ETEA DOC 1

Brewing the Tea

This summer, we decided to participate in Interstellar Game Jam 6. Our small team had only attempted one jam before this, but we were excited to have another structured opportunity to develop a finished project. Despite only having four days, we wanted to create something out of this world – literally!

After the theme was revealed to be isolation, we were immediately drawn to the vast uncertainty of space. Eventually, we settled on the concept of an alien barista. We wanted to subvert classic "lost in space” science-fiction tropes by portraying a light-hearted scenario where our alien protagonist Glorbo crash-lands on Earth and is mistaken as the newest employee of the hottest boba store in town.

The name ETea was chosen as homage to the classic 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in addition to as a reference to the boba tea shop where Glorbo works.

The core gameplay loop was inspired by the Papa’s series, which played a large part in our team’s childhoods. We sought to create a fast-paced environment where the player has to switch between various stations while juggling multiple timed, nuanced orders. Our team designed the difficulty to dynamically scale as the shift progresses.

Another integral mechanic was the stealth system, which we incorporated to subtly reinforce our narrative focus on isolation. Players had to ensure Glorbo stayed hidden behind the machinery and out of the customers’ lines of sight! Getting caught or serving the wrong order causes the “sus” bar to gradually increment, ultimately leading to a bad ending when full.

Conversely, serving orders correctly allowed Glorbo to start earning money! After making it through a full shift, players are treated to a good ending cinematic where Glorbo is revealed as an alien but accepted by everyone.

Despite being under a time constraint, our team proactively sought to make the most of each day. The process was truly interdisciplinary, as members of our team crafted intricate sprite work, backgrounds, and sound design to complement the collaborative C# scripts holding the project together.

We submitted the final jam build with a few hours to spare, having dedicated the past few days to developing and polishing our output. Upon release, the game seemed to immediately resonate with the other members of the jam. We ultimately placed #1 in Art, #3 in Sound, and #4 Overall out of 82 entries.

Participating in the jam allowed us to receive a ton of valuable feedback, particularly a comment from itch.io user niddelicious: “If this was further developed into a larger release I would definitely buy it.” Our priorities were no longer focused on placing well in the jam. Rather, we were proud to have created a concept that people genuinely enjoyed and saw potential in. As a team, we knew we had to take it further.

The game had its quirks, though. Our order queue system needed fixing, and the absence of a pause button and proper settings menu was an oversight that seemed unfeasible to implement due to the time limit established by the jam.

So, with all of this feedback in mind and our passion for the concept driving us, we decided to expand our ambitions for the game and set our sights on a thorough Steam release. We have been ironing out bugs and planning the scope of the new features we would like to add.

These include, but are not limited to, a proper narrative, shops to purchase items, boss battles, and numerous opportunities for Glorbo to interact with the supporting cast and his environment.

We are excited to share our iterative progress with you through this documentation!

Stirring the Cosmos

The initial plan was ambitious: in addition to the aforementioned changes, we envisioned six unique boss battles with different mechanics, each based on a member of our team, to give the game more depth and challenge (we’re just really terrible customers to Glorbo), and we planned on implementing a day/night system that allowed players to explore the city streets at night with three storekeepers in order to buy items & find/visit their “home” in-game while unraveling an underlying narrative that will lead to a variety of endings. To build anticipation, we released a teaser video, which garnered positive feedback and helped generate initial interest.

We created a game development document and a careful plan to work on the game throughout the summer, aiming for a release by August 7th– Etea was meant to be a small summer project. However, with our growing attachment to Glorbo and desire to add more to the game while perfecting it and balancing internships, jobs, and school made it challenging to stick to our timeline. As a result, we decided to push the release date back to September.

Despite these scheduling conflicts, we still focused on pulling our ideas back to Earth to get a solid and concrete idea of what we should focus on.

Here are some examples of very (in)coherent doodles we came up with during brainstorming/planning sessions:

Piece this together as you wish.

We are very blatant with our inspirations.

Rediscovering the Blend

After a month-long break, we reconvened during the school year and decided to work on ETea during Purdue Hackers' Hack Nights. Purdue Hackers is a club that encourages peers to work on creative technical projects together, making it the perfect environment for our team to collaborate on the game.

Additionally, Purdue Hackers introduced "The Show," an art gallery-like event at the end of the semester, where faculty, sponsors, and other students are invited to see the work of Purdue Hackers—something we really wanted to participate in. To align with this event and alleviate the stresses within our schedule, we decided to push the release date to December 2024.

At our first Hack Night of the semester, Hack Night 5.0 on 08/30/2024, we decided we needed to focus on Etea, although not much useful work ended up happening aside from the start of one of the boss battles through a 2D maze generation script.

At midnight during Hack Night, Purdue Hackers has demonstrations, giving people a space showcase what they were working on. We listened to the impressive projects from others and participated in it as well, where we showcased a trailer for ETea. The response was overwhelmingly positive—people enjoyed the humor, especially the "crying Glorbo" image, and hearing their giggles while watching the trailer brightened our moods. Seeing everyone engaged and entertained by our game was incredibly rewarding, and it strengthened our resolve to continue developing the project.

Topping it Off

This brings us to now. At 2am during Hack Night 5.0, we decided it would be a good idea to document our work through blog posts like this and stumbled on the Steam Next Fest approaching in October 2024. This would be a great incentive for us to work on perfecting certain aspects of the game so that we could release a polished demo. Instead of trying to complete all six boss battles, we decided to narrow our scope to one having the game end after that, ensuring that we could deliver a refined and enjoyable experience for the Steam Next Fest audience. This focused approach will allow us to make the best use of the progress we've made and present a compelling demo version of ETea.

Keep your eyes on the stars and your hands on the tea :3

Written By Saahil Aneja and Jadden Picardal