Before I can tell you what Wanderstop is, I have to tell you what it isn’t. If you’re looking for a high-pressure shop management sim that asks you to optimise your workflow for maximum customer satisfaction, this is not that. If you’re looking for a farm sim with life sim elements, this is also not that. If you’re looking for a cosy game… well, it’s kind of that, but not in a feel-good way.
What it is is a vehicle for a story that remains unfinished when you get to the end. I don’t say that as a criticism. Protagonist Alta’s story is one of burnout and self-hatred, fuelled by an intense need to retain control of herself, and by extension, her life. Alta is a renowned fighter, a woman who’s dedicated her entire life to being good at this one thing. She didn’t lose a fight, ever, until she did, starting a losing streak that she couldn’t end.
This is communicated to the player through a series of beautifully illustrated drawings – while these aren’t representative of the game’s art style as a whole, I found them gorgeous moments of abstraction that took my breath away.
Desperate to find a solution to her extended failure, believing that her losses can be chalked up to a lack of training and discipline, she goes looking for Master Winters, a legendary fighter who now lives in the woods. But Alta doesn’t have the energy, not to run, not even to hold her sword. She collapses in the woods and wakes up on a bench next to Boro, a huge, cheerful bald man who’s carried her to Wanderstop, his tea shop. He encourages her, in his strange way of speaking, to take a break and make some tea with him.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
When you eventually acquiesce (Alta is quite resistant to the concept of resting), you’re introduced to the actual gameplay, which isn’t complex, but is ritualistic. You will collect everything used in tea-making from the garden, where you plant seeds in various configurations and water the plants to create the resources you need – namely, fruits. You’ll collect tea leaves from bushes around the grounds, and leave them in baskets to dry and coalesce into tea balls. You can pick mushrooms as well, which can modify your plants and what they produce.
You can also maintain the grounds by snipping up weeds and sweeping up piles of leaves. You might find collectibles while doing it, too.
Actually making tea is just as time-consuming. You climb a tall ladder to the top of an elaborate machine, where you pull a rope to deposit water into a giant flask. You smack the bellows a bunch of times to get the water boiling, then kick a valve so the water rushes into a separate flask for infusion. You toss your tea leaves and other ingredients in, then kick another valve to transfer the brew into what Boro calls a “Pouramid”. You place a mug under the Pouramid and pull a rope to pour the brew. Voila, tea.
Take Your Time, Learn To Let Go
Does this sound frustrating? I imagine it might. Alta’s certainly frustrated, seemingly by everything. She doesn’t understand why the process has to be so elaborate. She doesn’t understand why some customers come to the tea shop but don’t seem to want tea. She doesn’t understand why Boro seems to take so much pleasure in doing nothing.
This persisting slowness, is, of course, the point. In fact, I’d go to far as to say that Wanderstop is an excellent example of ludonarrative consonance, when a game’s systems back up its story in every way. Wanderstop is expertly crafted so that its moment to moment gameplay puts absolutely no stress on the player whatsoever, because Alta’s supposed to be avoiding stress.
Resources are abundant. Customers don’t get impatient no matter how long you take to get to them, nor do they get upset with you if you mess up their order. Every single process is chronicled in your notes, so you never have to worry that you’ll forget something. There’s a book in the library with the answers to every order, if you don’t know what to do.
Even the tasks Boro might give you, few and far between as they are, have no stakes. The game will have you meditate under a tree to change the landscape of the garden and move on from a chapter when you’ve completed that part’s story. If you don’t finish his tasks in time, absolutely nothing bad happens – you just won’t get a specific collectible. At one point, Boro requests that you fill his hanging garden with plants, and Alta protests, why fill it when it’ll all be gone the next time she meditates? In response, Boro asks her, isn’t there worth in making things beautiful, even if they don’t last forever?
And that, at its core, is what Wanderstop is about: letting go. That may be letting go of self-sabotage, or your impossible expectations of yourself, or your anger at the world, or your need to be in absolute control. It turns out there are a lot of things Alta needs to let go of. Wanderstop came to me at a time when I was struggling with my own burnout, and while its writing can be indelicate and heavy-handed at times, Alta’s struggles felt painfully familiar. Her good enough wasn’t good enough for her. There’s real, striking pain in the knowledge that sometimes, you just have to let go. Resisting a necessary change can be disastrous.
Wanderstop Is An Obvious Labour Of Love
But around that pain is an astonishing amount of beauty. Wanderstop has a wonderful cast of characters, some who only stay for a moment, and others who have full-blown storylines and teach Alta valuable lessons about herself. These characters are wonderfully written, often hilarious, and never feel like they’re hitting the player over the head with some trite piece of wisdom – they’re people on their own journeys, and you can’t change what happens to them or even necessarily see how that journey ends.
Despite its heavy themes, Wanderstop is, broadly, a very funny game. The moment to moment is punctuated with hilarious scenes and humour that borders on absurdist at its most extreme.
The world around Alta, too, is beautiful, a real pleasure to do absolutely nothing in. Between tasks, I found myself weeding, drinking tea in various spots around the garden, and playing with the penguin-like Pluffins. Each chapter changes the colours of the trees and grounds around Wanderstop, and it’s always a wonderful sight to behold.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the developers’ attention to detail. The game is filled with books you can collect, whether they be given to you by characters or sent to you by a book club. Every instructional manual is funny. Every mystery novel you get in the mail is a sharp satire of the genre. Even the book of critical meta-analysis you get about those mystery novels is fully, and excellently, written.
My absolute favourite detail is that scrolling options in the opening menu plays notes in keeping with the theme song’s melody. Every time I booted up the game, I’d play along with the theme for at least half a minute before loading my save.
Wanderstop balances the discomfort brought on by seeing a game strike so true at the heart of burnout with being an absolute pleasure to play, full of delightful secrets and a healthy helping of whimsy. I’m awed at how well it’s all balanced and how, despite some occasionally schlocky dialogue, it so effectively gets its point across.
We don’t know how any of this ends, not really, and that’s okay, because it doesn’t have to be in our control for it to have meant something. Wanderstop won’t cure your burnout, because there is no cure. The only thing we really can do is the work, and sometimes the work is to rest; learning to be kind to ourselves, to recognise our own pain and acknowledge it. We do what we can. We let go of the rest.
Reviewed on PC.
Adventure
Indie Games
Simulation
- Gameplay is wonderfully consistent with the game?s story
- Beautiful world that is a joy to play in
- Excellently written cast of characters
- Clear attention to detail
- Alta?s dialogue is sometimes indelicate
- Very simplistic gameplay, though not always to the game?s detriment