Wanderstop - Stop the Hustle and Wander into this Restorative Tea Shop
Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide deeply affected me, and has influenced the way I approach game development and other creative pursuits for the last decade. When I learned that Wreden is the creative director of a studio that was working on a game in my favourite genre—farming sims—I knew I was in for both a treat and an existential crisis. Wanderstop did not disappoint.
Alta arrives in a forest clearing and finds a quaint tea shop, which she is invited to help run by its proprietor, Boro. But contrary to the classic cosy story arc where protagonists choose to escape a hectic city life and adopt a slower pace, Alta is not here out of choice—and she would rather be anywhere else. Until recently, Alta was an undefeated fighter, and she prides herself on her persistence, determination, and strength. She has dedicated her entire life to fighting, and it has become a deeply embedded part of her identity. When she suddenly cannot fight anymore, she has a crisis.
I’ve been there. When circumstances outside your control make it impossible to continue doing the thing you’ve been known for—working, producing, achieving—it’s hard not to feel like a failure. Wanderstop is the story of Alta trying to learn how to stop punishing herself and instead take the time she needs to recover.
If this game sounds like something that might interest you but you haven’t played it yet—stop reading now. The joy, beauty, and healing potential of this game are best experienced at your own pace and in your own way. This is very deliberate. The pacing, mechanics, and overall approach Wanderstop takes all feels deliberately designed to reinforce its message: it’s a game about patience, rest, and self-forgiveness.
When Boro first encounters Alta—and, in turn, the player—he meets her exactly where she’s at. Throughout the game, he often answers her questions with some variation of ‘What do you think?’ He encourages her to use his beautiful tea-making machine and address the requests of his customers and is endlessly forgiving when Alta incorrectly responds to a request, steals all his tools, or berates somebody for not wanting a cup of tea. Her snarky attitude is met with a smile and her hard-won compliments are received with deep gratitude. Boro is the best of us.
At first, Alta is resistant to resting, or doing anything Boro suggests might help her. She returns to the forest repeatedly, trying to continue her mission to train and become a better fighter. But each time she falls—unable to keep running or hold her sword—Boro returns her to the clearing and gently encourages her to accept that a temporary pause is a strategic decision, not a personal failing. Later in her arc, as she encounters different characters who stumble into Wanderstop, Alta begins to fight for the space to continue resting. When she encounters Ren—another fighter, who feels like their meeting is fated—he judges her for being unable to fight, deciding she simply isn’t determined enough. This mirrors the exact feelings Alta previously expressed to Boro, but hearing them from somebody else gives her the power to see that they’re wrong and to argue against them. I found it cathartic to tell Ren to ‘get out of my clearing’ after he disrespected Alta’s need for rest, contrasting all of the cranky dialogue I’d previously chosen when telling Boro that I didn’t have time to take a break from my training.
Ren is just one of the interesting customers who visit the tea shop throughout Wanderstop‘s five chapters. There’s a demon hunter trying to complete their first job, a dad pretending to be a knight to impress his son, a collection of businessmen, a capitalist nana, a glowing alien, and a cheeky child with rainbow hair—just to name a few. Everyone has their own story, but they often don’t want to share it with you—if Alta even cares to ask. Many of the characters won’t tell you why they’re travelling in the forest, what they were doing before they arrived, or where they’re going when they leave. You rarely reach a satisfactory resolution with each character before it’s time to move on and then, in most cases, you never hear from them again. They feel the hundreds of people you meet in the real world, where you see a tiny glimpse of their life as you pass each other on the way to the next stage of your own.
But many of the characters also leave a mark on Wanderstop. Gerald’s stop sign, the engineer’s wind chime, and Monster’s sculpture all made me smile each time I passed them, as did the various photos, drawings, and diagrams I used to decorate the walls of the tea shop. These reminders of the tea shop’s history became increasingly important to me as each seasonal shift wiped all of my plants, trinkets, and decorations from the clearing. Activities that I generally busy myself with when I play a farming sim—creating orchards that are both beautiful and functional, organising items on shelves based on some pattern or commonality, and filling pots with plants in various colours and styles—suddenly felt pointless. Why bother fussing with my environment if it was going to disappear as soon as I moved on to the next phase of the story?
Other elements of progression that we’re used to seeing in farming sims also don’t exist in Wanderstop. You have tools like a watering can and plant shears, but they can’t be upgraded. There’s no day/night cycle, and although the chapters resemble seasons, they don’t quite align with the designations we’re used to seeing. You are given the quest to return lost parcels when they arrive in the clearing and, although the recipients are grateful at first, they gradually become less appreciative of your efforts. There are 11 achievements in the game, but they are randomly unlocked and trophy guides are currently unsure what triggers them—although people have speculated it is some combination of playtime, requests completed, and seeds planted, it remains unclear. There’s a workbench but it’s only used once by a character that isn’t you. There’s a shop, but you can never buy things, and when Nana takes pity on you and gives you some of her wares for free, they disappear in the next chapter anyway.
Wanderstop strips away all of the dopamine that typically drags you through a farming sim and asks, ‘Do you still want to play?’ And for some people the answer will be no—and that’s okay. Although, at first, I struggled with the temporary nature of everything in this game, I soon realised that that is not dissimilar to how every game works. I’ve spent hours customising my island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, building sprawling farms in Stardew Valley and creating intricate buildings in Terraria, but then when I stop playing these games and move on to the next one, these creations become just as temporary as the gardens and shelves between seasons in Wanderstop. We are left only with the photos—or screenshots—we shared and a handful of memories. Does that make the exercise pointless? Maybe. But I don’t think so. This act of creativity—like painting a canvas that we then tuck away in the garage or completing a jigsaw puzzle that we then pull apart and put back in the box—does something to distract, soothe, and relax us. Something doesn’t need to be permanent to be beautiful.
And Wanderstop truly is beautiful. The illustrations are stunning, the music is transportive, and the 3D art and animation are full of life. Walking through this game is like walking through a beautiful forest; you can’t stay there forever, but the experience stays with you and you return home a little changed, hopefully for the better.
Wanderstop was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
