In Wanderstop, your job as Alta is mainly to rest and relax. At Boro’s teashop, you’re at liberty to take as much time as you want maintaining the grounds, playing with the Pluffins, and getting experimental with your gardening. That said, you’ll still have to serve customers from time to time, interpreting their sometimes confusing and convoluted requests into actual tea brews.
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Some of these customers are transient, staying only for a short time, while others will share parts of themselves with Alta and perhaps even teach her something about herself. And some of these customers are absolutely delightful. Here are our favourite customers, ranked.
This list contains spoilers for Wanderstop.
12
Customer on a Cloud
Here For A Good Time, Not A Long Time
Unfortunately, this customer makes the bottom of our list as we barely spend any time with them. We meet this customer in chapter 3, after Alta has a very important revelation that I won’t detail because of spoilers, and she’s left stunned and horrified by the repercussions. When the customer comes across Alta, they’re cheery and excited, but Alta isn’t able to form a complete sentence in response.
The customer politely excuses themself, telling Alta not to worry about them. The next time we see them, they’ve stopped speaking, indicating that Alta can now move on to the next chapter.
11
Often Farlands Citizen
First Tea, New Me
This customer is from the Often Farlands, and in their hometown, they’re forbidden from drinking tea. They’re forbidden from doing a lot of things there, it’s a place with a lot of rules. After some halfhearted refusals of Alta’s offer of tea, they decide that they want book tea – tea infused with books.
Later, they also ask for a tea infused with a fruit from their hometown, a delicacy where they’re from but a totally ordinary fruit here. They don’t want to tell you that much about themselves, though, which is perfectly alright. I see them as a representation of the desire to do things you’re told you can’t or shouldn’t do, even if it’s scary.
10
Fancy Bird
Notice The Beauty Of Life
This bougie bird loves the finer things in life and has a great appreciation for beautiful aesthetics, which is why she wants a soothing cup of lavender tea with some cheeky colour tweaks to make it look prettier.
She also values individuality and hates the groupthink-y businessmen that infest the teahouse in search of a boardroom, but we’ll get to them later. Unfortunately, she’s unable to offer you anything other than advice to slow down and appreciate the beauty in the world. To be fair, Wanderstop is a very beautiful place.
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9
Pained Customer
Drink The Pain Away
This reticent customer doesn’t have much to say, but you can’t really blame them – they have chronic chest pain that makes it hard to think about anything else. If you help them ease the pain and think about something else for once, they’ll very kindly reward you with a beautiful wind chime to put in the front of your shop. They remind me that though pain can be difficult, we can at least be grateful for brief respites from it.
8
Old Aeon Citizen
Kindnesses For The Wearygone, Muchly!
I have no idea what this customer is saying, and nor does Alta. It takes me several rereads to figure out what she’s trying to tell me, but she seems nice and polite in her tone, at least. She’ll ask you to make a ceremonial brew for her, which is a complicated and time consuming process, but in return she shares that she feels a “pulling-ness” from the woods, one that makes fragments of herself.
It’ll make sense at some point, don’t worry. Just appreciate her musings on dreams and her Sailor Moon-esque outfit.
7
Demon Hunter
Pseudo-Social Worker
The Demon Hunter’s role is a little contradictory – while they’re from an order of Demon Hunters, there aren’t actually many demons left to hunt. Since that’s the case, they travel from community to community, trying to help villages and towns in other, more conventional ways. These usually involve prepared speeches that lead into rituals where they try to resolve mundane arguments through the power of mediation.
While the Demon Hunter doesn’t get to do very much for Alta (largely because she rejects any attempt), they’re a nice reminder that even if you stop having a professional ‘purpose’, there’s always other ways you can be useful.
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6
Ren
The Warrior’s Spirit
Ren is a complicated character, one that mirrors Alta’s former self while reminding her of the dangers of pushing yourself too far. A warrior himself, he recognises Alta and sees their meeting as one of fate – he believes that his journey brought him to her so they could spar together and he can learn from her.
When she tells him that she can’t fight, he insists that she’s not determined enough, and tries to formulate a plan to help her recover so that they can fight. He pushes her to a breaking point, and after an argument, he says some very unkind things and leaves. He returns a bit later, injured, but somehow still determined to rise past this setback. If Alta’s burnout is one side of a coin, Ren’s spirit is the other.
5
Nana
The Capitalist Grandma
Nana is a great character, a tough salesman with a heart of gold. When she first appears at Wanderstop, she sets up shop outside the teashop and yells at her about economics and business plans. You can get cute items from her, which is nice, but expect her to scold you about ‘not knowing how business works’ or whatever.
Later, when Monster arrives, you’ll see her start to soften. She’s concerned about the little girl and wants to make sure she’s put on a good path. Mostly, though, she’s trying to keep up appearances of being a trash-talking consumerism machine.
I still don’t know what a Nanabuck is.
4
Gerald the “Knight”
World’s Dorkiest Dad
Gerald is a highly excitable man in a suit of armour who insists he’s a knight. He is not. He’s mostly just trying to impress his son, who he carries an array of polaroids of on his person. He’ll show you all of them too, if you ask.
Many of them are of his son trying to get some sleep.
He’s a truly fun character, painfully optimistic and thoroughly bent on going on a real knight’s quest so his son will finally say he’s cool. Unfortunately, his journey doesn’t go all that well, but you have to respect a guy who loves his kid this much.
3
Jerry, Larry, Terry and Harry
Where’s The Boardroom?
This quartet of businessmen are dressed exactly the same (suit, tie, and briefcase), talk exactly the same, and all want the same things: regular coffee, to find a boardroom, and to practice their presentations. All of them will give you equally pointless business presentations full of charts and insist on hanging around even though you don’t have coffee or a boardroom. What a wonderful expression of corporate conformity.
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2
Zenith/Garry
Alien Groupthink
Zenith, in their original form, is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Floating and glowing, with a hole for a face, they speak in multiple voices, and they love the businessmen. They try to help Alta fix her “change structure”, but decide before they’re done that they want to undergo some change themselves – they want to be a businessman, and they complete their transformation into Garry.
This is a disappointment for Alta, but they also make a great point: to resist change is to harm the self. We become what we must.
1
Monster
Rowdy, Rambunctious, Reflection
Monster is the most important customer at Wanderstop, which earns her the top spot on the list. She’s like a hurricane, a stereotypical ‘problem child’, but as we learn, she reminds Alta of herself when she was a kid – yearning for control over herself, acting out because of her own insecurity and pain, and in need of guidance. Alta can help Monster learn to trust adults, and in turn, Monster teaches Alta how to trust herself.
Adventure
Indie Games
Simulation
