Wanderstop is a pleasant little cosy game about self-care and acceptance brewed into a nice cuppa.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when going into Wanderstop. Coming, as all the advertising insists on telling us, from the creator of The Stanley Parable but being a nice narrative game about making tea gave me pause. Whilst I found some of the mechanics a little tiresome by the end, I found the story to be charming and soulful, speaking to me about the constant drive that we as people are expected to have and the consequences that those expectations can have. This isn’t going to be a game for everyone, but Wanderstop is quite a lovely experience.
You play as Alta, a champion sword fighter who has gone many years undefeated in the arena. One day, as happens to everyone at the top of the tree eventually, Alta loses, and no matter how hard she tries to retrain herself, she continues to lose. Unable to find a reason for what she perceives as her sudden failures, she heads into the forest to find a trainer who can return her to her former glory. She doesn’t make it though, and collapses on the path, awakening by a strange teashop named Wanderstop, having been rescued by the strange owner Boro. Boro encourages Alta to make tea and maintain the shop until she is ready to once again pick up her sword and return to her life as a warrior.
There’s a lot to unpack in the story, and I feel that a lot of people, particularly in my age bracket, will get something from it. You have elements of loss of youth, acceptance of failure, and what I felt was the concept of mid-life crisis. Alta feels as though she goes through the stages of grief during her time at the tea shop as we learn about her past and she learns what happened to her in the forest before she arrived. I genuinely really enjoyed the story here, as well as the stories of the ancillary characters.
During Alta’s time at Wanderstop, she will serve tea to various customers who arrive there and in doing so will learn more about them. Each of them have their own tea requests, which I’ll get to shortly, but I loved learning about them and their lives. I had such a soft spot for Gerald the knight who was so desperate for his son to be impressed by him, and Nana’ insistence on demolishing all business competition to her empire.
You’ll meet so many unique characters during your time in this, and every one of them is unique and memorable. I’ll refrain from going into what each of them is like as I feel it’s important you meet them for yourself. I cannot stress enough how much I liked these digital people, and I felt sorry when my time with them would end and Alta would move onto the next season at the shop. I won’t go into why I had such strong feelings for losing that time with them for fear of spoilers, but I was always left wanting more time with them. It reminds me of Before Your Eyes a little.
The actual gameplay of Wanderstop is where the cosy game comparisons come in. When you aren’t speaking to Boro and your customers, you’ll be growing ingredients and brewing tea. Growing ingredients isn’t too complicated, which I was glad of. I was worried about the level of complexity when I was initially told that there was a hex grid on the ground and depending on where you planted different seeds in relation to one another you’d get different results. The reality is much simpler. If you plant three of the same colour seeds in a row, you’ll get a plant that will grow new seeds. If you surround one seed with another three all of the same colour, you’ll get a plant that produces fruit. It’s simple enough, and there’s even a guide book that will tell you what combinations will produce what fruit which I very much appreciated.
Once you have tea leaves and fruit, you’ll need to use the bizarre steampunk-adjacent tea machine in the shop. Heat the water, add the tea and fruit, and then add it to a cup to serve to customers. As you serve each customer, you’ll learn more about them, but you can also choose to have Alta sit down and have some tea herself, meaning you can learn more about her story. There’s no time pressure here, so you can mess about with combinations, or simply explore and maintain the shop all you want.
Towards the end of the game though, I did find some of the tea making to be a bit of a chore as I wanted to get to the story segments more than I wanted to make tea. Having to gather seeds, plant them in the right combination, then make the tea starts to get a little tiresome, especially if you make a mistake and need to start a batch over. Some of the combinations later on, especially from Nana, are quite time and resource heavy and a slip up can be irritating. I appreciated the inclusion of The Book of Answers that tells you exactly what to do to make some of the more bizarre combinations though.
Still, the game world is so utterly charming that it’s hard to stay frustrated for long. The environment is bright and colourful, even during some of the more maudlin scenes, whilst the characters are incredibly expressive. I loved that the dishwasher was a set of trains that travel along a track through a waterfall to wash cups and other items. And the Pluffins! Utterly adorable and I’m sure plush teddies of those would sell very quickly. There’s a lot of character to the world itself that keeps the game at least interesting to look at even if some of the tasks are becoming a chore.
The sound is lovely too. There’s the sort of soundtrack I’d happily have on whilst painting models or cooking as it’s so delightfully chilled out. What voice acting there is is also very good. I’m disappointed there aren’t more fully voiced characters. I’d have loved to have been able to hear Nana and Zenith’s lines spoken, but I appreciate that I can’t have everything in a smaller budget game.
Wanderstop is a really enjoyable narrative game that’s let down ever so slightly by a few overused mechanics, even though the game tries to keep adding little twists to them. The story and characters really help to carry the experience though, and even though there are some quite heavy plot moments, everything is so charming that it doesn’t bring you down for long. Whilst this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I’m certainly glad I spent time with it.
Wanderstop is available now on PC, Xbox X/S, and PS5.
