Sovereign Tea

About this game

Under threat of invasion from the Coffee Empire, the 12 Tea Princesses of the independent Tea Realms must overcome their differences to defend their lands. Gather resources and brew Tea Minions to your side to counter the enemy's strategy in this grid-based mechanics-focused title. Featuring 12 playable characters, 25 fine-tuned levels, and 40+ Tea Minions to brew and discover, Sovereign Tea aims to be a unique and fun video game for all lovers of strategy and tea.

Gameplay

In Sovereign Tea, you utilize your Tea Princesses to brew an army of Tea Minions.



Tea Minions are your dispensable forces in the fight against the Coffee Empire. They all require resources to brew, some as simple as costing merely 1 tea leaf, others requiring bonus ingredients like blueberries and raspberries. Each Tea Minion has its own stats and abilities.



Different Tea Minions grant you situational advantage to counter the Coffee Minions you will face. Units brewed with raspberries tend to trigger their abilities whenever they get hit by an enemy, so use them to counter multi-hit units. Units brewed with blueberries usually have a trigger to deal loads of damage, so force them into a situation where the enemy has no choice but to fight them.



But that's not all: your Tea Princesses will imbue unique power into her Tea Minions. Sometimes you need territorial control, in which case Silver Needle's fast-but-fragile assassins are your key to victory. Other times you need to tank a lot of damage, so leverage the buffed healing properties of Shou Mei's minions. Maybe you need to fully disable the enemy for a turn, in which case you should strike hard with Chamomile's sleep-inducing brews.

There are multiple paths to success in this game, and no single strategy will work throughout all levels in the title. Ultimately, it's up to your judgment to lead the Tea Realms to glory against the Coffee Empire.

Story

Before the Old War, there lived two factions: the Tea Princesses and the Coffee Regents. The Tea Princesses chose to rule their realms separately, allowing each princess to govern by her own virtue... but the Coffee Regents chose to unify their lands, forming the great and terrible Coffee Empire. The most eminent regent, the Coffee Emperor, rose mighty armies and waged blind conquest across the continent. Their domains now splintered and on the brink, the Tea Princesses must embark on a quest to reclaim their homelands...

Characters and Levels

There are 12 playable Tea Princesses in the game that you can recruit, divided into 4 teams: White Teas, Green Teas, Herbal Teas, and Black Teas.



The game features a total of 25 replayable levels. From your arsenal of brewable and expendable minions, select your 9 brews per level and face off against the Coffee Empire!

Content warning: This game contains mentions of sensitive themes, including death and suicide. The latter topic is brought up extremely sparingly and is only mentioned, never depicted. It always comes up naturally with context in dialogues and is never thrust upon the player for the purpose of shocking or surprising them.

Latest news

• Announcements·27 Oct 2025Official

  Sovereign Tea for Free

  It's been quite a fun few years, hasn't it? We're so grateful for everybody who has played Sovereign Tea!There is a small change coming: the game is going to change from paid to free! This change will be permanent. We've made enough money from the game and at this point would like everybody to play, including those who previously could not afford the game.As a result of this, we recommend not purchasing the game in the short-term until this change is approved and live on Steam. Thank you all for your understanding, and thank you all again for your continued support!
  Read full article on Community Announcements (3 Halves Games)

• Patch Notes·30 May 2025Official

  v1.6.3 Release!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/a07d7362c5b25a9c3fc758b75e7ebfd9f7cd37c6.png The v1.6.3 for Sovereign Tea has arrived. The patch notes are below. Features Adjusted social media and external site buttons on Main Menu. Bugfixes Fixed a typo in the Tutorial regarding the Sacrificial Tea. Thank you as always for your continued support of our game! If you like what we do, please consider wishlisting our newest game, Sincerely, Stampy!
  Read full article on Community Announcements (3 Halves Games)

• Patch Notes·22 Jan 2024Official

  Sovereign Tea v1.6.2 Released! Birthday Sale!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/b76bb3bcf6b7ec00da8eee6a05d990b9c05b6dcd.jpg Sovereign Tea v1.6.2 is now available. It is also the birthdays of the lead game developer (January 22) and designer (January 19), so we're putting the game on sale to celebrate! Thanks for all the support over all the years, everybody. 🎂 Here are the patch notes: Features Adjusted Main Menu external button UI to be more clear on their functionality. Adjusted the escape button functionality on the Level Select screen to close it, not to bring up the Settings. Gameplay Increased movement for all units in Fort Steep by 2 to allow for easier conversational navigation. Bugfixes Fixed a typo in a post-Level 23 Fort Steep dialogue between Bai Mudan and Earl Grey. Fixed a typo in a post-Level 24 Fort Steep dialogue between Genmaicha and Earl Grey. Fixed a typo in the pre-Level 25 dialogue.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (3 Halves Games)

