Gee, Tea, Eh, Seven?

If you're here - that's INCREDIBLE, really. you're one of the earliest souls interested in the development of this title, driven by a single indie rookie developer. Thank you - this was all for you.

Gee, Tea, Eh, Seven is an open-world bubble tea chain management simulator... on one level. Once you're established, leave your bustling outlets to your employees and advance your brand's growing presence -- through all means available to you, including sabotaging rival outlets, stealing supplies, disrupting deliveries, and, uh, incapacitating their staff.

Whether you choose to grow your dominance through hard work and mastery, or ruthlessness and violence, don't feel bad for the competition. After all, they struck the first blow, laying low your father's sprawling boba empire and many of your family members in one single, fateful stroke.

REVENGE IS A CUP OF BUBBLE TEA, BEST SERVED COLD

As Seven, the protagonist and sole survivor of your family, your goals are clear: first amass enough influence, wealth, and muscle -- then attempt to uncover the identity of your family's aggressors, and exact your sweet revenge. Or deliver them to justice, and a fair trial. Your call. I'm not your father.

PICK THE JUST DESSERTS

The game's mechanics will include:

• A fully-functioning customer/NPC system with persistent, roaming customers, loyalty levels, and preference matching

• Sometimes accurate, sometimes FUN bubble tea brewing mechanics

• Automation and employee systems to build up towards

• Vehicles that you can hijack off the road - or legally purchase, of course, with your hard-earned money. Do note this may turn the drivers and law enforcement aggressive!

• Weapons, ranging from disruptive melee (BICYCLES, FISH! .. kicking, punching) to theme-appropriate (bubble tea "grenades with various effects - from recipes that you discover!), to automatic rifles, grenades and a helicopter. If you can find it.

• TRUE, FULL day/night cycles (see below!) with future updates possibly including SEASONS!

BECOME PART OF OUR STORY

Join our community (Discord, ideally!) or reach out on any platform to start a conversation if you wish to chat! Pls join it's just me and 20 bots ._. You would probably end up shaping how the game - and even franchise, for this is what I intend to do for the rest of my life (however much I have left of it!). 

We will eventually also do fun stuff like record fictional radio shows to play on vehicles, put your funny audio recordings in (bonus points if you suit an existing NPC), etc, and maybe even get the chance to work alongside qualified (and paid professionals). You'll be credited, of course.

Additional scope for the full game

We've got a tight timeline to hit and want a presentable standard of gameplay and polish. That said, the goal is:

• A sprawling city with (eventually) five distinct zones

• Fully working traffic and pedestrian systems, including the ability to enter (and maybe race...) a variety of vehicles

• Narrative arc that spans at least 12 core missions 

• An initial 10 sidequests with meaningful rewards to advance or modify gameplay (and not just 1% crit rate)

• Satisfying progression both in combat ability and expansion (or should we say restoration...) of your empire

• Full Steam Achievement integration encouraging multiple playstyles for replayability 

• Comedic, sometimes nostalgic callout moments, but let's not forget...

• Hopefully some touching / thought-provoking moments

• The ability to prioritize (and conversely deprioritize) gameplay elements that you may not like (combat-focused vs simulation-focused)

• Hopefully some 20 hours of gameplay EXCLUDING the endgame and open-world scenarios

Key polish areas

The screenshots and artwork you see right now are not indicative of the final product. We'll always be pushing hard to improve!

• Optimization to perform on a wider variety of rigs. It runs decently on the Steam Deck - which is good news for all PCs!

• Lighting and color-grading - The day/night cycles have made this doubly (or quadruply) tricky - but we are always iterating!

• Game feel - feedback should be visceral or satisfying depending on which pillar of gameplay you're pursuing at the moment. Some days are for chilling, others for smackin', right?

• Community feedback - Avid fans of both genres - open-world and simulator (and even cozy) will have invaluable feedback we NEED. Be sure to wishlist and hop into our Discord and/or Reddit channels to have your say, and to check in on the project status!

  POLICY ON USAGE OF GENAI ASSETS

  Tl;dr - we wish we did use them, it would have been so much cheaper. Yet, as tempting as it has been, we're standing our ground on this. Every single voice, artwork and asset in the game has been and will be human-driven. Even if it does does mean it looks a bit more dated, a bit less polished than what is genuinely very scary, good-looking GenAI products flooding asset marketplaces.
  
  I grew up a beneficiary of humans pouring their creative souls into what they loved. I really trust in us gamers to be able to appreciate the effort channeled into something. And so, while the game may look kinda janky (I'm just one guy...!), please afford us a little wiggle room on account of us refusing to use GenAI art!
  
  (E.g. our current Steam page capsule was me painstakingly capturing in-engine moments and then slapping some cheesy filters via my phone's inbuilt camera app and cobbling it together in amateur free editing software. That blender blade part that used to be in the top left? Literally something you can buy on Amazon, lol.) 
  
  We've worked with a small number of voice artists, and I am doing my own homebrew mocap + voices. We'll take the long way around; that's a guarantee. Even our SIGNATURE FONT was purchased after a custom contract negotiated with an Indonesian guy who's been churning them out for near a decade. That said, it's becoming increasingly hard to tell when we purchase assets to know if it is GenAI or not... so if you spot something you know for sure is GenAI (stolen/new account, etc), contact us and we'll weed it out. Most of the assets so far are from 2020-2023, predating all this stuff, so I hope they all come from legit 3D artists with a history of quality work!
  
  (P.S. We are ACTIVELY open to community inclusions (voicelines, guests on radio shows, MUSIC) and some of these may be paid opportunities! :))