Tea Time

Game Overview

Premise

Roll dice and match the results to tea orders.

Reading Orders

View all ongoing orders in the bottom right. Click the left- and right-pointing triangles to page through the orders. An order has a roll countdown and one to three tea requirements in its top row, then an X cancel button and teacup requirements in its bottom row. Add a new order at any time by clicking the notebook-and-pencil icon in the top right. [Note: itch.io may decide to make that icon invisible on your computer! You can still click in the top right to add new orders.]

Placing Dice

To place a die, click the die, then click a requirement of the same type in an order. Once a die has been placed on an order requirement, it only returns when the order has been sent out, canceled, or failed. A die showing a tea square can be placed in any unfilled tea requirement, but it will only meet the requirement if the color of tea shown on the die is included in the requirement.

Rolling Dice

To roll all unplaced dice, click the roll icon in the top left. (All orders' roll countdowns will decrease by one.) Each die can roll one teacup, two teacups, three teacups, or any of the three tea colors at the top of where it rolls.

[Note: itch.io may decide to make the roll icon invisible on your computer! You can still click in the top left to roll all unplaced dice.]

Resolving Orders

When an order's teacup requirements are met (the sum of teacup dice placed on it meets or exceeds the number of tea requirements), the order is completed, sent out, and scored as follows:

• -1 per tea requirement you did not meet,
• +1, +2, or +3 tip (random) per tea requirement you did meet,
• plus a time bonus if the order met all tea requirements: half the rolls left on the order's roll countdown, rounded up.

When you click the X on an order, the order is canceled and removed: -1 point.

When an order is at 0 rolls left on its roll countdown and you roll the dice, the order is failed and removed: -2 points.

Your current score is the lavender number in the bottom left.

Ending the Game

When you are done playing, stop.

Credits

Background picture by Brooke Lark, provided through Unsplash.

Notebook-and-pencil and dice-rolling icons by Delapouite, released on game-icons.net under the CC BY 3.0 Creative Commons license.

Questions & Answers

What audio is suggested for the game?

Something you find soothing or energizing.

What types of tea are ordered and served in this game?

Black, white, oolong (represented by orange), yellow, and green.

What lore could possibly justify this game's mechanics?

You work at the counter of a prestigious tea shop owned by a notorious teamaker who is extremely eccentric and forbids all communication within the shop except for limited gesturing, such as you indicating to the customers to fill out order forms. Each of the five co-workers assigned to move between the kitchen and your counter is furthermore permitted, whenever you send them back to the kitchen, to only bring back one of three kinds of tea (one cup's worth at a time, of course) or retrieve one, two, or three teacups. The kitchen, naturally, is on the entire other side of the serving area, a large (but silent) pond and garden with tables dotted around it. Consequently the bussing staff members are extremely anxious and assume any order with sufficient teacups is ready to deliver. However, failed and canceled orders don't reflect badly on you so much as bad reviews for incorrectly-served orders. The job has excellent benefits, including enough paid time off that you can choose to report in for work only whenever you feel able to treat all of these restrictions as a fun challenge.