Tea Garden Simulator

Honestly, can't figure it out. While the interface is reasonably intuitive the behavior of the game elements are not. It does seem bug riddled and really needs some deep QA even for an early access game. I won't be recommending it to the rest of my sim gamer house until a LOT of the game breaking issues get fixed or refactored. Good concept, lackluster execution.

WAIT BEFORE YOU BUY IT Game currently is rather a demo version in terms of UI there is little explenation to anything you do basic tutorials teaches you to basiclly figure out what the guide says and click a bunch of wheels to start production. Game lacks in aspect of Ui the most i believe there are many actions you cant do like transporting already prepared tea while not in factory mode(you cant switch modes as you please) so i have to gather new leavese to everything over again just to compelte order i could do without gathering leaves weird controls where you cant simple move around by draging map or moving cursor to the edge of screen many windows poping out and stuff you can simple see bc you did not pressed soemthing or you have to enter different mode or you have to plant different leaves and on and on. Game in general currently is about doing same thing over and over again without much thinking and its not like Ui is not simple its rather stupidly made if devs do not plan to change it thats a huge L. I played for like hour and while i expected to chill and play some fun game i expierenced frustration and had to think not how to do stuff but what a i doing wrong cuz game does not tell you plus i had to think what this terrible "hint/explenation" is suggesting me i should do. For this price game is way beyond acceptable i personally bought it for much lower price, save your money and wait till game is either fixed or if better game you want to play pops up.

This one is a tough cookie, it takes the simulation part quite serious. So if you are interested in a complex tea cultivation simulator that is more on the tough side where you can grow amazing tea leaves just to mess up the processing and end up with either the wrong tea or low quality produce. This one is for you. I actually learned a lot about tea production and the challenges you have to deal with to get decently rated tea done. It covers the following tea kinds: White, Green, Oolong, Black There is various methods, machines and practices involved and you will not only need to understand what they each are good for but also in what way they react to the leaves / plants you cultivate. So far I only managed to get two or three objectives far into the main story but once I have the mind for it I will continue to see if I can produce better tea once the rain season (ingame) stops and I can toy around with UV treatment for the harvested leaves. I saw one of the developer streams and it helped a lot, otherwise I would have not understood some of the mechanics as it is indeed quite complex. Especially the conversion of plant components into desirable tastes nuances. Last time I played, before the last update and dev stream, I was lost as the tutorial of the first missions can not cover all there is to consider.

8/10，因为UI和操作设计很糟糕必须扣1分，除此之外还是不错的作品，如果忽视掉那些在游戏过程中并没有什么游玩意义的纯背景板的学术性内容的话。 ①作为茶园经营和制茶题材赛道的事实上第一款作品，《Tea Garden Simulator》一上来就挑战大师级难度，模拟深度已经超过Steam上所有的酒庄经营和酿酒题材的游戏，不可不谓勇猛，让人怀疑是受到了专门机构资助的特别文化项目，学术性拉满。 ②而事实上本作在游戏性方面的表现也可圈可点，最大的问题出在UI和操作设计上，很明显地限制了其游戏性的传达。UI设计问题其它评测者大多也都提到了，但还有一个没被明确指出的问题：UI上大量学术性的内容并没有与游戏玩法直接关联起来，令人怀疑其是否有存在的必要。制作组去细究每种茶树拥有的特殊化合物有没有意义呢？当然有意义，但很明显这些内容如果未能产生对应的玩法，那就是纯纯的背景板，是纯学术性而非游戏性的东西。这样纯学术的内容在UI上大量存在，对于一个游戏作品来说是严重失格的，很容易让玩家误判其对玩法有着什么突出意义，导致最后期望落空，又或是让玩家无法方便地获取那些真正有用的信息。制作组明显是在学术性和游戏性的比重上极大偏袒前者，才造成了UI设计的灾难。 ③本作体量不大，在完全学习理解了四类茶的本质之后就没有什么挑战性了，都有公式化的制茶方法，游戏乐趣会锐减。而制作五星级茶叶所必需的土壤育成环节却非常非常枯燥。加上之前提到的UI设计使玩家产生的误判和最终的期望落空，实际游戏内容量和平均游戏体验是不太对得起这个价位的，给高分不过是考虑到其是题材第一作，能有这个表现已经可以了。希望今后制作组能够把重心放在游戏性的打磨上，而任何不与游戏玩法结合的纯学术性的东西是不可能得到玩家的普遍认可的。

I've tried making this game work. It works great for the 1st in game day, sometimes. It's the second day that I can't get to work. I'll be able to get through all the steps... except I won't be able to drag the tea to the very last machine, making everything pointless. Not that it matters if it asks for a different type of tea in the order, it won't let you change what leaves get plucked, it tells you the task for the day is already allocated. This means if your 1st order and 2nd order have different leaf requirements you're a bit S.O.L. unless you buy a new plot of land and speed through a month, but that doesn't really matter if it stops you from moving the leaves to a machine at the end. I would love to see the game worked on and developed into a fully playable game, but at this point in time, I'm having no luck with it.

