Indie Rock: Tea Serving Simulator

My day job sees me behind a bar at a pub in some town you’ve no call to have heard of save for passing by it (speedily) as a stop between London and Cambridge. As it’s part of a larger chain of branded pubs there’s an arcane set of standards for service intending to produce a uniform expectation of quality across the country. Part-pour this drink. With this one, just give the customer a glass and an open bottle. Cut the head off this beer with the branded trademark beer cutter®. It is not “this” type of popular brown soda-pop, it is “this” one, is that okay?

For the most part these rules serve as a decent guideline but it’s, god, it’s a ballache trying to do your job quickly and accurately. Often mindlessly performing these duties you’re going to be going against the preferences of the customer, too. Bleugh. One of the rules for one of the above recently changed, as if someone decided it was suddenly gauche to do something we’d been doing that no one would have noticed either way, really. How dare us.

Tea Serving Simulator is about being a butler and acquiescing the demands of your master. Specifically: The tea-related ones. It’s another one of a set of games I’m into where the process of doing something reasonably simple is made difficult by limiting your ability. To serve the tea, you bring out a teapot on a tray, balancing the two on your finger. The force of your motions are hyper exaggerated, though. Any input will likely push an item flying off into the distance. You have to gracefully maintain your composure as you transport the tray for 20 seconds, sliding your finger back and forth softly, calmly, passionately.

Each time you manage to shuttle over the items, another object (that apparently you’ve forgotten, you DINGUS) is added to the tray, further increasing the difficulty. Your master likes tea with milk! And sugar! casino online In a mug! How could you forget this? Your ass is on the line, here, butler. It mirrors my own daily activity, literally juggling the service of drinks while I’m only doing it figuratively (and, sure, in a few cases, literally).

I like it when you eventually just say “Fuck it” and catapult the tray and all of its contents into the fucking air. Lift your cursor up high enough and you see that the butler’s arm is actually disembodied with a rocket pack attached. It’s a silly way of solving a development problem with a non-sequitur. Either you”ve got to make the arm really long (which is also very cool) or just make it a disembodied cursor. Adding a silly propulsion engine is, gosh, that’s such a great idea. I laughed, like a real human with feelings might.

Tea Serving Simulator’s fun! It’s fun to play silly games about normal things! If that isn’t the misson statement of this entire column at this point, it might as well be.