Hey Tea Witches,

We’re heading into fall here, which to me is the perfect tea season — you can appreciate the joy of holding a hot, steaming mug without the rest of you freezing off. Plus, everyone’s talking about the leaves, whether they’re falling from the trees or turning colors, so might as well also think about the leaves in your cup! This morning I’m actually adding some fresh ginger and turmeric to my cup of white jasmine because I’m recovering from another bout with laryngitis, but recovery is going well, thank you for asking.

Regardless of season or health situation, I usually like my tea strongly brewed. I put in extra leaves, or let it go a bit longer, for a more intense flavor. Maybe I’m not particularly sensitive, but I also can’t really get into more subtle or weakly-brewed teas, because to me they just taste like hot water. And Loose Leaf being such an in-depth tea-brewing sim made us add “strength” as a simulation element on the checklist. But that means we have to define, in code… when does an infusion become “strong”? Or “weak”? Or neither? Especially if you can’t actually taste the brew in question?

Well! We let ourselves be guided by our existing systems of “perfectly steeped” versus “oversteeped”, making the strength textured by both ingredient quantity and time. Essentially, every tea begins as weak, at the beginning of an infusion, after which it may become perfect — and, simultaneously, if there are 2+ servings of an ingredient, strong. And in fact, we added that if there are 4+ servings, the infusion of that flavor becomes “super”! So 4 green tea servings in one cup will, over time, taste “super green”, and can also be perfectly steeped, if served at the right moment.

The real question is, which guests order that? Some might prefer their cup to be super sweet… or iced… or a particular recipe… but now we have the capability to serve a Strong cup of London Fog, versus a weaker cup of London Fog, and guests can comment on what you’ve served them, according to their tastes.

Next on the docket: more beauty! We’d love to cut a new trailer to show you how gorgeous the game has become over the past months, with all the new tea and wares and tarot and characters we’ve developed, but it’ll be a lot of work, so bear with us. We don’t want to spoil too much, but we also want you to know we’re making steady progress towards that witchy tea room you’re dreaming of. Make sure to join your fellow Tea Witch coven in the Kitfox Discord[discord.gg]!

Thank you for your patience!

Tanya & the Loose Leaf team

Hey Tea Enjoyers,

It's Alexandra here with an exciting Loose Leaf: A Tea Witch Simulator update. It's my absolutely pleasure to introduce you to some of the characters you'll be serving tea to. I chatted with Creative Director and Artist Thea to see what it was like designing these special tea guests:

Loose Leaf didn’t start its pre-production life as a tea brewing simulator, and originally you were a witch that served food to little spirits that visited your cottage. After a lot of time and re-thinking, we changed the gameplay entirely, but kept the idea of a witch serving something to strange little beings. The original had pretty heavy inspiration from the types of cute creatures you encounter in Ghibli movies, but during planning our Tea Witch Game, I wanted to go more stylized and inhuman.

The guests are colourful spirits who visit you for a cup of tea, I described them as ‘LIttle Weird Guys’ (or, just Weird Guys or Weirdos) and it kind of stuck as an internal moniker for them. We originally had the idea that some of the guests you got closer to would turn into humans the more you knew them, but with a shift in story focus, we decided to keep them in their spirit forms.

For these guys, I drew inspiration from some fond childhood movies; The Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, My Neighbour Totoro. I also threw in some inspiration from the ultimate Little Weird Guy fan, Hieronymus Bosch. I’ve also always had an interest in stories of cryptids and ghosts, so some of that bleeds through, too. Did you know that Kitfox made a cryptid game[kitfoxgames.itch.io] for a game jam? I also love plants and wanted to channel some of that into the designs as well. I think this helps in grounding them a bit, so they don’t feel TOO strange or alien (though some I tried to make inscrutable). Here are some of my favourite inspirations from Hieronymus Bosch:"

We can't wait for you to meet all the weird little guys yourself! Can you guess what the mystery creatures might look like? Some of those silhouettes are very friend-shaped!

Who is your favourite little weird guy? Join us on the Kitfox Discord[discord.gg] to let us know!

-Alexandra