Um Imparcial View of Wanderstop Gameplay
The joy I found in stumbling across these little kleptomaniacs, picking them up and shaking them around to drop whatever package or seed they’d stolen, was immense. And yes, you can
Grow and harvest the ingredients needed for tea, and then mix them together in an unusual tea-making contraption. Along the way, speak with the many travelers who pass through the shop, learn their stories and make tea that’s just right for them.
Because that’s all we can do, isn’t it? We can’t control everything. We can’t control who stays and who leaves. We can’t control how people feel about us, how our stories with them end, or whether they end at all. The only thing we have power over is ourselves. That’s the lesson Wanderstop leaves us with.
The only things that remain are Boro, the books, and the images we’ve taken. I hated this, in fact, I think I still hate it. It felt like the game was forcing me to deal with my own control issues, to accept that I couldn’t hold onto everything.
Customers will ask for specific brews, while Boro and Alta (and the Pluffins) can drink just about anything. With each sip of tea, we get to know our characters a little better as they share vignettes of their life outside the shop.
Some of the best books you'll ever read don't have happy or neat endings. They're a pleasure to experience but they serve as the catalyst for new ideas and curiosity beyond the confines of their pages. If art is intended to imitate life then it must go on and on, it must be unpredictable, and it must leave you waiting and hoping and wondering.
Let me put it this way, Wanderstop isn’t just a game. It’s an experience. It’s a quiet conversation you didn’t know you needed. A warm cup of tea that lingers on your tongue long after it’s gone. A lesson in patience, in acceptance, in letting go. It’s not a game that hands you answers.
Operating the tea machine itself is rather uncomplicated for such a complicated looking contraption. A tall ladder rotates around the giant glass pots in the center of the tea shop – you climb to the very top and pull a rope to fill the first pot with water, then climb down to smack the bellows, keeping the thermometer bar balanced to get the water to a perfect boil.
There's nothing wrong with this angle, of course, but Wanderstop offers a far more realistic approach to the process of change. It's still a cozy game for the most part, but one that isn't afraid to point out the challenges that come with slowing down. The farming, harvesting, and tea-making serve as actively therapeutic actions, rather than mindless wholesome gameplay in search of gifts for romanceable Wanderstop Gameplay residents (or to pay back a merciless tanuki landlord).
There’s this one cutscene with Monster—a moment so heavy, so emotionally charged—that I know I would’ve been bawling if there had been music. And that’s my one gripe with the soundtrack: That scene needed a BGM.
When I saw that the minds behind The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide were also the ones making Wanderstop, I knew what to expect… or, at least, I thought I did. I anticipated its immensely emotional story, wry sense of humor, and at least one strange twist – but while I got all of those things and more, what I didn’t see coming was that a game about making tea and avoiding burn out would force me to grapple with my own hold-ups around productivity in such an intimate way.
It's not stuffy, either, or singularly shooting for emotional high-notes. Wanderstop has incredibly funny dialogue and a truly bizarre cast of characters with strangely high expectations of what a cup of tea might do for them.
Doggerland review: "A delicate dance of survival and management that doesn't feel weighted toward a single strategy"
Doggerland review: "A delicate dance of survival and management that doesn't feel weighted toward a single strategy"