Have to ever thought of creating a game with impossible spaces without a procedurally generated environment? Procedurally generated maps limits you to the roguelike genre only. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good roguelike game, and Tea for God is amazing, in both the colloquial and literal sense of the word. But I would love to see an adventure game with a predesigned map layout. Procedural generation is great for replayability, but sort of limits the storytelling and ability to design puzzles. Those are my two favorite aspects of games, and I’d die to see them paired with the ability to walk without artificial locomotion in VR.
No. It was one of the main ideas behind Tea For God. Adjust to the play space. Without any bits of procedural generation I would either have to create lots of variants or stick to a certain size. But there is one important thing. The way I have created room and region generators it is in general possible to have pieces done in a very traditional way and then just connected to each other with procedural bits. But then, all places that there are in Tea For God, are generated procedurally to use most of the area (ideally, but in fact sometimes it is limited to specific sizes or some other limitations kick in, on purpose).
Procedural generation (of both environment and NPCs) allows me to experiment with fidelity of meshes, making it easier to have meshes with less triangles and details for Quest and more detailed on PC. There is still at least few things that are required to help with performance on Quest and they will be basing on procedural generation (LOD system is not there at all).
Getting back to the linear vs procedural. In case of Tea For God, it heavily depends on procedurally generated levels and replayability as it is a roguelite for reasons I will mention in a minute. But in general, it is possible to have just certain rooms, parts of the level being created by hand and to connect them with procedural bits of level. Also, you can have a linear adventure game that has bits between key scenes generated procedurally. To be honest, I wanted to make a shooter a long time ago in which you have a very linear story, a bunch of scenes/sequences that are done by hand, but between them you have procedurally generated bits. Why? Imagine that you start a game and you tell how long you wish it would take to finish it. You have just 2 hours? Ok. You have 10 hours to spare? Ok. You have more? No problem. You will be experiencing the same story (although for much longer games there should be some additional scenes added) but in case of 2h game it will be densely packed with scenes and action sequences will be extremely short, while 10h version would have much more shooting, tactics, upgrading stuff etc. But the story would be the same.
And now for the reasons Tea For God is a roguelite. I like roguelites. I like both roguelikes and roguelites. They are my favourite kind of games. (and I really like simulators too BTW). Why? Because in most cases I can predict how long it will take to have a single run. It shouldn't be more than 20 minutes or 30 or one hour. And I know that most likely I will die but then again, I will be able to play it again and again. And learn from my failures. That's one reason.
Second is that I do not enjoy stories that much. I even started to "ignore" stories in movies and books. Sometimes the characters are much more interesting. Sometimes it is the world. Generally speaking, I prefer having rich lore to a story. Story may bring questions, give answers (or not). Most I can get from a story is emotions and/or some interesting questions to think about. Which is still enjoyable of course. But a world/lore is something that gets my imagination working. That stays with me for longer. Many times I stop being interested in a story. With movies at least the story moves much quicker than in games. In games most of the times you have bunch of action sequences with bits of story and then cutscenes. Sometimes I am disappointed that the action sequences stop me from getting into the story and they appear as a chore to do, rather than a game to play. Other times I have so much fun doing stuff, that when a cutscene comes, I want to skip it. And world/lore... It sinks slowly into you. You may learn stuff in a game or you can read about it on the Internet. But you don't have to be focused on it. It is just always there.
Next reason. I am an explorer. I don't enjoy replaying the same levels (although I do enjoy learning tracks for racing games). I know that people love to master levels, but not me. I'd rather explore new stuff. It might be similar, but if it is not the same as it was, it is good enough. I love that feeling of something new, the excitement you get when you don't know what is out there but you can go there and see it. Of course it may happen in a linear game too. But just once. And if I'd enjoy it, I won't get that when replaying. And yes, in roguelites, it will wear off after time, but still it will last for much longer.
Yet, I have things to say, there is a story in Tea For God (not just world/lore, but actual story). But what I would like to do, to have in the game, is an ability, to tell how do you want to play the game. Maybe you just want the story. Told in a most linear manner. It will be possible. You will be taken right from the start to the end. With infinite health and ammo, you will be able to focus solely on the story. Or you could change all options to get a roguelite. Story being slowly developed, getting killed one time after another, trying different builds, different strategies, etc. The story will be the same. But you will get more occasions to learn about the lore.