• Announcements·28 Aug 2023Official

  v1.6.1 Released! New Dialogues! Endosymbiont Level!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/6c13f5f5cac6ff0101a4cd427dae3e750c0c0c45.png We have a pretty significant update to Sovereign Tea that should be of interest to fans old and new alike. The game is now 70% off for one week as part of the Steam Strategy Fest! First, the patch notes: Features Added "Level 14.5" to specifically teach Mint and Endosymbiont interaction prior to Levels 15 and 16. Completely rewrote post-Level 09 Fort Steep dialogue between Silver Needle and Genmaicha. Minor tweaks to post-Level 09 Fort Steep dialogue between Bai Mudan and Silver Needle. Minor tweaks to post-Level 13 Fort Steep dialogue between Silver Needle and Genmaicha. Gameplay Adjusted BGM in Level 25 to hit dynamic loop at an earlier point. Bugfixes Fixed a softlock condition involving the Brew Experimentation while a Compendium entry is open. Fixed a typo in a post-Level 20 Fort Steep dialogue between Dragon Well and Earl Grey. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/baa2d34c48c62c58cb868d168ea58d993f039ea9.jpg This has a surprising change in that we willingly changed one of the earlier dialogues involving Genmaicha. Genmaicha was always a character defined by her edges, amplified by the devastation she personally suffered at the hands of the Coffee Empire. On replay, years out, there was one dialogue that stood out to me as lacking, which was the post-Level 09 Fort Steep dialogue between her and Silver Needle. This is a dialogue that plays immediately after the Matcha letter scene, so in hindsight, it was unusual for Genmaicha to be so confrontational in this instance. Thanks to this dialogue change, some later dialogues needed very minor edits to help improve cohesiveness. I hope you go back and give Genmaicha another chance, and I hope this story change, minor though it may be, helps you understand more about what's going on between her and the rest of the Tea Realms. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/eb6e09419c24e5d7103624825eb5cbb4ad848276.png Finally, the new level of the game, Level 14.5 technically...
  Read full article on Community Announcements (3 Halves Games)

• Announcements·13 Aug 2023Official

  Return of Adagio Teas + v1.6 Release + More!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/22489665b0feb5b900aaa72ee6cc3d7e0767afba.jpg It's Marimo, lead developer for 3 Halves Games. I thought my last update would be the last. I also thought the update before that was the last. Oh well. Let's get to the big news: the teas are back and available for order! These teas are available on Adagio, as are many other fandom blends you may enjoy. To be clear, we make no money out of this arrangement; the initial tea rewards existed as a major motivating factor to get backers to help fund our project. These are now available again as a courtesy to fans, particularly the fans who drank all their tea ages ago and have been begging for more. Incidentally, you can create your own blends based off of the Tea Princesses and Tea Minions from the game! If you do please let me know, because I and everybody on the development team would love to taste it! Now, onto the second order of business... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/df3881c07be25bd902420dfafd936538447d82fb.png It's been over a year since the last update. This new update is a performance-specific update. The update is now available on Steam! Did you know I work in video games professionally? Of late I've been hardcore UI-focused at work, and that got me thinking: is the UI in Sovereign Tea as performant as it could be? The answer was... no. This update does a couple of amazing things: Reduces (compressed) game file size by about 50MB! In our testbench scene (Level 04 with the Brew Action menu open) reduces RAM consumption by about 200MB! (this number shocked me) In our testbench scene (Level 04 with the Brew Action menu open) reduces draw calls by about 100! (again, a shocking number) If you're somebody with a lower end machine, it might be a good idea to update. The game should run better for you! This update isn't done yet though. Far from it, because... {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40458138/8c3a90718ca57fef41b33ab306d1e3d043a4dea2.png The lead game designer and I were having a silly discussion abou...
  Read full article on Community Announcements (3 Halves Games)