Wanderstop Steam Charts & Stats

Beautiful game, down to the music, characters, visuals. A game that encourages you to slow down and enjoy your time, appreciate things the way they are before moving on to the next. Every character has something about them to learn and every interaction something to learn from. Alta is a perfect example of someone who is rushed in their lives and only cares about moving forward. I think this game will resonate with a lot of people and if you're thinking about buying it I definitely recommend you to.

A gorgeous game with beautiful metaphors and fun characters. I love it!

Between this game and the Tomes & Tea books, I really want to run away from my corporate job and go run a quiet tea shop somewhere. The narrative got unexpectedly dark in places, but it was needed and well handled. I love the care that was put into the writing of Wanderstop. I love the whimsy that went into its environments. Initially I didn't like a certain character who sets up shop across from you, but she grew on me too. This game is just very heart warming, like a nice cup of tea.

Right away, there is nothing in this game that will make you feel the adrenaline of gaming. I feel like this game was made to prove a point -- people view boredom and rest as unproductive, oftentimes completely abandoning it just so they can continue to absolutely overwork themselves. If you're that kind of person, then high five! This game basically lures you in, makes you relate to the protagonist and get annoyed with her and guess what? Ideally, you slow down. You get more interested in your surroundings, you start talking to the customers, tending the shop. You try different types of tea. You explore yourself and you take a virtual rest. You do it at your own pace, as there is no timer and no competition. You can actually challenge yourself and clean every single pile of leaves, find all the trinkets, farm all the plants. The point is that you don't have to, you can do as little or as much as you want. If this sounds boring, maybe it is; maybe the point was to actually make you embrace the boredom, show you that it can be good. In all seriousness, though, there wasn't a single moment in the game when I felt bored. I genuinely enjoy simulators, so that might've helped, but preparing different tea, finding trinkets, the minimalistic farming and meeting these amazing characters! Ah, that was enough for me. Also, Boro is just the sweetest guy and his profound wisdom is absolutely incredible. I've taken multiple screenshots of conversations with him because they hit on a different level, I swear. The game is also visually stunning, as the nature changes according to seasons and the weather. You get a sense of progress because you learn more and your reactions to the protagonist's attitude change as well. And Boro is always there for you to help you process what's just happened. I saw that many people talked about this game being therapeutic and I can wholeheartedly agree. If you struggle with wanting to constantly stay productive, get this game and allow yourself to rest.

For some, this might be just what you need. For others, it is an exercise in frustration. If the point of it all was to embrace boredom and tedium, I think they succeeded a little too well on that front. I would've preferred a shorter, handcrafted narrative experience OR more emphasis on enjoyable mechanics.

