Plum Road Tea Dream is not a conventional exploration game, or really a conventional game at all, but our review found that even though there are some benefits to its unique approach, the overall game just doesn’t quite hold up.
Plum Road Tea Dream falls short in many areas, but its storytelling, writing, and visuals aren’t among them. Those who go in knowing that the game is meant to be semi-autobiographical, and explores themes like grief, trauma, and identity, may find a lot to connect with. But once you focus on the gameplay, any sense of fulfillment will fade fast. Plum Road Tea Dream is very slow, and the gaps between its more meaningful points are wide enough to test anyone’s patience.
Where the game scores points is in its presentation and writing. After trudging through the world at an almost glacial pace, you finally arrive at segments where the game shines… but only for a while, before dropping you right back into that same slow-moving world you just escaped from.
The Good:
- Writing and storytelling can be emotionally resonant
- Some striking visual design
The Bad:
- Very simple gameplay with a glacial slow pace
- Sluggish movement exacerbates pacing issues
Review Details:
- Reviewed on: PC
- Platforms available: PC
- Official release date: July 27, 2026
Plum Road Tea Dream plays like an unfinished game
In Plum Road Tea Dream, developer Samuel Baidoo channels deeply personal stories of grief and joy through the game’s characters: Druid, Oracle, Black Mage, and others, each of whom you free using the Sword of Sadness. Freeing them unlocks a short story, a personal quote, or some small fragment that lingers with you.
Our review confirmed that Plum Road Tea Dream isn’t the game you log into to decompress at the end of the day. It doesn’t challenge you much on the gameplay front, but it does ask some other things of you: space, patience, and the willingness to sit with and absorb the stories the title’s author has to share.
Some are uncomfortable, like an awkward night spent with a crush, told with genuinely heartfelt writing. Others are harder to sit with, like threats received as a child from one’s own father over their sexual identity.
The journals scattered across the map at each save point are also a genuinely nice touch. We found ourselves jotting down real thoughts every time we saved. Those are the game’s strongest moments, but getting to those moments hasn’t been made easy.
Plum Road Tea Dream starts on a slow note, right off the bat. For a game that’s semi-autobiographical, it makes sense for it to have a developed prologue. But while the developer speaks, players have next to nothing to do. That part of the game is unskippable, so it would have been nice to spawn the player into a more immersive space, similar to Dream Garden, an area that appears way later in the game.
Our early impressions of the game saw this lack of player agency as a potential issue, and unfortunately, it remained a problem through much of the game.
Once you get past the Prologue, you’re asked to collect artifacts that can be used to create Gods, and then track down the entities themselves. That means covering a lot of ground across a sprawling map, and that’s where the gameplay really starts to wear on you.
The game’s opening task, which is quite literally “Creating a God,” proved an early test of patience. An interminable staircase stretched upward, offering no jump function and no way to hasten the climb. We found ourselves reaching for a speed boost button in a futile search for something that simply wasn’t there.
The character’s slow movement makes the climb feel even longer. And just as we reached the top, we realized we’d missed an artifact, one we’d walked right past at the bottom of the stairs. So it was back down we went, only to make the same climb all over again.
Things did get better after that, but the gaps between tasks are made worse by how slowly the character moved, and were long enough that even the calm, meditative music stopped taking the edge off our frustration. Eventually, we unlocked the Sword of Sadness, which gave our morale a real boost and the motivation to keep pushing through the rest of the game.
That persistence paid off to some extent. Plant Care space and Dream Garden are both interesting locations in the game, each with plenty to see and explore. The Mausoleum, however, stands above the rest when it comes to visual design. The area houses an exceptional art piece mounted on a wall facing the sun, casting multicolored light across the shaded room. Players are invited to sit here and simply listen to the stories the narrator has to share.
Plum Road Tea Dream may not be your cup of tea if you’re looking for challenging or engaging gameplay, but it can serve as a capable space to reflect and sit with your own thoughts. Unfortunately, even that experience can be marred by just how tedious it is to complete each of the game’s tasks in order to move on to the next mission.
For every contemplative space and intriguing story, there’s a whole lot of walking and waiting, as well as occasional frustration.
Combined with the lack of a jump feature, no option to move faster, and just how bland the game’s opening stages look, it’s hard not to come away thinking Plum Road Tea Dream feels like a game with potential that’s still waiting to be finished.
The bones of something special are clearly here. The writing, the visuals, the emotional weight of it all proves out at times. But the gameplay around it feels like an afterthought, and actually playing Plum Road Tea Dream just doesn’t feel great.
The game doesn’t come with a manual or guidelines either, so if you do decide to take the plunge, we recommend saving every chance you get. Redoing tasks can quickly become exhausting given how slow the game moves.
The Bottom Line: Plum Road Tea Dream has real heart, but as a game it will be far too slow and tedious for most players to enjoy.
Score: 5.0/10
