Wanderstop review – the ultimate cosy game
The director behind The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide returns with a narrative adventure set in a tea shop, which challenges the very nature of video games.
The director behind The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide returns with a narrative adventure set in a tea shop, which challenges the very nature of video games.
While farming simulators, cooking games, and virtual pets have existed for years, these experiences are now commonly filed under the moniker of ‘cosy’ game. In recent years, the label has become popular shorthand for anything cutesy, but when boiled down, the term is so broad and vibes-based it can encompass almost anything, depending on the person.
Cute cats and flowery fields are the default ‘cosy’ aesthetic for normies, but who’s to say popping heads in Call Of Duty doesn’t offer the same kind of soothing mental cleansing as tending the weeds?
The purpose and nature of these games is explored in Wanderstop, a narrative-driven title which has all the conventional cosy tenets – plants to water, animals to pet, and a cuddly art style to sink into – but uses the concept to say something deeper about the importance of taking time out when you feel lost in life.
The unlikely protagonist for the game is Alta, a highly-driven fighter who has dedicated her entire life to the craft, but who suddenly loses her mojo after someone breaks her undefeated streak. Baffled by the loss, she decides to seek out a legendary warrior to help her train but, while on the trip through a forest, she collapses and can no longer carry her sword.
She is saved and nursed back to health by Boro, the chirpy owner of the Wanderstop tea shop. When she wakes up, Alta is initially stubborn to rest, brushing her fall off as a minor hiccup, but after subsequent runs through the forest end in the same way, she takes up Boro’s offer of helping him manage the tea shop while she figures out what’s going on.
This starts the relaxed gameplay loop of Wanderstop. Boro teaches you how to grow plants using different coloured seeds, with the colour you use combined with how they’re placed on a hexagonal grid across the ground altering the end result.
Place three in a straight line and you’ll grow a plant to generate more seeds, while a larger triangular formation will grow a hybrid plant. These plants sprout fruits with distinctive flavours which you can infuse into your tea, which is required to fulfil the specific requests of customers who float in and out of Wanderstop.
These requests escalate in complexity, throwing in other considerations like mushrooms which can change the colour of fruits, while some require you to study an in-game guidebook so you can match the vaguer orders to the descriptions of specific plants. Wanderstop isn’t challenging but is instead a stress-free experience you tackle at your own pace, with zero time pressure and no repercussions for getting an order wrong.
The act of brewing tea is consistently satisfying thanks to the stellar animation, sound design, and elaborate Willy Wonka-like contraption you have to utilise at the shop’s centre. You whip around the towering machine on a rolling ladder; pulling a rope to pour water, slapping bellows in the right rhythm to boil it up, adding ingredients, and opening valves to allow the glowing mixture to swirl around the tubes, before it finally sloshes into your mug.
There’s even an art to pulling the final rope for a set time to fill your cup without any overflow, which is acknowledged by Boro, but is otherwise entirely there for your personal amusement.
This isn’t your average kettle (Annapurna Interactive)Wanderstop is very unconcerned with rewarding players in the traditional sense. You’re progressing through a narrative, but trinkets you find from trimming weeds or sweeping leaves disappear when you decide to progress to the next season – as dictated by a stone shrine which glows after you’ve completed all the tea orders of that cycle.
This goes for all your plants too, so while you can spend hours just decorating the fields around the tea shop it won’t last and the changing of the seasons will wash away all your hard work.
This all connects to Wanderstop’s central theme of dealing with change. Interestingly, the only tangible progress which does carry over between seasons are photographs (taken through an in-game camera or given to you by characters) that you can place in frames around the tea shop.
Even the vaguely-worded achievements are tied to a time delay after you’ve triggered them, further distancing itself from the idea of completing tasks to fulfil a dopamine checklist.
The cosy nature of Wanderstop isn’t just about the pleasing aesthetic but the solace of pulling yourself off the typical tracks of progress and finding gratification in the smaller moments. It wants you to dally and dawdle with its plant combinations, read funny stories about a fictional action hero sent in the mailbox, or serve tea to the roaming Pluffin birds so they change colours and fly after you.
The game wants your mind to wander, reflect, and breathe in the small stuff, even if it isn’t contributing towards any specific goal.
This is a tough statement to make in a video game, a medium built on the satisfaction of filling progress bars and levelling up, but Wanderstop’s characters are the gratifying sweetener in the brew.
In each season, customers will approach Alta with various problems, which you try to alleviate with tea specific to their tastes. All of these encounters are memorable, sharply written, and very funny, from Gerald the wannabe knight who is trying to impress his son despite a witch’s curse, to a combative nan who is obsessed with overthrowing Boro’s tea shop through her advanced knowledge of economics.
These stories aren’t all given a clean resolution – a tea shop is for fleeting visits after all – but they all feed into Wanderstop’s overall message. The thornier issue is Alta herself, whose arc is largely obvious and poorly paced. A meditation on burnout and overcoming mental roadblocks is naturally going to involve some frustration but over the course of 10 hours, Wanderstop labours the same point to an irritating degree – taking some of your sympathies for Alta along with it.
While the game has a sumptuous pastel art style and a fantastic soundtrack by Minecraft composer Daniel Rosenfeld, aka C418, there are jarring inconsistencies in the presentation.
Only certain lines from Alta are voice acted, which isn’t an obstacle per se, but the back and forth feels like an awkward choice when no other characters (including Boro, who is the most likeable) have a voice. The same applies in the switch to static 2D artwork during specific cut scenes, which while nicely drawn comes off as a cost-cutting measure rather than an artistic choice.
Wanderstop is difficult to critique because of its unique intentions but, looking back, I’ve enjoyed thinking about it more than actually playing it – which almost feels like the point.
It’s the ultimate pallet cleanser, a pleasant space to occupy and recalibrate against the noise, wrapped in a charming tea-brewing game which wants you to slow down and better yourself. It’s a flawed experiment, with bumps along the way, especially if you’re looking for clear cut resolutions and payoffs, but this understated wander through cosy tropes has a pungent and thoughtful aftertaste.
Wanderstop review summaryIn Short: A fascinating cosy experiment, packed with memorable characters and sharp writing, but which occasionally stumbles in the execution.
Pros: Brewing tea is very fun and satisfying. Excellent cast of characters, led by Boro. A visual treat with one of the best soundtracks of the year. A unique blend of concept and narrative, with a theme rarely tackled in games.
Cons: Alta as a character can be grating and her story has some pacing issues. Some design choices might rub players the wrong way, even if well intentioned.
Score: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: TBA
Publisher: Annapurna Interactive
Developer: Ivy Road
Release Date: 11th March 2025
Age Rating: 12
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