A very intricate looking game. Would love to play it without needing to utilize the windows magnifier software.

This game has a lot of promise. I love the amount of detail and care that went into developing this game so far. I'm glad to see consistent and recent updates as well, which tells me that this game is getting worked on often. I can absolutely tell a lot of love and time has gone into the game's details where they stand. However, I do have some comments and questions with where I'm at in the game. I do understand this game is in early access so some of what I may address may already be in the works. The tutorial is a helpful starting point for getting teas developed. However, changing the different sliders has no impact on the bar graph to the right stating the impact of the process on the tea. Trying to develop an oolong or green tea can take a bit of guesswork and working with the different parameters of the machines. A suggestion I have here is a "range" on the sliders for the different teas, maybe targeted by the user selection as to what tea they are attempting to make. Kind of like the ranges on the wheel of oxidation. Black teas are at the very far right and green teas are to the far left with oolong overlapping the 2. The bar graph is also a little bit buggy with the descriptions. Clicking on any of the others will quickly pop up the description, and then it will immediately jump back to "UV Damage". What does UV damage do to the flavor of the tea, the oxidization levels, etc? What do any of the impacts do to the flavor of the tea itself? For the impact of the process on the tea leaves, I have no idea how a process will impact the flavor profile of the tea or oxidization until it's already started. I like that I can pause that process and rework it to get finer adjustments on the flavor profile, but I'm lost as to how to plan for specific flavors. This has become a bit of a problem because I cannot progress past level 0, because, despite all my working and reworking, I cannot get teas that match the First Flush Orthodox or Spring Green Tea well. I wish I had tips or clues as to what in the flavor profile is making them not match the target values and what I might try to do to fix it. I get these values as close as I can based off what I've learned, but it seems as though if there's even one "undesired" aspect of the flavor profile that is close to the value of the desired aspects, the tea will fail. It wasn't a problem for the First Flush Black tea to have "undesirable" flavors close in value to the target ones. I would appreciate it, personally, if the tutorial can cover how to push for some flavors. Like I noticed the Mother leaf and Fish leaf are less likely to produce a floral flavor quickly, but will push the vegetal flavor a bit more aggressively by comparison. Say I wanted a sweeter tea, the tutorial can cover that the buds or first leaves tend to create sweeter teas and that oxidation can advance the sweetness as well. There are a lot of different combinations to create in the game, so not a tutorial that covers every single possible combination, just how to create more sweet flavor or more vegetal flavor and introduce the more complex flavors as the tea plants and machines that create those get unlocked by the user. Maybe a recipe book with the flavor profile at the top and the leaves you can pick and processes that enhance the flavor. The tutorial covers that Second and Third leaves are good for black teas...what about the other leaves? It would also be nice to know what each machine can do. I've had some green teas turn to oolong because I accidentally left them in the sun-withering machine for too long and they oxidized. Or if there's a flavor reduction penalty. In the quality ratings, what is it based on? Flavor? Rarity? The specific leaves? I see the weather tab there and assume that that is currently in development, so maybe address how the different weather conditions impact the tea in the tutorial when the weather becomes implemented? Could there possibly be tips as to how to improve the quality of the next tea leaves based on the rating you just got? Maybe a record of the flavor profiles and how they rated somewhere? Or “the ideal tea” with the flavor profile and chemical layout for each basic tea leaf (since quality seems to be somewhat unaffected by flavor profile for now). This is just me being a bit picky about the UI, but it would be nice to be able to hover the cursor over the different chemicals in the different leaves and see what flavor aspect that specific chemical creates. I know there's the chart up in the corner, but it can be hard for me to find the chemicals I'm seeing in the leaves in the chart and sort out which one impacts which flavor. Hexenal, for example. Being able to hover over the label in the dashboard in the bottom and a little text box pop up over my cursor that says "grassy aroma" or “vegetal” would be helpful. Or a similar idea where the user can see which chemicals are in the leaves before they're picked and deciding which ones suits the tea they're trying to make the best. Flavinols: good for black tea. What about green tea? What should I target to get a good green tea? Lastly, I have to ask because I’m a huge fan of tea outside of this game, to the point of growing my own little tea bush…will there be flavored teas in this game? Jasmine green/white tea or raspberry black tea and the like? This is already a fantastically complex game with the traditional, unadorned teas, but it would be interesting if the flavor add-ins in modern tea were a part of the game.