Reading the reviews, you can easily get the impression that you need to play this game at the right time. That you need to relate to the protagonist to unlock the emotional core for yourself. I want to offer a kind of counterpoint, as someone who doesn't really relate to Alta at all, but still found themselves pulled into the story. It's a strange thing with Davey Wreden's games. I would consider myself a big fan of his work, yet whenever I start playing a game of his, I feel disappointed at first, only to fall in love the more I think about it and the more time I spend with it. His games are so different to each other that you really can't expect a certain thing with them. Whereas The Stanley Parable and even The Beginners Guide had a narrative irony and a meta tone to them, Wanderstop upholds illusion and sincerity the entire way through. It still employs some narrative misdirection, but it never does an ironic 180 like The Beginners Guide. That being the case, it's easy to misunderstand this game intitially. To think that it's a low-story cozy game that makes a point with its concept. I advise everyone to stick with the shallow-seeming writing for a while and remember that this is a game thought up by someone who knows how to write a dang story. Ultimately, it's about Alta's struggles. It's about feelings of inadequacy, burnout, trauma, repression and mental health in general. The gameplay is deliberately designed to be... well... deliberate. There's no automating and very little optimizing. You just do the things you do. Step by step, at whatever pace you want. They are instant and simple, letting you either click and work restlessly or accept that you can sometimes stand around doing nothing of consequence. This is a real strong point, as it can evoke many different emotions in you depending on how you play. Resistance to the mundanity is painful and exhausting while embracing the low-consequence freedom can transition you into a state of serene calmness. How Long to Beat states this game as 10-12 hours to complete on average. I did it in 17, not because I was ever stuck, but because I gardened, decorated and just made and drank tea a lot. I strongly recommend you have Alta try all the different kinds of tea. In my opinion it is crucial for chatacterization. The writing of her thoughts on the different brews is better than much of the mandatory story sequences actually. But this is what I mean - my experience with this game wasn't a ludo-narrative one. What the gameplay meant to me was much different from what it did to Alta. I felt a disconnect from the character, but I still understood her. And that was powerful. My experience foiled her's, making it even more emotional. So no, this isn't "the game for you if you are prone to burnout". This is simply a well-crafted story, whether you relate to it or not. The first chapter is setup. It's hard to get through because there's very little story. In fact, the game seems to almost belittle you when you try to find a sincere narrative. The opening monolgue is super cliché and over the top, characters shatter the seeming fantasy setting with anachronistic talk and potential concepts and storylines are undermined by fluffy jokes and narrative irony. At one point you can ask for a detailed explanation of how the forest works, but if you do, you literally get: "The forest is magical." I felt like the game was making a point to me that I had already learned, thus making my experience kind of pointless. But the story does somewhat go back on this later. It's halfway through chapter two that the narrative starts to develop and character depth and deeper themes start to form. It was here that the fact that Alta had not learned the point which had been obvious to me, became an experience. The writing stays fairly literal, making the metaphors into something diegetic and tangible. This is both a weakness and a strength as it does remove some room for interpretation, but also enables the emotional core to be a concrete part of the story. Ultimately, the choice is yours. You can resist the game in it's simplicity and seeming pointlessness, like Alta, or you can let it grow on you and find a different truth. It's a sound, unqiue emotional journey either way.

I’m going through something difficult myself, so I saw a lot of myself in Alta and the way she struggles with her inner turmoil. I truly felt connected to the characters, and the art is gorgeous. This is one of my favorite games to date. By the end, I didn’t want it to be over—but that’s life, and time always moves forward.

Not content with just being a cozy game about making tea, Ivy Road's cozy game about making tea, "Wanderstop", is subversive all the way down to the achievements, trailers, and "About this game" section on Steam, many times leaving only small hints to its true nature. Mixing a wonderfully colourful aesthetic, a gorgeous soundtrack made by none other than C418 himself, cozy vibes, a simple gameplay loop, and some over-the-top cartoony characters, and then misdirecting you with all of those things to tell a dark, messy, and ultimately profound story about grief, burnout, change, patience, and more. Wanderstop can best be described as the sweetest tea you've ever tried, made by a bitter and vile individual who deep down thinks serving sweet tea will get him judged by his customers, so he decides to ruin it on purpose by adding some coriander and onions to the mix. None of this is meant as a dig towards the game, mind you; my point with the previous paragraph is to highlight how refreshing it feels to play a game that isn't just cute and cozy for the sake of being cute and cozy. More thought and effort was put into this game than I believe many have anticipated or even given it credit for. And with Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable / The Beginner's Guide) at the helm of writing, I don't rightfully know how I expected anything different. Yet after reaching the credits, I also believe that not everything glues together as neatly as Mister Wreden's previous works. Wanderstop is, ironically, a game about a type of person that will probably never play it. An impatient, try-hard, overworked, judgemental, potentially bitter, and depressed individual that clearly has issues seeing things from a perspective that differs from their own, who also just so happens to be unable to wind down and only has work and physical self-improvement on their mind. This leaves the game in a weird sort of limbo state where a lot of its more "preachy" elements will probably fall on deaf ears. Not only that, but for a game about winding down, relaxing, and even how it is okay to not be doing anything, I find it kind of ironic that the only way to meaningfully progress the game and help Alta deal with her struggles is by doing one specific thing: making tea and serving your customers. The game kept beating me over the head about how it's "okay to just sit on a bench and read a book, sweep some leaves, take some pictures and frame them, etc." Yet doing exactly that didn't progress Alta's story or grow her character in the slightest. Maybe I'm just too impatient and should have done nothing for longer, but from my POV, with how much thought was put into most facets of this game, the message and gameplay loop of this game don't really gel. In short, I believe Wanderstop says it best: Boredom is a luxury. But are you willing to just exist? And I guess my answer to that is: "kind of, not for too long, maybe somewhere else, it's complicated." 7/10

This game confronts you, it will ask you what you choose to do. It will give you no push, it will not demand anything, it will wait forever. Are you willing to exist?

