Tag Tea-Powered Games

Tea-Powered Prototypes: Roundup

In our introduction to this set of blog posts, we briefly mentioned why we chose to release our prototypes (Spirit RPG, and Life Game: Childhood, Teen, Adulthood) the way we did. We think they’re interesting, hopefully inspiring, and we’d rather see them out in the world than stuck in a digital storeroom gathering proverbial dust. But there is more to it than that, so to wrap up our prototype releases, we wanted to really answer the question(s) of ‘Why?’, and in doing so explore the feelings that go into making games which may not always be addressed in commercial development cycles.

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Spirit RPG

Note: We’re going to talk in depth about our thoughts while designing this game, which will likely affect your experience of it. We highly recommend playing it first if you have any inclination to do so: Spirit RPG (itch.io)

What is the game about?

Spirit RPG is an RPG Maker prototype in which you convince spirits to lend you their powers through magical encounters that mirror turn-based RPG battles, but require you reach an Accord rather than simply fight. In these encounters, your characters have moves to defend or heal themselves, convince the spirits, or otherwise modify the encounter. If you succeed, the spirit joins you, providing new abilities to be used within encounters, or to help traverse the world (by moving boulders, slowing turbulent winds or growing plants, for example). 

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Life Game: Adulthood

Note: We’re going to talk in depth about our thoughts while designing this game, which will likely affect your experience of it. We highly recommend playing it first if you have any inclination to do so: Life Game – Adulthood (itch.io)

What is the game about?

Life Game: Adulthood is a text-based scheduling game representing your full adult life. As an adult, time moves differently, so you can only choose one activity to focus on per quarter, such as angling for a raise, learning an instrument or spending time with friends. Alongside your planned efforts are random events to react to – will you take that job in another country? Donate to the charity that comes knocking on your door? Each choice you make will improve skills, manage your happiness or income, and lead to an entirely different life. 

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Life Game: Teenage Years

Note: We’re going to talk in depth about our thoughts while designing this game, which will likely affect your experience of it. We highly recommend playing it first if you have any inclination to do so: Life Game – Childhood & Teenage Years (itch.io)

What is the game about?

In Life Game: Teenage Years, you play an active role-playing game representing the seven years you spend in Hero Academy, a school preparing magic-wielding individuals like yourself for adulthood and ‘the real world’. While all controls are mouse-based, each of the five magic types has a different way to interact with the world, from moving around to solving puzzles and recharging your energy. With Alteration, you might move in short bursts by tapping in a direction, and solve puzzles by poking everything in sight and seeing what happens. On the other hand, with Force, each move you make counts, as you position yourself by dragging arrows and puzzling out what forces to apply to arrange objects in the world. Your highest stat in Childhood has been brought to Teen in its corresponding magical form, with some links being more obvious (push marbles as a kid, push rocks as a teen), others less so (I Spy becomes an RTS-light called Perception). The Magic stats are now called Music, Perception, Athletics, Force and Alteration.

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Life Game: Childhood

Note: We’re going to talk in depth about our thoughts while designing this game, which will likely affect your experience of it. We highly recommend playing it first if you have any inclination to do so: Life Game – Childhood & Teenage Years (itch.io)

What is the game about?

In Life Game: Childhood, you play a series of microgames which evoke things you might play with as a child, and prepare you for the abilities and activities you will encounter in the later years of Life Game. All controls are handled via mouse. There are 5 microgames, which widen in scope and complexity the more times they’ve come up. Each microgame you play represents a ‘year’ of life – after thirteen of them you will enter the Teenage Years. At first, the games are very narrow, goalless, and randomly selected. Later on, you will be able to choose which game you’d like to play, and they become less sandbox-y and more goal-oriented.

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Tea-Powered Prototypes: Intro

Hi. We’ve been pretty quiet the last couple years. It has, perhaps for many people and obvious reasons, been a time of reflection. We’re also continuing work on Elemental Flow, something we’re really happy with and looking forward to showing off in the future. But right now, we wanted to take a break to do something a little different.

We didn’t always know that the thing that would become Elemental Flow was going to be our follow-up game after Dialogue. There was a period of time where we experimented by brainstorming ideas, building out prototypes and testing with friends. We were looking at those prototypes recently with no small amount of fondness. They exist in an in-between space – not quite marketable or complete enough to reasonably pull together into a Product, but also not neatly absorbed into other projects.

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Restless – Making A New Conversation UI

A new User Interface, with its own layout and art, can help attract players and convey information and character in a way that’s unique to your game. I want to talk about our experience with Restless – a small(ish) game where you haunt a house and try to make peace with its inhabitants. I hope this post can be a useful tool for others looking to make their own UI, especially in text-heavy games, or those where the bulk of the game is in its interface.

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Conflict Resolution in Dialogue (or Lack Thereof)

It’s been a couple of years since we first released Dialogue: A Writer’s Story, and I wanted to take this opportunity to view it with a lens we don’t usually use. Minor spoilers for the game ahead, so feel free to go play it right now =)

When talking about the game, we often highlight how it is an everyday sort of story. It is about exploring Lucille’s life as a writer and her relationships with others. The stakes are low and your choices do not create wide sweeping changes. All of this is true, but there is also something else, something complementary, beneath all that. Dialogue determinedly avoids clean conflict resolution, and this can feel ‘off’ to a lot of people.

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Tea-Powered Games’ 2017 Wrap-up

It’s been a busy year for the two of us at Tea-Powered Games! We’ve been reflecting a bit on our work this year, and we thought we would share some of that with you.

 

Dialogue: A Writer’s Story

The year started with Dialogue on Itch, and on Greenlight going through the voting process (remember the days of Greenlight?)

We spent some time improving Dialogue, especially the User Interface art, creating a new trailer and reaching out to our market. We worked with Lewis Denby from Game If You Are; he was a big help in putting all of it together!

And so, we got Greenlit and subsequently released Dialogue on Steam! We’re happy it’s finally there, and we needed a bit of a change in pace, so we’ve also been working on…

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