Eighteen Thousand, Nine Hundred and Four games were released on Steam in 2024. We’re
currently halfway through March in 2025 and Steam has already had Three Thousand,
Seven Hundred and Fifty Eight released this year. Regardless of your tastes that is far too
many for one sane person to try and play. Even playing just one percent of those would be
close to 40 games in just under 80 days.
It’s fine though. You don’t play that many games, you have TV shows to catch up on. Of
course there’s that finale this week, 2 shows coming next week, and don’t forget that movie
tie-in you want to watch, and those books you’ve been meaning to read. I hear it gets good
around book 3. Oh and of course there’s the…
Ok breathe.
Sometimes it’s nice to just take a moment. Sure it can feel like a rat race, you don’t have to
win though. Life is a constant stream of tasks and goals to achieve. That’s a lot to juggle,
especially when time is finite. It waits for no one. So we need to move, get things done.
Knock one down and move on to the next, I can sleep when I’m dead.
Everyone needs a break and cozy games are a great way to get that feeling. So what better
way to not burn out than playing a game about being burnt out? Wanderstop fits the bill
perfectly even if I tried to fight it pretty much the whole time I was playing it.
Wanderstop sees you stepping up as Alta, a fighter who, after pushing herself to become the
very best, that no one ever was… Gets knocked from atop that mountain. It’s ok though, just
train harder, push yourself that little bit extra. All gas, no breaks. Maybe if you can find
Master Winter, they could help you recover your glory… If only this damn sword wasn’t so
heavy. A few panic attacks and a lot of exhaustion later, and you find yourself at Wanderstop.
A tea shop in the middle of the forest ran by the caring, soft blanket of a person that is Boro.
After some chit chat Boro offers you a suggestion. Rest here, no stress, no requirements, no
pressure. Help them make tea at your own pace, on your own terms. And just get some self
care.
You can choose what to focus on in Wanderstop, from keeping the gardens clean and tidy by
sweeping up leaves and cutting down weeds, to decorating it with flowerpots and other little
trinkets. The interior has shelves for you to put all of your finds on as well as picture frames
to hang memories in. If you don’t want any of that and just want to focus on the main goal…
Then it’s tea time. You’re a shop after all, so you’ll get customers. Help Boro make them their
request tea by growing planets, drying leaves and brewing the tea, before pouring the
perfect cup. There’s no timers or rush on any of these orders. You’re able to just approach
what you want, in the order you want, whenever you want to. The game is very hands off in
the management aspect. It doesn’t want to stress you, it wants you to recover.
I’ve been conditioned by games these days to have micro-progression and unlocks feed
dopamine shots directly in to my brain. I crave seeing achievement unlocks, collectables,
metrics, stats, and all host of other things. Sure a game can tell me it’s cozy, or be all about
relaxing. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to abuse the turnip market to get more bells than I
need. So when a game like Wanderstop comes along and tells me that there isn’t really a set
list of activities I need to do, that I’m free to take every task that comes along at my own
speed. That speed is of course going to be breakneck baby. Those tasks aren’t going to
know what hit them. Those weeds? Cut. That Tea? Made. Those Shelfs? Stocked. That hole
inside me? Unfilled… Ohhh.
And that’s the point. Wanderstop is a game about burnout that acts as a sort of, rest spot. It’s
a safety game. I used to play games as a form of escapism back in the day, but this is a
game that embodies escapism. It’s not forcing you to take a breath, you can complete all
your tasks like a squirrel on Adderall if that’s your desire. It’s just giving you a safe haven
where you don’t NEED to do that. You can take that breath in your own time. A rest stop on
the road of relentlessness.
There was a moment a few hours in after I’d knocked off all the tasks on my own personal
checklist. Where something happened that rendered everything I had done for naught. My
initial reaction was frustration. When the game then told me, that all things are temporary
and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them… I doubled down on my frustration.
The game is honest in its approach. In a way that if you pay too much attention you’ll start to
think, I don’t like this it’s getting a bit real in here. You’re told that temporary delights are still
worth indulging in. That you may not get a resolution to everyone else’s story. Even at the
very end of the game, I was given the option to continue decorating before I rolled credits. To
which Alta asks, what’s the point… Only to be met with yet more kindness and soft words
about choice, change, freedom, and options.
These aren’t new ideas. This isn’t some shining light from the heavens ordaining us with
revolutionary gospel about how we don’t need to work so hard and oh yeah why didn’t I ever
think of that. It’s refreshing though to have a game take this approach and back it up with the
message. The difference between knowing someone loves you, and hearing them SAY they
love you. It hits you differently.
And Wanderstop definitely hit me differently. Even now after it’s done I still can’t tell how
much I liked it, simply because I never managed to fully let go of that stress. There were
moments, fleeting glimpses of rest shared between Alta and Myself. For the rest of it though
both of us refused to let go of our friction. I’d pre-plan all the tea I needed to make, stock up
on seeds and flowers, and give Boro dismissive sarcasm whenever he talked to me because
he was slowing me down. You can choose to have Alta go along with Boro’s plan for rest.
You can embrace it, or you can have her fight it every chance you get. That this is temporary,
you’re leaving as soon as you can. You’ve got work to be doing. Of course, you could also
just stop trying to snap yourself in have with stress and just make a damn good cup of tea.
There’s some fun pieces in Wanderstop, making a cup of tea containing all manner of chaos
and getting Boro to drink it just to watch his reaction kept me entertained far longer than it
should. You could also make tea for the customers, decorate the shop, plant flowers, clean
up the gardens. Find trinkets hidden around. None of these systems are exceptionally deep
or complex. I could complain about this, how things are pretty surface level… But I can’t tell if
that’s by intention or not, because it fits the overall message so well I’m not sure if I’m filling
in a blank or the game is saying it outright. The Wanderstop tea shop is meant to be a
respite. You can’t recover and relax if you’re learning all of these new systems, juggling all of
this information and helping a million other fight their own quests. It’s a light game by design.
That’s the message at the core here. It’s hard to slow down, you can feel like something is
wrong with you or that you’re broken. But it’s ok. You’re allowed to take a breath, you’re not
broken… You’re tired. It would be easy to just take this on the surface as another cozy game,
but the message shouldn’t be overlooked, even if you’re not as big a fan of the cozy.
There’s more than a few flaws to find in Wanderstop, but most of them feel like they’re part of
the message so it’s just going to be how much they infuriate you. Decoration and collection
is temporary. You’re seeing glimpses of others lives, but not the whole questline. Some will
go unresolved. If you’re the kind of person who will be annoyed by that, then you might want
to hold off… Or dive in, Wanderstop is trying to tell you something about the fact that it
annoys you. Stupid game, making me think about myself and be all introspective and stuff.
Wanderstop currently will set you back £18 or $22. Our playthrough ended up being just
under a relaxing 10 hours which could have been pushed out a few more if I’d managed to
slow down, during that time we collected all of the 11 total achievements. It feels like they’re
given out during the story, again, reducing stress and just allowing you to relax before
moving on to the next achievement grindfest.
I don’t really like it when a game makes me look inwards, but that’s because I don’t like what
I see. That’s not Wanderstops fault though. It’s just trying to help. A light, cozy, stress free
rest stop. A game that’s telling you it’s ok to not be ok. Just asking how we’re doing, while we
self reflect about truths, and the lies we tell ourselves. It’s alright if you’re not quite ready for
that yet though. Just pour a cup of tea, and take your time…
