Wanderstop review: a surprisingly intricate, de-stressing tea-making indie game

What do you do when you've met with personal failure? Do you mope in despair, try to talk about it with someone, dust yourself off and put all your energy into getting back on the saddle? Or maybe before any of that, you just put the kettle on first.

That is to some extent what Wanderstop is built around. Centred on celebrated arena fighter Alta who one day loses her undefeated streak, her quest to find a mysterious master who can train her back to her best leads her to waking up in a forest clearing, the site of a tea shop run by a gentle giant named Boro.

Unable to leave this clearing without quickly collapsing from exhaustion again, and lacking the strength to even pick up her own sword, her goal instead is to rest. But knowing that to do nothing would have you feeling excruciatingly restless, she decides to grudgingly help run the titular tea shop, trying to make the most of it.

Wanderstop is a cosy game where the protagonist doesn't want to be there, the kind of narrative twist you would expect from the creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide. But in between its story beats, it's also arguably quite conventional as it commits to the bit of being a cosy game. (For more background, read my interview with the Wanderstop dev.)

Tea cosy game

Wanderstop will feel familiar to other cosy management sim games that have grown in popularity in recent years. Running the tea shop involves taking requests from the quirky customers who randomly also find their way into this clearing. But the actual tea-making process is quite deliberate in its many intricate steps. You have to collect enough tea leaves with a basket then wait for them to dry, while you'll also learn to plant multicoloured seeds in different patterns that result in hybrid plants that grow different fruits that can be used to flavour the tea.

Once you have the ingredients, you have to operate the large tea machine in the centre of the shop itself, which you can conveniently navigate with a ladder that swivels around it. That involves heating the water just right by manually stoking the fire with bellows, before tossing in your ingredients, and then pouring the results into a clean cup.

A lot of busywork just to make a brew, and yet it's all the care that goes into these small interactions that makes the process feel rewarding in its own way, especially as you watch different ingredients change the colour of the tea. You'll even realise that there's a right timing to ensure you pour just the right amount without any of it spilling over.

It's not all just about tea-making, as you also have tools to keep the clearing tidy, from trimming weeds to cleaning dirt piles with a broom. Over time, you may also notice other elements, such as the strange mushrooms you can pluck and use to modify your plants or pulpy action novellas that come through the mailbox you can happily leaf through. You might even want to decorate the shop by taking pictures with a camera and framing them, or fill the pots with plants. But they're all simply suggestions rather than objectives you have to tick off, though will undoubtedly play into the psychology of trophy hunters.

Breaking the cycle

Perhaps due its cosy trappings of taking your time, Wanderstop's story is also a slow brew that requires patience to develop, especially when compared with writer and director Davey Wreden's previous games, which had much shorter playtimes and therefore never outstayed their welcome.

Without going into spoilers, as you fulfil your customers' requests, something strange happens that means all your hard work will routinely reset as a new cycle begins, also changing the clearing's colour palettes as well as the customers you encounter. In between these cycles, narration and illustrations also piece out the internal conflict Alta is experiencing.

Wreden had already spoken explicitly about how the game has a personal story based on his own feelings of burnout that comes from obsession and perfectionism, and knowing that, those parallels with Alta's struggles are pretty direct. But I also found myself relating to her impatience, questioning why I'm making all these teas for people, some of whom you borderline have to force into making a request for tea, when it's also impermanent and inconsequential before the story moves onto its next beat.

Perhaps I'm just in denial of my own sense of encroaching burnout, with the need to always be on, searching for the next game to cover, the next work assignment, the next pay cheque. In other words, Wanderstop is a game I needed to play to get myself to slow down, but it's also better to describe it as meditative medicine rather than a must-play you can't put down.

Verdict

While it may drip-feed its story for longer than necessary and doesn't really go out of its way to subvert the cosy game, those who are looking for a way to relax will find comfort in the intricate and charming processes of making tea to pass the time.

What do you think of Wanderstop and it's art direction? Let us know in the comments below.