Wanderstop review

Go to therapy. That's the message I received in Wanderstop, a narrative adventure about a troubled warrior running a tea shop. I think it's excellent advice, especially since it comes with an important and honest caveat: therapy, helpful as it may be, won't fix you. It's just a starting point.

In Wanderstop you play as Alta, a fierce warrior who hasn't known a single defeat in years, but who one day starts losing all her fights and eventually finds herself so weak she can't even lift her sword. She collapses and awakens in an idyllic forest clearing where a cozy tea shop owner named Boro suggests she recover her strength while learning how to make tea for a collection of oddball customers.

What follows is part tea shop management sim—figuring out what sort of tea a customer wants, farming the ingredients, and brewing the tea—and part story-driven adventure as Alta grapples with her mental health and personal history, and examines her relentless need to be a champion. Wanderstop is successful on both ends: it's a satisfying tea shop sim and a well-written story I'm still thinking about after I've finished.

Steep and deep

It's a good thing Alta is a warrior because making tea in Wanderstop is more of a physical activity than you might guess, mostly because Boro's teakettle is a towering two-story contraption built more like a giant alchemy set than a teakettle. You have to clamber up a ladder to pull the chain that fills it with water, pump the bellows to heat the water to a boil, and kick the valve that sends the water through a spiralling tube to a teapot the size of a jacuzzi.

Then you chuck in the ingredients: an orb of tea leaves the size of a soccer ball, a colorful piece of fruit from your garden, maybe a mushroom, occasionally even an object like a book: it all depends on what type of tea the customer has ordered, and these customers usually have eccentric tastes. Smack another valve and the brew descends to the spout where you can fill a mug with tea and hand it to a customer. Or to Boro, if you want to see how he likes it. Or you can find a quiet spot in the clearing to sit and sip it yourself.

It's all beautifully done: the teashop management system in Wanderstop could have been an enjoyable game all on its own, with charming fantasy characters placing bizarre tea orders and you farming, mixing ingredients, and clambering around on your enormous alchemy set to make them happy—sort of like Strange Horticulture but for caffeinated drinks.

But there's the other half of the game, where you learn about Alta's life and history and self-doubts, where you talk to customers about your problems (and theirs), where you speak regularly with the kind, gentle, and generous Boro, who listens to your troubles without judgement, who doesn't give advice but instead offers his own perspective.

Sort of like therapy. I've never really told anyone this, so why not do it in a videogame review, I guess: I was in therapy for a couple of years, and several moments in Wanderstop are reminiscent of my experience. At one point Alta explains to Boro that she's been pushing herself to her limits for years and she never felt tired before. She simply can't understand why she's suddenly tired now. Boro gently suggests: isn't it possible she's tired because she's been pushing herself to her limits for years?

The most helpful moments in therapy for me were a lot like this: gaining a new perspective, sometimes a painfully obvious one I'd somehow been missing despite stewing over my problems for years. Sometimes it just takes someone else to look at your situation and give you a little bit of information you were unable to grasp yourself.

That's also, in some ways, what I found to be the limits of therapy. I was given information, I gained some new perspectives, but I didn't walk away from it as a whole new person. I wasn't "fixed," not even a little. I had been given some new tools, but I still had to actually decide on my own if I would use them or not. This theme also comes through in Wanderstop: as magical as this cozy little tea shop in the forest clearing is, no one is going to wave a wand that will solve Alta's problems.

Help wanted

There are other moments I appreciate in the writing by Davey Wrenden (The Stanley Parable) and Karla Zimonja (Tacoma). Not long after I met one character, they began asking me some personal questions, and for a moment I was torn: telling this stranger my feelings felt like the videogame thing to do, in that it would advance our relationship and thus the story. But it didn't feel natural to open up to someone I'd just met, same as I'm reluctant to share myself with people I don't know well in real life.

A dialogue option let me essentially say, "I don't know you well enough to talk about that," and the character left. I wondered for a while if I'd messed up and missed part of the story, but a little later that character returned and basically apologized for pushing me to reveal personal information I wasn't ready to share. I liked that: it's rare to follow a non-gaming instinct in a game and see it rewarded.

Wanderstop also presents another important truth: when people see you hurting they will often try to help, but even though they may mean well, they are probably unequipped to actually help. Acquaintances, friends, family, they may think they know how to solve your problem, but they can be just plain wrong. That's the case with one of the customers you slowly get to know in Wanderstop.

It's extremely difficult to turn down that help, especially when it comes from a place of kindness and caring—and especially if the person offering is increasingly insistent. It can even feel like you're letting them down by denying them the help they're offering. But even coming from a place of good intentions, it can do you harm. It's good to see that message in a game, too.

Wannastop

Wanderstop does a great job with its two halves: there's a satisfying farming and alchemy system that makes brewing tea a genuine pleasure, and there's a well-written story with meaningful themes and interesting characters. One thing I noticed, though: as a sort of side-effect of the self-reflective nature of Wanderstop, I found myself examining how I was actually playing it.

Here I was, playing a warrior who needs rest and relaxation, and what was I doing? Holding down the sprint button as I rushed around gathering ingredients and making tea. Getting stressed out by the thorny weeds that would grow across the clearing if I didn't snip them with my shears. I gave a bird some coffee and it started following me everywhere, squawking: I started worrying I'd gotten it addicted to caffeine.

If this is a cozy game about chilling out, why was I usually a bundle of nerves while playing it? With such serious themes, and the stakes of Alta's mental health on the line, and my own need to complete tasks in a brisk manner, I didn't really find Wanderstop all that relaxing.

Maybe I'm more like Alta than I thought: I have trouble slowing down and taking it easy when there are so many things to do. Something for me to examine in therapy, I suppose.