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. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44779548/2b1feedc8a66ba663d786bf14ed1a89a16ac4fc0.png[/img] For these guys, I drew inspiration from some fond childhood movies; [i]The Labyrinth[/i], [i]Dark Crystal[/i], [i]My Neighbour Totoro[/i]. 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 [url=https://kitfoxgames.itch.io/cryptid-containment-taskforce]made a cryptid game[/url] 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:" [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44779548/f3e008daaa8fb01cbe176d767c0d1e885ce9e4f9.png[/img] 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 [url=https://discord.gg/kitfoxgames]Kitfox Discord[/url] to let us know! -Alexandra