I almost wish I'd hated this game, because then I could just write "Wanderslop." and walk off. Unfortunately, while I can't recommend it completely without qualifiers, I did mostly like it, so now I have to review it properly. The thing I found most interesting about Wanderstop is the way it's consciously cozy without being full-on saccharine. The core gameplay loop is deliberately low-stress and low-effort. Customers will arrive with requests for tea, but there can sometimes be more than one way to fulfill them, and regardless, they're infinitely patient and you can try as many times as you like if you make a mistake. If you get completely stuck and are just getting frustrated, there's even an entirely optional in-game guide that will spell out exactly how to fulfill every request. Very little is truly mandatory. You can decorate, or not. The lovable proprietor will give you optional tasks, but always with a clear emphasis that these are optional and not even important, and rewarding you with yet more decorative items. You can tidy up around the grounds, sometimes being rewarded with teacups or decor items, but there are no real consequences for neglecting it. The very light farming and even lighter tea-brewing are really the only inescapable game mechanics. Even conversations with NPCs provide a certain amount of wiggle room. If a particular character's comedic bit doesn't interest you, there's often a chance to just tell them you aren't interested in hearing about it, whatever their particular "it" is. Even the rewards they turn over can be declined if you simply don't care. The structure is inherently laid-back and invites you to do what you want, the way you want it, at the pace that feels best for you, sometimes letting some time pass where there may be nothing of consequence to do at all (though never for terribly long). Even the achievements are built around this. [spoiler]They're a clever bit of misdirection. Achievements are handed out at random as you progress, and it's impossible to actually miss any by the end of the game.[/spoiler] But as mentioned earlier, cozy doesn't mean saccharine, and this is where I felt the game was at its most interesting. Even the outlandish, silly, exaggerated characters that visit the titular Wanderstop have a strangely real element of humanity to them, in that their stories do not revolve around a single problem that can be resolved during their visit to a tea shop with the magic of friendship and beverages. Alta, the protagonist, is not their friend or their therapist. Her life simply intersects with the lives of her customers for the little while they spend at the shop. She can provide them some company and some comfort, but she'll never know everything, or even very much at all, about them, and the greater challenges of their lives are ultimately things they will have to face on their own when they leave. No one ever has a single, defining moment of turning their lives around or fixing their central dilemma; life is complicated, messy, and full of problems that never go away completely, and often the best one can do for people who are struggling is show them some kindness. The lack of clean and easy traditional "character arc" storytelling feels surprisingly real, and at times even dark and uncomfortable, especially for a game that could easily be mistaken for a good-vibes-only romp. Mechanically, there's not a lot going on, and if you're not really vibing with the atmosphere, I can imagine boredom setting in for a lot of people. I admit, even having had a good time, that I was quite ready to be done with it by the end of a 12ish hour run (slowed down a bit by my insistence on trying every type of tea to hear Alta's monologues). But there's an admirable deliberateness to Wanderstop's design in both its systems and storytelling. It's not purely an exercise in mood. Wanderstop has specific things to say about identifiable topics, weaving together various concepts found in therapy and psychology and turning them over thoughtfully without resorting to nonexistent easy answers. It may look (or at times even be) cute and goofy to the point of vapidness, but the full story is a thoughtful and intelligent one, in a "food for thought" way rather than an "answers to all life's questions found here" way. I refuse on principle to say Wanderstop "won't be everyone's cup of tea," but whether you'll be into it will depend a great deal on your receptiveness to its ponderous pace and lack of conventionally contrived character arcs. There are plenty of times where it may feel like the game's taking it a little too easy, but it finds a lot of ways to gently produce ideas and leave the player to think them through, and if you're receptive to that, there is a quiet, sometimes melancholy magic to it.