The Boba Teashop Review (PC)

First Happy’s Humble Burger Farm, then Coil’s Containment, and now The Boba Teashop. Say what you will, but it seems as if there’s a pattern emerging here—a rather disoriented, unorthodox pattern of VHS-like breadcrumbs that, while still scoops, patties, and bubbles apart, all share that one common thing: a nightmarish twist on an otherwise harmless career.

In Happy’s Humble Burger Farm, you had Toe—a chef who casually flipped meat pies in tandem with a world that was endlessly bending and sliding back and forth between a questionable reality and a lucid fever dream. In Coil’s Containment, you had Mr. Coil—the pin-eyed ice cream entrepreneur who made a solemn vow to wreak havoc on your daily routine if you failed to earn a proper income. And here, in The Boba Teashop, you have three things: a seemingly harmless cafe, a repository of curious customers, and a mind that can’t quite differentiate fact from fiction. Again, the pattern emerges.

In an attempt to build on the foundations of its counterparts, The Boba Teashop rolls out the grease-smitten carpet for a very, very simple gameplay loop, one in which players must create boba tea recipes, serve them to customers, and involuntarily witness the distressing events that plague an otherwise smooth and satisfying tea-making experience. It comes as no surprise here that the act of making the boba tea itself isn’t the issue; it’s the world around it, and the psychological torment that it brings to the table as you go about your daily routine.

Curious to hear more about Mike Ten’s boba-centric VHS horror? Then grab a cup and take a seat — we’re milking this one for all it’s worth.

One Cuppa Boba

The Boba Teashop casts its shadow over a youngish woman named Risa who, after finding the conclusion that the corporate world wasn’t her particular cup of tea, decides to plant roots in another pot—a pot with roots in milk tea and boba. And this, in short, is where you join the story: in the beginning of this exciting career opportunity to wax your dreams as a fledgling boba mixologist. But, there’s an issue: there’s an awfully strange series of events happening around you, and there’s no telling who, what, or why they’re looming over your shoulders as you pour each cup for the guests who flock into your store.

As far as the gameplay goes, there isn’t a huge amount for you to sink your teeth into outside of the A-to-B act of pouring milk tea into a plastic cup and adding the usual boba pearls for that extra flamboyant aesthetic. Naturally, you would half expect a game about creating bubble tea to feature something of an intricate mixing suite and a solid amount of recipes, to boot. Alas, that isn’t so much the case here, as the process itself is more or less confined to a simple multi-step procedure, all of which can be done via one of several appliances from behind your counter. And believe it or not, this is, quite simply, the bulk of the experience: creating boba.

After Hours

Of course, a psychological horror wouldn’t be a horror if it kept to the same basic structure of a generic chore core simulator. Oh, there’s more here than that, as it turns out. While the gameplay is a little monotonous and air-headed, it does, in fact, feature a good amount of crossroads for you to overcome—dialogue arcs, for the most part, that let you shape the story ever so slightly. For example, every so-and-so customer may roll into your boba shop with an ultimatum on top of their regular order. In one case, a customer asks you for a phone number, at which point you can decide whether or not to hand it to them. And like a lot of games that adopt choice-based scenarios, certain things happen depending on which option you choose. Granted, these choices don’t necessarily affect the tea-making process — but it’s a neat addition.

The heart and soul of The Boba Teashop isn’t in the shopkeeping department, but in the atmosphere that it builds over the course of the journey. With its VHS visuals in tow, the game makes an effort to warp the image over time, with customers gradually turning more sinister, and the tender loving ambiance slowly becoming more vigilant and threatening with each fleeting moment. Does it work? Eh, it generates a good selection of jump scares and unsettling effects, but I wouldn’t say that it always hits its target. Don’t get me wrong, the VHS overlay can be naturally eerie and, although timeless and even nostalgic, it’s still a fitting choice for the setting at hand. Add a casket of vacant expressions, low-poly faces, and a handful of puppet-like movements into the melting pot, and you have quite the spooky boba pearl.

Verdict

If it’s VHS visuals that pique your interest, or perhaps even the idea of plunging into a perpetual loop of mixing boba and questioning your mental state, then I’d like to think that you would have a jolly old time plopping pearls into this unsettling dimension. It isn’t drastically different from Coil’s Containment, in the sense that you spend a lot of your time carrying out the same basic tasks, but also with a world that’s constantly altering its mood swings to adopt something of an unpredictable nature that can keep you second guessing the next event. It does that a lot—to the point where you often forget to pour the boba on the off chance that something might spring out from beneath the woodwork at any given moment.

It’s a simple game: make boba, serve boba, and roll with whatever punches it frequently decides to dish out. It’s unlikely that you’ll want to stick around for an entire weekend, but like a boba tea, in general, you’ll find that the first mouthful will taste a heck of a lot better than the tasteless pearls teetering around the rim. In other words, you’ll probably find the first few sips to be palatable, but like a lot cold beverages, one too many sips can bring about a sour note on your tongue and even the odd headache. Still, if you enjoy unusual horrors with B-movie jump scares, then you’ll want to guzzle this one down the next time you’re on the hunt for a cheap thrill.