For this installment of the Spotlight series team Teatraders step up to the plate to share with us some details about their game The Little Tea Shop, a game about blending tea and managing a tea shop. (Rumour has it that British retailers are already taking preorders)
Could you give us a short introduction to The Little Tea Shop?
Well, it’s fairly simple, conceptually. Your goal in the game, as the role of a retired war veteran, is to try and make a living as a tea salesman. To succeed, you can buy finished tea blends or mix your own to sell later on for a profit. The main challenge is appealing to specific categories among clients, which consist of everything from economy students to fruit merchants.
The game concept – blending teas – is unusual, to say the least. Where did the concept come from? Are there any similar games out there?
When it was time for us to write a game design concept for our game project in school I sat at home drinking tea while brainstorming. I wanted to create a game that was quite simple but also would be interesting to design and work with during the school project. At first, my ideas were too big and would have been impossible to do in the ten weeks we had estimated for the project and with people that lacked game development experience.
Suddenly, I remembered a little tea shop in Visby, called “Kränku”, which I used to visit in the summers and I thought to myself; why not make a game about that? As I started writing down things related to the concept I had a feeling the game lacked something. I started to wonder about what you do as a tea salesman and how it’s different from other salesmen’s directions and I thought back to Kränku again. The tea shop Kränku does a lot of its own tea blends and that’s why I thought it would be a good addition to the game.
Of course there are a lot of casual games similar to The Little Tea Shop where you also manage a shop or similar. For example, there’s a game called Pizza Tycoon where you manage a pizza restaurant and create your own pizza recipes. I have yet to find another game about running a tea shop and blending tea, but perhaps somewhere, one exists.
What kind of feelings and moods do you want to communicate with The Little Tea Shop?
We wanted the player to feel like he/she is in a cute little tea shop. Initially, we had plans to let players choose what style they wanted the shop to have. Soon, we realized we didn’t have the time to do so, which ended with us settling exclusively for an Asian theme.
What inspired the art direction for the game?
The Asian theme can basically be seen in every graphical aspect of the shop and the interface. The characters in the game have a distinguished manga-esque look to match the theme. The colors in the game are based on the colors of tea and the music has a very relaxing Asian, style.
Who do you see as the audience for The Little Tea Shop? You label it as a casual game, but does it have hardcore appeal as well?
When we tested the game we noticed how it appeals to both casual and hardcore players in different ways. Casual players were quite happy just mixing some teas, buying a few and seeing how well they sold. The hardcore crowd was considerably more interested in the numbers that made customers buy their teas, and could sit for quite a while trying to find perfect teas and to get the most profit.
However, we noticed that in between these two categories there where players who weren’t quite as happy with the concept. They knew nothing about teas and weren’t interested in randomly mixing teas for the fun of it, nor were they interested in analyzing the game in numbers.
What tools have you been using to create The Little Tea Shop?
Naturally, different areas of development use different tools. For game design, word and excel were used the most. For graphics, the software/tools used were mostly Photoshop CS3/4 and Wacom Intous 3. Programmers used Visual Studio and HGE, and finally the sound designer who focused the sound and music creation around Audition and Fruityloops.
Finally, what are your favourite games… and your most hated game?
It’s really hard to say what games we like as a group. I think most of us find there’s something worth your time in most games. I do play a lot of different games, even games that are not digital, and I really like games that have an interesting game design that inspires me. I don’t really hate any games, but I’m always disappointed when I feel someone has released a game that they didn’t even care about themselves.
And that concludes our interview! Thanks to team Teatraders for taking their time to do this Spotlight with us!
