. It was the aesthetic that the team was going for.

“We wanted to create an atmosphere that was melancholy,” Grunewald says. “That’s something that really speaks to us. There are lots of games out there, cosy games, that are bright, playful, and happy, and that’s nice. But all of us like the darker aesthetic. We found that not a lot of games have done this before.” In addition to the dark aesthetic, the feeling of melancholy can be a “very powerful and beautiful emotion,” something that should be showcased in a game like this. While it carries an undertone of sadness, Emberstorm Entertainment believed that this sentiment can be translated into “Fernweh”, a German term for the feeling of longing for distant places. “It is supposed to keep you moving and wanting to explore new places. Additionally, we wanted to create a sense of loneliness in the rural environment as a contrast to the players' warm and inviting home. We feel that contrasts are what make a world feel alive; having some sadness and melancholy makes joy and happiness feel much more intense and vice versa.”

There are also no combat elements in the game, nor survival mechanics. It is purely a cozy sandbox and creativity-centric game with a strict focus on atmospheric house building and immersion, letting your creativity shine. “So when you come home from a stressful day, you can just relax in the world of REKA and explore nature.”

Awaken Your Inner Witch In REKA

The game definitely has turned some heads, garnering attention for its unusual but calm aesthetic as well as being a witch simulator. While witch-theme and magic-centric games are nothing new, REKA stands out for its darker style and serene atmosphere. Its reception has been very welcoming, with many gamers of all ages expressing their interest in its concept and looking forward to its full release. It’s definitely a game to look out for, and it’s coming real soon!

REKA is set to release in Early Access on September 12th! However, a demo is available for interested players to try out before purchasing.