Chai Empire

A portrait Android incremental clicker about growing one gali tapri into a nationwide chai business.

Overview

Chai Empire is a working Unity prototype built around tapping, automation, location expansion, offline earnings, and long-term prestige. Start with a kettle and a lane-side stall, then invest in stronger recipes, helpers, UPI collection, snacks, brand upgrades, and increasingly valuable locations.

The playable project lives in ChaiEmpire_AllInOne/ChaiEmpireUnity. The root-level Assets, Packages, and ProjectSettings folders contain a separate Unity URP sample project and are not the implemented game.

Preview

_{The hero and kettle emblem are illustrative branding. This screen is a live Unity capture; its stall artwork and UI are generated by the project.}

Highlights

• Tap the kettle or serve the queue, then turn manual income into passive production through upgrades.
• Expand through eight locations, from Gali Tapri to Airport Lounge, with increasing demand multipliers.
• Trigger Rush Hour, collect offline earnings, and retain progress in a local JSON save with corrupt-save recovery.
• Preserve Secret Masala after reaching the prestige threshold, then spend skill points across brew, operations, supply, brand, and expansion bonuses.
• Play optional rotating events and use local prototype flows for sponsor rewards, cosmetics, achievements, consent, analytics, crash state, and cloud-save export/import.
• Tune 15 upgrades and eight locations through the validated default-content.json catalog.

How to Play

1. Tap Tap Kettle or Serve Queue to earn rupees.
2. Buy recipe and automation upgrades from the Upgrade Bazaar.
3. Use Rush Hour when it is ready for a temporary production boost.
4. Unlock new locations to increase demand and grow the stall into a national brand.
5. Return for offline earnings, then preserve Secret Masala after unlocking Airport Lounge and earning 1B lifetime rupees.

Default offline progress pays at 75% efficiency for up to eight hours. Prestige skills can improve both values.

Getting Started

Requirements

• Unity Hub with Unity Editor 6000.4.9f1
• Git and Git LFS
• Android Build Support for Unity, including the SDK, NDK, and OpenJDK, if you want to build the APK

Clone and open the game

git lfs install
git clone https://github.com/Dev0910/ChaiEmpire.git
cd ChaiEmpire
git lfs pull

1. In Unity Hub, choose Add > Add project from disk.
2. Select ChaiEmpire_AllInOne/ChaiEmpireUnity inside the cloned repository.
3. Open Assets/ChaiEmpire/Scenes/ChaiEmpire.unity.
4. Enter Play mode.

The first import can take a few minutes while Unity resolves the project packages.

Development

Useful Unity menu actions:

Menu action	Purpose
Chai Empire > Rebuild Main Scene	Regenerate the saved scene and portrait UI hierarchy.
Chai Empire > Content > Validate Default Catalog	Check upgrade and location IDs, values, and progression data.
Chai Empire > Content > Export Built-In Catalog JSON	Rewrite the JSON catalog from the built-in defaults.

Run the test suite from Window > General > Test Runner > EditMode > Run All. For command-line use, set the UNITY_EDITOR environment variable to your Unity 6000.4.9f1 editor executable, then run:

& $env:UNITY_EDITOR `
  -batchmode `
  -projectPath ".\ChaiEmpire_AllInOne\ChaiEmpireUnity" `
  -runTests `
  -testPlatform EditMode `
  -testResults ".\editmode-results.xml" `
  -logFile -

The current suite contains 33 EditMode tests covering economy progression, content validation, save recovery, offline rewards, events, prestige, optional rewards, consent, achievements, and cloud-save payloads.

Android Build

Install Unity's Android Build Support modules, then run:

& $env:UNITY_EDITOR `
  -batchmode `
  -quit `
  -projectPath ".\ChaiEmpire_AllInOne\ChaiEmpireUnity" `
  -executeMethod ChaiEmpire.Editor.ChaiEmpireBuild.BuildAndroid `
  -logFile -

The build method regenerates the main scene, switches to Android, uses application ID com.taprilabs.chaiempire, and writes ChaiEmpire_AllInOne/ChaiEmpire.apk.

Tech Stack

• Unity 6000.4.9f1 and C#
• Unity UI (UnityEngine.UI) with a runtime-created portrait interface
• Unity Test Framework 1.5.1
• TextMesh Pro 3.2.0-pre.14
• BreakInfinity.BigDouble for large economy values
• JSON content and local JSON save data

Project Structure

ChaiEmpire_AllInOne/ChaiEmpireUnity/
├── Assets/ChaiEmpire/
│   ├── Editor/              # Scene, content, and Android build tooling
│   ├── Resources/           # Data-driven default economy catalog
│   ├── Runtime/             # Economy, saves, events, prestige, and UI
│   ├── Scenes/              # Playable ChaiEmpire scene
│   └── Tests/EditMode/      # 33 automated tests
├── docs/                    # Design, economy, UI, testing, and release notes
├── Packages/                # Unity package manifest and lockfile
└── ProjectSettings/         # Unity 6000.4.9f1 project configuration

See the documentation index for the game design, economy formulas, save format, UI specification, implementation notes, and roadmap.

Current Limitations

• The ad, billing, cloud save, Play Games, analytics, and crash-reporting experiences are local prototype implementations; no external service SDKs are connected.
• The privacy button still points to a placeholder example.com URL and must be replaced before distribution.
• The current visuals and audio are procedural prototype assets rather than final production art.
• The build script creates an APK, not an Android App Bundle, and the repository does not include a published release build.

Third-Party Notice

BreakInfinity.BigDouble is vendored under the MIT License. The repository does not currently include a top-level license for Chai Empire itself.