Wanderstop Review

When I saw that the minds behind The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide were also the ones making Wanderstop, I knew what to expect… or, at least, I thought I did. I anticipated its immensely emotional story, wry sense of humor, and at least one strange twist – but while I got all of those things and more, what I didn’t see coming was that a game about making tea and avoiding burn out would force me to grapple with my own hold-ups around productivity in such an intimate way. For as sweet and wholesome as it may seem on the surface, this is a piping hot cup of tea that left a lasting mark when spilled.

Before we go any further, let me warn you: The less you know about Wanderstop’s story at the start, the better. I’m going to avoid any major spoilers, particularly since its compelling central twist arrives very early on, but a big part of the enjoyment here is following both the emotional journey of the main character, Alta, as well as the mystery surrounding the woods she finds herself in. If you already think you might enjoy a game like this without more convincing, just go play it knowing that I give Wanderstop an enthusiastic recommendation. Then you can come back here later to say, “Wow, thank you so much Ms. IGN reviewer, this game has left me feeling strangely hallowed out and yet so full at the same time.”

You see, this isn’t just a story about burn out (though playing it while actively experiencing burn out myself added a whole other level to that aspect of it). Alta is a previously undefeated arena fighter who has hit a terrible losing streak. Convinced something must be wrong with her, she heads to a mysterious forest in search of a legendary fighter to help “fix” her, but passes out from exhaustion on the way. Instead, she finds Boro, the kind and charming owner of a tea shop called Wanderstop, who presents her with a deceptively simple choice: rest and make some tea for a bit, or push herself to press on at any cost.

As I said, this is not a story about burn out alone, but an insightful exploration of why we often burn ourselves out over and over again. Maybe you’re familiar with the feeling: You push yourself day after day not just to meet deadlines or complete projects, but to maintain that control you need over your life to stay on the right course. To keep things moving perfectly. Inevitably, you exhaust yourself until your body forces you to take a break. You rest for a bit and tell yourself it is good for you, but you’ll be right back here in no time, just as exhausted as before. The setting here may be fantastical, but this is a situation that feels firmly rooted in reality.

Wanderstop is smart in how it directly calls out this toxic loop of relentless productivity. You can’t just stumble into a magical tea shop, help some other people solve their own problems, and then be “fixed” yourself. At one point, Alta says, “even relaxing feels like a job.” She’s not wrong. We’ve turned relaxing into a chore, something that must be filled with tasks: satisfying and productive. (I’m looking at you, “cozy gamers.”) I felt incredibly called out by this, personally, and it helped me realize this cycle is just not sustainable. By the end of Alta’s journey, I felt like I not only understood her a little better, but understood a part of myself I hadn’t listened to in a long time. I might even owe developer Ivy Road a therapist’s fee.

In some ways, Wanderstop reminds me of the tear-jerking Spiritfarer, as it’s very much a story-first game. When new visitors wander into the tea shop’s forest clearing, you first need to get to know them before they’ll give you a tea request, and then you must use the information you’ve gathered to brew the correct cup for them. To do that, you’ll have to grow your own ingredients in a small garden plot outside the tea shop (though you can technically plant anywhere). You’re given a field book, a limited amount of seeds, and some gentle parenting from Boro, but the rest is yours to figure out.

The field book outlines the patterns you need to sow your seeds so that “plant eggs” will form, with different combinations of seed colors (blue, pink, green, and yellow) causing different plants to emerge. Once you’ve discovered a new type of plant by growing it, you can use your field guide to read up on the unique tastes and even strange effects each fruit has when brewed in tea. It’s all fairly straightforward, but gardening is still a fun little challenge as you puzzle out which color combinations are required for each plant variety.

Operating the tea machine itself is rather uncomplicated for such a complicated looking contraption. A tall ladder rotates around the giant glass pots in the center of the tea shop – you climb to the very top and pull a rope to fill the first pot with water, then climb down to smack the bellows, keeping the thermometer bar balanced to get the water to a perfect boil. Next, you climb back up, kick a lever, and the water drains into the next pot. Swing that ladder around, and it’s time to throw your tea and other ingredients in. Then all that’s left is to kick the lever to release it and pour it into a mug. The movement is so fun that you start to feel like a pro by the end, even though the tea making itself is otherwise quite simple.

As long as you figure out what tea you actually need to make, of course. I really loved the little conversation-based riddles the customers give you. Sometimes figuring out the right tea ingredients was easy. They want a mint-flavored tea? Throw in a chip-chip plant, which describes its flavor as mint ice cream. But what do you do when someone asks for a tea that tastes like fruity cereal and dirt? Well, it’s a good thing there’s a delightfully whimsical fruit you can grow that tastes like whatever the drinker had the most for breakfast growing up.

