REKA

This breaks my heart to leave a "not recommended" review for this, because it should be literally everything I love in game form. I was patiently waiting until it was close to 1.0 to try it because I was SO excited and didn't want to ruin it by playing an unfinished version, especially when the initial EA reviews weren't great. I thought I was safe getting it a few weeks before full release and taking some time to catch up, but oh my god this game is so freaking buggy, and not the cute janky early access bugs, the game breaking, unable to progress, lose your save file type bugs. I want to be clear that the vibes in Reka are IMMACULATE - the autumnal atmosphere, the crows cawing, lighting candles with your magic and performing rituals... all of it is just perfect. But I fear that the immaculate vibes are by far the best part of this game. Within the first 20 minutes I met a bug that meant a door that should have been open was closed and I couldn't progress, so I had to load a previous save. It happens I guess. Then about 2.5hrs in I became stuck in a dialogue window, unable to close it, and had to alt f4. That seemingly corrupted my save file and I had to once again load a previous save, but this was annoying for two reasons - one, I googled the problem I was having and saw it has existed for 2yrs+, and two, there is no autosave for some reason so I lost a LOT of progress. Those were just the gamebreaking bugs, although I've also encountered invisible NPCs, people and items glitching through the floor, bugged quests, and all of these issues made me look past the excellent vibe and evaluate what I was actually doing in this game. I realised on reflection that the vibe was carrying a lacklustre game. Every area you travel to looks the same, all the NPCs look the same, and every village has the same buildings with the same layouts. The house building and decorating is decent, but could definitely use some polish considering it's such a selling point of the game. I feel like I was kinda catfished for the first hour or so by the intro quests because they were excellent, immersive and interesting, but after the first 2 zones the quality is not the same at all imo. It might be that the latest update introduced a lot of bugs, but as this is my only experience with the game, I can't in good conscience recommend it in it's current state. I will definitely check back for future updates, maybe playing a little bit every now and then so the repetition doesn't get to me. I want to love it so badly, and the immersion and atmosphere is amazing, but everything else just fell flat for me.

If you like to build, or, you get motion sickness from video games, DO NOT BOTHER. There are no settings to alleviate motion sickness, and the game is constantly spinning the camera view (example: open any storage chest). When you finally settle in and start really building your house, the build controls are so wonky that you will never be able to snap a simple roof to anything. The theme and story are fantastic. I really tried to make it work. The nausea coupled with inability to build is just ruins everything.

My review: This game is amazing in my personal opinion, there is building, exploration, magic, and overall fun. Yes its buggy, no its not abandoned, yes you will have fun if you give it patience. For the negative, whiny complaints: Y'all, it says "Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.", in layman's terms, hold your freaking horses, its NOT a COMPLETE game. Its in development, youre going to see bugs and game breaking issues, which ARE worked on. This game is going into 1.0 soon and will continue to be updated, GIVE DEVS SOME PATIENCE AND GRACE. Give it a chance, and if you don't like it, don't write "ItS BuGgY Weeeh wOe Is mE", just speak what you don't like, get off your soap box and find a triple A game that is completely finished because EA games by indie/solo devs are NOT for you. The whining is really annoying in these indie/solo dev, Early Access review sections. (And i say DEVELOPER, not the publisher. This is literally the devs only game dawg.)

let me preference, i really really want this game to succeed. but is absolutely nowhere near polished enough for a full release!! every time there is a new update i start a new save, and every time the same exact same bugs pop up. its been years now. with the latest update the frame rate has broken. merchant vanishing, animals spawning inside of scenery, random tiles in the house not allowing to be built on for no reason, turning your house into an asymmetrical mess. also it is missing some utterly frustrating quality of life updates. things like how am i supposed to tell what is a large or small meal? when you get an item you have to click thru a pop up every single time, despite the fact you have collect them before. having to have all cooking items on you to use, despite the ingredients being in your house. also the random generation is buck wild, you get houses hanging off of cliffs, bridges spawning on top of boats, trees floating in the air. every single update has been a disappointment. what is the point of new content if the game barely works at all? i do not recommend it until its in a better state.

Gosh, this game has so much potential. I've played for 5 hours and already reported 3 bugs. 2 of which made it so that one [u] quest couldn't even be started [/u] and the second made it so [u] another quest couldn't be completed[/u]. The third was just a glitched out character. From what I've gathered so far, each section of the game has a different map and once you complete the main quest and move on, you can't go back. So, I've already missed one entire questline in each of the two locations I've been to so far. Honestly, I'm irritated about it and don't even want to play anymore. [b]I looked up the quests and there are reddit threads from over TWO YEARS ago having the same quest issues... why is an entire quest unplayable for two years? Unacceptable. [/b] I don't want to get further invested in the game when there's so many issues already.

两年了！游戏出了两年了！！我买了那么久一直等，中文一直都没有出，我真的很无语，不推荐中文玩家购买，制作组不在乎中国市场！波兰，乌克兰语都出了就是没有中文！！

its filled with bugs now. its crashed 3 times in the 5 hours that I've had it and there are a lot of npc movement bugs. I have gotten stuck in game and had to reload just to try and continue .

Played for 4 hrs. Got to the 2nd map and saved to come back later. Game now crashing when trying to load that save. Those first 4 hours were pretty buggy, but mostly stuff you can play around, just really sloppy and clashing with the otherwise great vibe the game has visually and thematically. I had held off from getting this after their demo before they went into EA because it was so rough and figured this close to 1.0 it would be in better shape. The performance vs fidelity is still way off as well. Nah, just as janky and with the crash on save load I just can't recommend it. Edit: Even the bug submission form is erroring out and I am unable to provide the save and pc info. Granted they are using a 3rd party for this so hopefully they can get that resolved as well. Sheesh. Edit 2: So I rolled back to an autosave in the 1st map and got to progress into the 2nd area. After spending almost 2 hrs there I got softlocked in a dialog with the Elder Lutk and lost all that progress. How is there still critical blockers in the main path after 2 years?! FFS

Game has too many game breaking bugs, graphics are ♥♥♥♥, the npc spawning is broken. Overall a game that is worth about $5 MAX. For a game with an official release date of about two months, I would get started on making the game playable first. Early release for an unplayable game that costs $20 is ridiculous.

This game is not compatible with Steam Deck in the slightest despite being verified. Had to follow a guide just to get it to launch, then once In the main menu, none of the controls work. Who verified this...?