The Boba Teashop Refill World Premiere Debuts at 28 Games Later Showcase
The Boba Teashop: Refill, a first-person psychological horror game developed by Serafini Productions and Mike Ten, debuted at Insider Gaming’s 28 Games Later Horror Showcase. The game serves as a continuation of the original The Boba Teashop, created by Mike Ten.
Players assume the role of Maya, a financially struggling young woman who takes a job at a newly opened branch of a boba teashop—an expansion of Risa’s establishment from the original game. What begins as a seemingly ordinary service industry position gradually transforms into an increasingly oppressive and unsettling experience.
Gameplay centers on the pressures of working behind the counter, where every action faces scrutiny. Customers judge performance, negative reviews accumulate, and manager Vanessa maintains constant surveillance. The teashop setting masks something more disturbing, as Maya encounters strange occurrences and mounting psychological dread throughout her shifts.
The game explores workplace anxiety and the dehumanizing aspects of service work through a horror lens, blending mundane customer service frustrations with psychological unease. The narrative progression emphasizes how ordinary workplace stress—customer dissatisfaction, managerial oversight, and performance pressure—can escalate into something deeply wrong and sinister.
Serafini Productions and Mike Ten’s approach combines the relatable experience of service industry employment with horror elements, creating a game that examines both workplace exploitation and mysterious supernatural undertones occurring within the teashop’s confines.