Tea For God is a VR adventure that uses impossible spaces with procedural generation to allow players infinite movement within their own room. Customizable gameplay can be anything between a relaxing long walk, an intense arcade shooter (checkpoint based) and a roguelite shooter-explorer.
In the distant future, humankind has been united, ruled by God Emperor. Endowed with advanced technology we reached stars, colonised new worlds, went onto endless crusades against myriads of civilisations.
Personal tragedies tend to be meaningless against the time. But once in a while, one person may start a fire that can change the fate of the whole universe. A man who lost his family, who holds God Emperor accountable for their death, seeking answers and vengeance, embarks onto his last journey to the place no human has ever left alive, where God Emperor is believed to reside.
Key features
- Use your own feet to move, no teleporting, no sliding.
- Adjusts to your play-area, no matter how small or how big it is.
- Customize your experience, make it as easy or as hard as you desire.
- Procedurally generated world with a linear story and handcrafted key scenes.
Impossible spaces
Tea For God utilises the concept of impossible spaces, a Euclidean orbifold. The world is composed of spaces that overlap each other making it possible to travel through a big world, while never leaving your play-area.
Procedural generation
It's the procedural generation that makes many things possible. To fully utilise impossible concepts, the game generates the world to fit within your play-area. The procedural generation doesn't stop with there. Almost everything you see is created with the use of procedural generation, carefully created algorithms that generate robots, how they look and move, devices, weapons and more.
Play-area
As the game adjusts to the available space, there are some minimal requirements. The smallest space handled by the game is 1.8m x 1.2m (6ft x 4ft). If you have less than that, the game will use horizontal scaling to make the world appear larger, bringing the minimal space down to 90cm x 60cm (3ft x 2ft).
Customizable experience
There are three main game modes:
- Experience. Offers simple short linear experience with no story nor narration. The best way to introduce people to VR and the concept of impossible spaces.
- Standard Rules. Easy to understand, navigation that guides you to your current objective. The gameplay systems are simpler and are explained with tutorials.
- Advanced Rules. More complex gameplay that requires exploration and experimenting. Resource managment gets harder as resources are scarcer. You have to find your own way through the world with use of the map.
The second important setting is about what happens when you fail:
- Pause for a few seconds and continue.
- Restart at the last checkpoint.
- Restart the adventure.
Besides that, there is a range of modifiers, which may make the game much easier (up to where you have infinite health and ammo and there are no robots, even the ones that do not harm you) or much harder (tougher, more aggressive enemies that are quicker to attack, no navigation aid and more).
The world and the story
As you venture further into the complex, you will listen to a recording that will introduce you to the world but will provide you with even more questions. For the answers, you will have to look alone. They won't be given on a silver plate. You're not welcome in this vast strange complex. You will fight hordes of robots, find unlikely allies. You will bring ritual tea for God. Just beware of the being that lurks in the darkness.
