Tag Tea-Powered Games

The Elemental Plane

Hello everyone! Now that we’ve shown the new demo of Elemental Flow at a few events, we’re feeling pretty good about where it stands. We’re still brewing up the world, but there’s a specific part of it we’d like to talk about today: the Elemental Plane.

The game takes place in two separate but connected areas. In Reality, things look quite normal; there are people you can talk to, buildings and streets, tables and chairs and everything else you would expect. However, you’ll also have the opportunity to explore a parallel place called the Elemental Plane, where things are a bit more… odd.

read more

Elemental Flow – Communicating as Developers

It’s time for something a little bit more personal than usual – we don’t talk as much as we should about our development process. The two of us at Tea-Powered Games have a tendency to avoid spoilers of every kind, for any forms of media, if we’re in the middle of experiencing it or we think we’ll get around to it in the near future. Discussing the media we love with others is valuable and enjoyable, but we like to come to that discussion uncoloured by others’ opinions when we can (except between the two of us, but we’re married and working together so that’s bound to happen).

read more

Elemental Flow – Getting Ready for Adventure X

Hello everyone! We’ve been pretty busy in the last month or so – Dialogue launched on Steam and Flo released two free games: The Felidae Phylogenetic Tree, an interactive exploration of feline species, and The Dream Self, an entry to the 2017 Interactive Fiction Competition.

Now that all those are out in the world, we’ve been focusing on Elemental Flow’s new demo, which we’ll be showing at Adventure X. We learned a lot from watching people play the previous demo, so we’re taking everything we learned there (and adding a few other ideas) to make this new version. We’ve outlined a few of the larger changes we’re making, but do note that these might not all make it to the final game – they’re steps towards a better version of Elemental Flow!

read more

Mechanics of Dialogue: Exploration Conversations

Hey everyone! We’re excited to finally be counting down to the Steam release of Dialogue: A Writer’s Story – Sept 20th is less than two weeks away! To celebrate, we’re doing a couple of blogs to talk you through the two main conversation types of Dialogue and the mechanics therein. In case you don’t already know, Dialogue is a game about conversation which sets you in the everyday life of a writer, Lucille. Different types of conversations have different mechanics to better reflect their nature (if you want to read a bit more about Dialogue in general, you can find out more here). Today, we’re kicking off with Exploration Conversations.

read more

Elemental Flow Tease 3 – Encounter Customisation

In our first post about Elemental Flow, we mentioned that we wanted to keep what we love about RPG systems, but use non-violent mechanics to tell a different kind of story. High levels of customisation is a feature that’s on the top of our list.

The menus and user interface are still bare bones, but customisation is something we want to play with from the start!

read more

Elemental Flow Tease 2 – Encounter Basics

After revealing Elemental Flow and its art and setting, we want to talk about encounters. In Elemental Flow, rather than using violence to defeat someone or something else, you have encounters with other people, where you attempt to reach an understanding of each other’s point of view.

A tutorial encounter from the current build of Elemental Flow. The player is holding B to speak using the fire element.

read more

Elemental Flow Tease 1 – Art and Setting

After our initial reveal of Elemental Flow, we’re ready to share a bit more information! Elemental Flow is set in a fictional, modern world. The main character1 will explore different cities, each inspired by a real place, but with a few twists to give it its own identity.

A work-in-progress screenshot of our first city, whose inspiration is probably given away by the red phone booths. Click on the screenshot to see a higher resolution version.

read more

Tea-Powered Games as a Narrative Design Consultancy

This blog post is a little different – it’s about us as a company, and what we’re setting out to do in the future. Tea-Powered Games is finally opening its doors as a narrative design consultancy!

Our first game as a company (Dialogue: A Writer’s Story) experimented with new types of conversations in games. From real-time active conversations to relaxed, exploratory chats and repeatedly re-written emails, we gave players different actions for different sorts of conversations. We told a story that was important to us, about the creative process and scientific research, and put together something that exemplified the kinds of things we wanted to do at Tea-Powered Games.

It’s always been a goal of ours to work with other studios and help them tell their own stories in new and interesting ways, and we think there’s no better time to start doing so than now! We know that not every team has enough time and resources to devote to making character interactions interesting, but we also know that the story, characters and ambiance of a game, from its music to its mechanics, can be a major selling point. This is where we come in, as a two-person team specialising in writing and design, making quality storytelling and design easier and more affordable. We can be very flexible – we know what it’s like to work on a small budget, on a short time scale, so we’ll find whatever works best for your game.

We’ll keep making our own games, of course! Our second game is in the works, and we can’t wait to share more about it! However, there are many interesting stories to tell, and we want to help other people tell them through their games and gameplay.

If you are a game developer and want to know more, have a look at our consultancy page, or send us a message via twitter (@teapoweredteam) or email (team@teapoweredgames.co.uk) and we’ll have a chat about your game. Whether you want a short script, more in-depth design work to integrate your story, or you’re not sure what you might need, let us know!

read more