When Emberstorm Entertainment and Fireshine Games first released Reka, I was psyched. A story following the Baba Yaga’s apprentice as she traveled around the medieval countryside in a house on chicken’s legs? The first release had magic, house building, and adventure all rolled into one with the promise of so much more. With baking, candlemaking, gardening, and so much more coming out with each release, the positives just kept going, but the more material that Emberstorm released, the more apparent the issues became, and with the latest update, we’re seeing true game breaking bugs.

From the beginning, the NPCs have often glitched. They’ve appeared in the middle of the forest, floating in trees or offered strings of characters in the place of names when referring to each other. Now, you may have a conversation cut off halfway through, leaving the game locked without dialogue, unable to open a menu or back out as your character and the NPC in question look back and forth as if growing impatient with you. Alternatively, NPCs walk around without heads, or you might catch them falling asleep in abandoned houses in the middle of the day.

Where houses sometimes were half-buried in swamps before, players may now fall right through the floors, getting stuck between the bottoms of houses and the landscape with no way out.

Auto-saving prompts you to save rather than seamlessly saving in the background, meaning any error that break the game may cost who knows how much time depending on if you saved or not upon prompting, making the reminders necessary but almost an insult to injury when making it a background function would’ve been cleaner considering how much can happen in a single minute of gameplay.

The new animal helping and healing quests feel more like hoarding. If you refuse to bring any of the animals back home, the quest remains incomplete. Considering the space limitations which I’ve happily tested in my original tower, I’m just not interested in having an entire herd taking up my porch. I already have issues with the roof on my chicken coop blocking the door and glitching through the sides of the house because it auto-shifts to corners but the walls don’t auto-triangle, so the choice becomes gaps or glitches.

With chickens spasming as they fight over nests and baby goats floating all over the place, I have my hands full. I didn’t need to know that the cats that I can’t pet and can’t feed are upset because I apparently don’t spend enough time with them and don’t let them each my birds. Frankly, don’t offer a problem to players that they can’t fix.

Additionally, you may find your screen going black. You’ll still be able to save and access to menus, but you won’t be able to see or really play unless you’d like a blind simulator.

I sincerely hope that the Emberstorm Entertainment team refocuses, improving the functionality before doing any major updates on the story content. The idea and story are both very strong, and there’s plenty of room to expand, but if repeated issues prevent smooth gameplay, they’ll wind up down the same rabbit hole where many much larger dame developers are failing.

Do you agree? Disagree? Is this an issue you’ve seen across other game titles? Share your thoughts and join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord and Facebook.

Featured Image: Emberstorm Entertainment & Fireshine Games

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