I can only speak for myself, but burnout is absolutely horrible. I’m the type of person who can cause it to happen to me because of the pressure I put on myself. I have always felt the need to be perfect. It has nothing to do with the outside world and everything to do with me (and, as I’ve learned far too late in life, my ADHD). Despite our many differences, I can relate to Wanderstop’s protagonist Alta. The game is her tale of burnout, inspired by the developer’s personal experience. This very personal connection from the developer to the player makes Wanderstop feel like a warm embrace on a chilly evening, my very definition of what makes a game cozy.
Alta is a fighter with a perfect battle record. She remains undefeated for years, working extremely hard to be the best. Until… defeat. Followed by another. Alta has no idea what is happening to her, so she runs into the woods to find a past mentor who can help “fix” her. But she quickly tires, the weight of her sword becoming more unbearable with every step. She drops the sword, but only makes it a few more steps before fainting.
She awakens in a beautiful clearing, home to the Wanderstop tea shop. Boro, a kind and gentle man, brought Alta (and her sword) here after finding her unconscious in the forest. There is much back and forth, and in the end, Alta agrees to a brief stay with some light work at the tea shop. She is not happy, though. Her comments are always angry and snarky, to Boro and customers alike. This holds even when you control how she responds to someone — there aren’t even polite options!
Working at the tea shop is very laid-back. There are basically no rules. Customers don’t even need to order tea! As Alta, you can take your time with tasks and customer orders. I spend a lot of time out in the clearing, sweeping leaf piles and snipping down weeds. I also love to create plants and place them in every pot possible. The game takes place in what I would describe as chapters, and once you are done with the tasks for a chapter you can choose when to move on to the next. New chapters are as exciting as Wanderstop gets, as the clearing changes with each one.
The clearing isn’t the only thing evolving. As the game progresses, Alta slowly starts to change. She can (but doesn’t have to) treat people with a small degree of respect. She begins to feel empathy towards others. Every now and again, though, her perfectionist self rears its head to tell her to do better, to be better, to push harder towards her definition of success. Wanderstop sometimes counters these unhelpful thoughts by posing questions; for example, how long do you expect to go on being perfect — you can’t go on forever, right? The game gently encourages players to be kind to themselves. And at a time when life is agony for me, this is a needed reminder that I am grateful for.
Wanderstop’s customers are an odd, eclectic bunch — but I wouldn’t have it any other way! Each is under pressure, striving to be perfect as a dad, a demon hunter, a merchant, etc. Their struggles are heartbreaking, as each hides their true self (and their problems) under larger-than-life personalities. Trying to be what they believe they need to be is causing them to burn out, too.
The main gameplay consists of planting and harvesting fruit, gathering tea leaves, making tea, and serving (or drinking) said tea. The first chapter begins with two seed varieties, blue and pink. If you plant one seed, it is a basic flower/plant and you cannot harvest it. To make plants bearing seeds and fruit, you combine multiple plant seeds. For example, plant three blue seeds (the plants look like ferns) in a row and water the pod created at their centre, and you’ll have a new plant that bears seeds. To get fruit, you combine more seeds in specific patterns. With each new chapter comes an added seed colour, so gardening becomes more complex as Alta’s story continues.
Gardening could be complex, but it’s not too bad. Your hand is held through the entire process thanks to a basic gardening book and a book that details how to make each tea order as they come in. When there are no orders, it is blank. I never need to search the web for answers or guides because it is all relatively simple to find the information in-game.
The same goes for making tea: you are given the information you need for each customer order, so no need to panic! The process is the same for every sort of tea, save for different ingredients. You make tea in oversized scientific glassware — and a giant teapot! To start, climb a ladder to the top and fill a flask with water by pulling on a rope, then descend slightly and stoke the flames to the temperature rising steadily. Kick a knob for the boiling water to go into the teapot then toss ingredients in one at a time. Kick another knob for the tea to fill a lower flask with a windy glass tube attached. Place a cup under the end of the windy glass tube and pull a rope to make tea. The process feels magical each time, and it is a joy to do. Sometimes I make tea just because I feel like repeating the process. It feels seamless and effortless after just a few tries.
There are so many other fun aspects of the game, like collecting trinkets and teacups from weeds and piles of leaves outside, taking photos to place in the shop, and putting everything in its perfect (to me) location on shelves and tables. The world of Wanderstop seems magical, and it’s not just the tea-making. There are adorable puffins. The dishwasher is more like a train through a waterfall. The plants you grow are completely unique and look kind of kooky. It all feels wonderfully fantastical.
It’s time for me to get a bit personal personal. (Again.) As I’ve written about in the past, I suffer from severe chronic pain that is never expected to get better. As a bonus, it comes with pretty bad brain fog. For me, cozy games shouldn’t involve strange stretching of your hand or extensive use of one finger. It should be lightly tapping and rotating, that’s it. There are a couple of options/settings in Wanderstop that can help with this. You can press and hold a button to access your inventory, or press to toggle it on and off. It would have been great if it worked. No matter how many times I changed it, it changed back on its own. There is also an option to hold (ironic) instead of pressing quickly and repeatedly to boil water. It does turn on, but it does not work. These issues persist after installing an update on launch day. I also really dislike the running mechanic. Its option to toggle works, but it involves pressing down on the left joystick. This movement is incredibly awkward and painful for me, so my only option is to hold down the left trigger. An option to trigger running by using the controller’s trigger (what a mouthful) would be incredible.
Wanderstop is phenomenal for many reasons, including its characters, world, gameplay, and message of mental health and hygiene. I feel deeply for Alta. I’m not frustrated by her inability to think differently, I empathise with it. Learning new thought patterns requires a lot of hard work for a long time, and the game is Alta’s journey to a new way of looking at life. Wanderstop is touching, sweet, funny, and soothing. Its gameplay is flawless. My only issue with it was a lack of working accessibility options, sometimes causing me pain when I could have been feeling a glowing, happy warmth instead.
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