Tea for Sana

Beautiful and understated story about grief, memory, friendship and healing. It is short yet well worth it if you want a calm and meditative experience with some foraging and crafting. The music and sound design are lovely as well. Dialogues are just the right length and there are no emotional 'traps' or contrived plot points. The folklore and recipes add a lot of character as well. There are some darker moments in the plot but they are mainly about grief, caregiving and loss rather than any supernatural 'horror' themes. This isn't a long crafting sim, there's no grinding. You find things and use them once. I didn't need to consult a walkthrough, and the small puzzles seemed to require just the right amount of thought. Checking things again and wandering around is the main strategy. The world map is small and there are only a few characters but it feels complete. Some unique and humorous things happen, such as [spoiler] your friend turning into a snail, and you soke a pipe to make things occur. [/spoiler] Recommended to all who like story-driven and heartfelt games.

This is a really special game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The art, writing, and music were all phenomenal and the story was quite touching and therapeutic. There are multiple choices with some characters so you could play it through twice. The only issues I had were not realising you have to sit on the bench outside your house to save the game. There is no autosave feature! I had to replay most of my game because of this reason so watch out for that. I also had a few achievements only show up upon completion which caused me some confusion, but this is a very minor thing. I really enjoyed it, 8/10 from me. The credits song made it all the more special because I realised I had heard the melody somewhere before, during the game.... ;)

Every New Years I buy a game with my year's Steam Trading Card earnings. This time I chose Tea for Sana. It's a really solid 2D adventure game with great tone and atmosphere. As other reviews have already pointed out, the writing is the game's strongest aspect. It adds to the mystical theme and lets your brain wonder what it all means. As far as the gameplay goes, it's a fairly simple fare of figuring out light puzzles such as where to find an item that lets you clear an obstacle to your objective. If you've played any RPGMaker adventure/horror games, you find the gameplay very familiar. In addition to that, you need to find out how to remember recipes, then find ingredients to the recipe and prepare the food or drink as instructed. It all fits well into the game's feel and while not challenging, it's all done better than many other games in this genre do it. Overall I enjoyed my experience.The game doesn't overstay its welcome and if you're a fan of more artistic type of games with good writing, I encourage you to give this one a go.

This game was very good; lots of thoughtful and touching introspection about the nature of life and healing. The exploration and cooking mechanics were fun too.

I loved every second of playing this game. The story narrative is creative and engaging. The game is also a beautiful pixel gem. I highly recommend this game to anyone curious to try.

Very sweet, but quite short. Very touching and a lovely tale, regardless! The ending felt a little sudden for the tale we were weaving; I wish we had been able to see more of the villagers, but it was sweet with what we did have, and I hope Vesna has a lovely life ahead of her.