I loved the characters in this game in ways I didn’t anticipate, from the adorkable pretend-knight Gerald and his overbearing love for his son, to the boisterous Nana, whose fiercely competitive nature lands her shop on Wanderstop’s doorstep to try and “run you out of business.” I even liked Alta, and let’s be very clear: Alta is not a likable character. She is thick-headed, abrasive, and sometimes outright mean. But we don’t always completely love ourselves or the way we act towards others either, do we?

What’s great about Alta as a main character is that you get plenty of opportunities to choose interesting paths of dialogue throughout your time at Wanderstop. At first, your options might be limited to either a mean answer or a snarky answer, but as time goes on, you’ll get to choose between options that reveal a streak of humor under all of Alta’s steely resolve. With each new cup of tea she drinks, you’ll also learn about her past and how she reacts to strange new sensations, with every sip bringing you closer to understanding why Alta is the way she is.

The customers who visit Wanderstop are impressively diverse, and I’m not just talking about ethnicity or gender. Each visitor has their own unique design, drinking animation, and personality, all of which shine. Even the customers who are initially just as abrasive as Alta eventually stand out as quirky, complex people with their own deep and emotional reasons for having stumbled into Wanderstop. These characters are colorful, but it’s important that they aren’t just quirky for quirky’s sake, either. Each one reflects a little bit of Alta back at her, helping to advance her own emotional journey forward, and saying goodbye as they inevitably moved on was always difficult.

Also, there are Pluffins, which are adorable little penguin guys with giant eyebrows who live in a coop on the Wanderstop grounds. The joy I found in stumbling across these little kleptomaniacs, picking them up and shaking them around to drop whatever package or seed they’d stolen, was immense. And yes, you can pet the Pluffins.

I knew I was in for a musical treat as well when I learned C418, one of the Minecraft composers, was behind the soundtrack for Wanderstop. The music itself doesn’t just fill the empty spaces, it tells its own stories. Each customer has their own musical theme, so even though their conversations didn’t have any voice acting, they all felt deeply engrossing. On top of this, the music of the clearing will subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) change over time and with major story moments. Themes that once felt comforting and idyllic can abruptly become unnerving with impressive precision.

Besides growing your own strange fruits and collecting tea leaves to brew new drinks, your stay at Wanderstop also equips you with a trusty broom and garden shears. You can use these to tidy up the clearing of little piles of leaves or gnarly, spiky weeds. But the refreshingly strange thing is that there is no tangible incentive to do so. The weeds pose no real danger to your garden, and while walking through them can slow you down, they don’t need to be sheared in order to pass.

As you tidy the leaves and weeds, you do have a small chance of finding something hidden underneath the clutter. Dozens of little trinkets can be uncovered while you clean, including colorful new tea mugs, teddy bears, and even lost packages. The catch, however, is that you can’t keep these trinkets as the roughly 15-hour campaign progresses, and the story directly addresses why in a clever way. As Boro reminds Alta at one point, just because you can’t take the decorations you love with you, is that any reason not to make your surroundings more beautiful while you’re here? Isn’t decorating for the sake of enjoying your own personal space enough on its own?

The lost packages, on the other hand, are mysterious parcels that somehow wound up in the clearing, and they can be sent back out into the world via the strange mailbox outside Wanderstop’s doors. There’s no “reward” for doing so like you might expect in other games, but you will receive a letter in response that is usually worth the effort. These letters string together to form funny little gags made up of stories occurring outside the clearing, adding a lovely little dose of humor to your cleaning.

Wanderstop might technically be a “cozy” game in this way, but it is not a comfortable one. Sure, making tea and cleaning up the tea shop is fun and relaxing, and solving each customer’s tea order is just challenging enough. But I cried during my first playthrough. A lot. There were times when I felt like I was grieving – not just over a sad moment or for the loss of a character, but also a loss of self. Wanderstop constantly put me up against situations that were not just uncomfortable, but that intentionally went against the grain of what you normally expect from these types of games in order to make its point.

That’s not a bad thing, though, as pushing you out of your comfort zone is very much the idea. By the end of my playthrough, I didn’t want to leave. I knew I’d done everything I could – I’d talked to all the customers, I’d grown every single type of plant, and I’d tasted almost every type of tea. Alta was at the end of her journey, and so was I. But I still didn’t want to go.

The warmth that emanates from Wanderstop isn’t that of a warm hug. It’s the warmth that spreads through your fingers from a hot cup of tea, made by someone you love, while you sit in their kitchen with tears welling up in the back of your throat. It’s a painful journey through a safe and inviting space that asks you not just to rest, but to really do the work of unpacking what brought you to rock bottom in the first place.