Little Update

I've started the very exciting process of moving all the Spirit Tea stuff from Google Drive into layout and boy is it a surprise to see how little space there actually is on an A5 page.

All the Spirit Tea Ingredients, Requests, and Events have all been written in a spreadsheet - I don't rightly know why, it just felt like the best way to do it - and it turns out 3 lines on my spreadsheet is like 7 lines of an Apothecaria style event box. Which is permissable like once per page but then I have to match it up with shorter ones and, yeah, there's a whole process. So now I've gotta go through and edit all the events to make them shorter but still sound good.

Outside of that, I've been preparing for UKGE by getting a massive banner made and by putting together a catalogue to help people who visit our stall learn more about our games! Of course we're happy to chat and tell you all about them but sometimes it's nice to have something to read in the comfort of your hotel room after a long, disorientating day going around the halls.

The art used is from For Small Creatures Such As We, Apothecaria, Apawthecaria, and her novel.">

If you're going to be at UKGE this month, come find us at Stand 4-T13 :)

Challenge Versus Experience

Spirit Tea is a hack of Apothecaria meaning it uses most of Apothecaria's systems. It adds in new ones of course and even adjusts the few that it takes wholecloth but the DNA is there.

One big thing that I've added to Spirit Tea is the Brewing mechanic.

In Apothecaria you throw the Reagents together and BAM, you've got a potion or a cream or a poultice or whatever form you want it to take.

But with Spirit Tea, I wanted the actual making of the tea to feel like a skill. Like it could be done right or wrong and that there would be consequences for doing it wrong. So, you can play through a Blackjack style minigame to Brew you're Tea and can end up with an Acceptable, Exceptional, or Awful Brew which has an effect on the Spirit that shows up.

Mechanically, it's quite cool as its a sort of unknown push-your-luck mechanic which captures the feeling of not knowing how long to steep your tea or what temperature it should be or any of the million other little things that tea masters will tell you contributes to a properly brewed tea.

And this was fine and from a game design perspective it worked well but then my partner had a brilliant idea - as she often does.

Why not get the player to brew some tea in real life?

This whole game is an exploration of this amazing culture that surrounds tea. By having an optional mechanic that gets you to be curious and start exploring new teas we hope you'll find something you love in the process.

Everything is so fast nowadays that getting to slow down and enjoy a cup of tea as you think of all the experiences your character has had to make it sounds bloody delightful.

So while we wait for me to make the game, what's your favourite tea just now?

I think mines is a pu-er that we had after Kung Fu a few weeks ago. The slight curry taste of it was so interesting and it was such a smooth tea that I would have drank it all day if I'd been allowed!