[h1]Yes, yes, yes.[/h1] Despite the current bugs, I recommend this game wholeheartedly. [h3] Regarding the negative reviews: Improvements can be made, but this is NOT a dead game.[/h3] The devs are present and responsive, and they need player input to improve At its heart, this is a game about growing and producing tea, and making money by selling the best tea you can possibly generate, given your current available land, tea plants, production equipment and a healthy dose of your own tea knowledge. If you enjoy tea, if you want to learn more about how it's made and the down-and-dirty details of what makes tea taste good, the challenges of processing it while preserving all of the qualities you want it to have, this is absolutely 100% the game for you. Nothing else like it exists. At the same time, this means it isn't really a 'casual' production game - it is a simulator, through and through. Selecting the right cultivar of plants for the type of tea you want them to produce, managing the soil to maximize precursor compounds, and then processing to maximize the presence of certain flavors and aromas while minimizing the loss of others - that's what this game is really about. This will turn off some players who want a cozy easy production game, but it will excite others, and based on the dev's love for tea, I think that's the audience this game is really for. People who want to get into the details. -Because- of this, I think this game isn't properly thought of as an automation game. Automation does exist within the game, but when you get down to it, you'll likely want to be micromanaging each step of production, because even the same cultivar from different fields will have slightly different properties and you can't just set the oxidizing machine to "One minute thirty seconds with so and so airflow and temperature settings" and expect every batch of leaves to turn out perfectly for that step of production. On the other hand, if you prefer to automate the process, you can do that pretty well by blending the tea leaves from your fields together initially to combine their properties and result in a consistent batch, then feed that into your processing chain once you have your settings dialed in, and get a consistent output that way. Maybe you'll lose a decimal or two of quality for going this route but some players could prefer it. I want to make clear that it's rather unconventional. It does things somewhat differently than other production games and certain conventions that you may have grown accustomed to are not followed. I think this confuses new players. Other reviews say they have trouble understanding it, can't get through the tutorial, or there are too many bugs. I also had these complaints upon starting, and I'm glad I pushed through the initial frustration. Currently (as of 7/20/25) the tutorial does not cover every mechanic, and some that it does mention aren't properly illustrated. This could definitely be improved upon. HOWEVER, when I joined the discord and made these suggestions, the dev was immediately responsive. Even though it's been released for some time, -this is not a dead game-. I believe that too few people have stuck around long enough to build that critical mass of players that's necessary to get all the bugs reported and all of the Quality of Life suggestions made and acted upon. The players that have have simply gotten past or found workarounds for the bugs that do exist and are enjoying their life as a tea producer, and haven't been focused on finding and reporting the bugs. And you can. The bugs are not game-breaking for the most part and it is very fun to sit around blending tea leaves, weighing the pros and cons of various production techniques, and finally produce that elusive super-tea that you've been straining to reach. Well, since this is the kind of game that seems tailor made to my interests, I've taken it upon myself to work with the devs and try to hunt every bug and make every quality of life suggestion I can think of. I believe once the tutorial is polished and the bugs are eliminated, this is a gem of a production game that will, someday soon, find its niche audience and shine as it deserves to.

This is far more of a simulator than a game. I know nothing about tea cultivation and production but I'd be surprised if you'd find more detail in a textbook than in this game. Many of the bugs mentioned in earlier reviews seem to have been fixed but ultimately its not a fun game. At a high level its quite basic: grow your tea leaves, process them in different ways to produce different kinds of tea to sell. However, each stage has numerous parameters that have to be set correctly to produce the best quality of the chosen tea. There are numerous chemical compounds represented in the plants that vary depending on the variety, weather, time of year etc. These have to be converted into the right balance of other compounds for the type of tea (black, white, oolong, green) through a series of machines, each with several parameter (time, airflow, temperature, pressure etc.) to produce your final tea. I'm an engineer so I love a complex simulation but the main issue with this game is the step change in difficulty and lack of explanation. At level 1 you're told exactly how to process the leaves through a reference guide and some tutorial text with much of the complex options hidden but without much explanation of what is happening. Once you reach level 2, this the detailed reference is changed for something far more vague and suddenly loads of complex options are unlocked with a dump of information. Without the previous reference guide or a better paced explanation of how to grow your plants and calibrate your machines you end up producing worse quality tea than in level 1 with little understanding of why. In addition, once you reach level 2 its all about tea quality, the money seems to be just for buying new machines and land with no way to fail other than not progressing. The level of knowledge required to play this game probably only comes from studying tea cultivation and processing but if you're doing that you probably want to be making tea for real rather than playing a game. Ultimately this game has such tiny niche because of the significant subject knowledge required and its lack of fun.

I am learning a lot about making tea from playing this game.