Slice-of-life sim Spirittea channels Stardew Valley and the spirit world

No More Robots have announced they’ll be publishing Cheesemaster Games’ Spirittea, a supernatural bath-house management and life simulator based around magical tea that lets you see spirits. I’m sitting here right now slurping what must be my quintillionth cup of tea so far today, so I’m quite up for finding out more about this one. I just hope the water in the kettle doesn’t come from the bathhouse.

Along with helping out spirits and drinking lashings of tea, Spirittea lets you live out your time as a writer seeking quietude in an East Asian village. There’ll be villagers to make friends with and hobbies to take up. It’s inspired by Stardew Valley, natch, but also supernatural anime and manga.

You’ll be helped in your spirit-bothering efforts by a cat ghost called Wonyan. Get good enough at attracting spirits to your bathhouse and Lord Spirits will rock up, which take up a whole room each. All the bathhouse management stuff is a bit reminiscent of Onsen Master.

There’s a lot to do in Spirittea judging from the trailer. You could be cooking, sweeping up mess in the bathhouse or bringing fresh towels to spirits. They like having a wash, spirits do. It looks like there’s minigames too – I spotted some kind of drum-based rhythm game and a very satisfying sounding one involving food scissors and dishing out a meal. Apparently, there’s bug-catching and karaoke too.

Canadian Dan Beckerton of Cheesemaster Games is the lone dev who’s been working on Spirittea for years. It’s his second game, following a fantasy adventure called Fables Of Talumos that launched in 2019. Beckerton actually launched a Kickstarter campaign for Spirittea in January 2020 and it was fully funded by the end of the month. The game is based on Beckerton’s experiences from living in South Korea for four years, although maybe not the supernatural part.

Spirittea is out at an undisclosed point in summer on Steam and console. There’s more details on Beckerton’s process of creating Spirittea on the Kickstarter page.