About the Project

Inspiration

Mystic Tea House was inspired by our love of progression-focused management games and merge games, combined with an appreciation for traditional tea culture and Chinese-inspired aesthetics. Many merge games provide satisfying progression but often lack a strong thematic identity. We wanted to create an experience where every action contributes to the growth of a magical tea house, while drawing inspiration from traditional tea ingredients, herbal remedies, and fantasy folklore.

We were also interested in exploring how a simple mechanic could support deep progression. The challenge became finding a way to create meaningful long-term goals while keeping the gameplay easy to learn and accessible to a wide audience.

What it Does

Mystic Tea House is a merge-based management game where players operate a tea house that serves both ordinary customers and mystical visitors.

Players generate elemental energy and spend it on seed bags that produce ingredients. These ingredients can be merged into higher-tier items, used to fulfil customer orders, or combined into recipes to create valuable tea products.

Completing orders rewards Gold, Tea House Experience, and progression resources that allow players to unlock new elements, recipes, and production paths. As players expand their tea house, they gain access to additional ingredients, more complex orders, and advanced tea creations.

The core gameplay loop is:

Generate Energy → Purchase Seed Bags → Merge Ingredients → Complete Orders → Unlock New Content

How We Built It

The project was designed around a small set of reusable systems that could support large amounts of content.

The foundation of the game consists of:

A grid-based merge board
Elemental energy generation
Seed bag production
Customer orders
Tea House progression
Recipe crafting

Rather than creating many unique mechanics, we focused on building systems that could expand naturally through new ingredients, recipes, and elemental themes. This approach allows the game to grow through content while keeping the underlying gameplay easy to understand.

The visual direction combines cozy tea house management with stylized fantasy elements, using a bright and approachable art style suitable for a broad audience.

Challenges We Ran Into

One of the biggest challenges was balancing simplicity with long-term progression.

Merge games are easy to understand, but keeping players engaged over longer periods requires meaningful goals and rewards. We spent significant time identifying progression systems that would add depth without introducing unnecessary complexity.

Another challenge was scope management. We wanted the game to feel expandable while remaining realistic for a small development team. This led us to focus on reusable systems and content-driven progression rather than continually adding new mechanics.

We also explored how to create a progression structure that gradually introduces new content without overwhelming players during their first session.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We are proud of creating a design that combines accessibility with long-term progression.

The game introduces its core mechanics within minutes, while still providing clear future goals through recipes, elemental unlocks, and Tea House upgrades.

We are also proud of developing a scalable progression structure. New ingredients, recipes, and elements can be added without significantly increasing development complexity, allowing the game to grow over time while maintaining a consistent player experience.

Finally, we believe the visual theme helps the project stand out from many traditional merge games by combining tea culture, fantasy elements, and management gameplay into a cohesive experience.

What We Learned

Through designing Mystic Tea House, we learned the importance of focusing on a strong core loop before expanding feature scope.

We found that progression systems are most effective when they reinforce existing gameplay rather than compete with it. Every unlock, recipe, and upgrade in the game ultimately supports the central merge mechanic.

We also gained valuable insight into designing for accessibility. Simple mechanics often create the strongest foundations when paired with meaningful progression and clear player goals.

What's Next for Mystic Tea House

Future development would focus on expanding both progression depth and social features.

Planned additions include:

Fire and Water elemental production paths
Additional seed bags and ingredient chains
Expanded recipe collections
Special customer types and requests
Weekly challenges and seasonal events
Social leaderboards and progression rankings
Cosmetic Tea House customisation

Our long-term vision is to create a relaxing progression-focused experience where players continuously discover new recipes, unlock new production paths, and grow their tea house over time.