"Wanderstop" Review

Publisher: Annapurna Interactive

Developer: Ivy Road

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S

In 2013, an indie game called The Stanley Parable rocked the world with its narrative and exploration of choice in gaming. Known primarily for its sense of humor, The Stanley Parable has endured in the hearts of many to this day. In 2015, Davey Wreden, one of The Stanley Parable's two developers, came out with The Beginner's Guide. This title was more of a character piece about a self-insert version of Wreden finding meaning in showing people his developer friend's work. Rather than focusing on comedy, The Beginner's Guide maintained a melancholic feel with almost pitiable undertones. Now, in 2025, Wreden is back under the umbrella of a development studio called "Ivy Road," this time with a game unlike anything he's ever done before...for better or worse, depending on who you ask. That game is Wanderstop, which is a "cozy" game. I'm here today to tell you why it's a worthy entry in the Wreden portfolio, even if it's for different reasons than one might expect.

In Wanderstop, you are Alta: a world-renowned arena fighter who has suddenly found herself unable to fight in any meaningful way after suffering an unexpected, humiliating loss for the first time in her life. Physically, she's fine, but there's something broken in her confidence that she has been having trouble healing. At the start of the game, we see Alta dragging her sword through a forest said to be the home of a legendary fighter who might be able to help her out of her rut. But she doesn't get far, as the sword becomes heavier and heavier, and eventually she loses consciousness. When she awakes, she finds herself on a bench in the clearing of the titular Wanderstop: a tea shop seemingly located in a pocket of the woods where time is more of a suggestion than anything else. Beside her on this bench is a delightful, rotund, and effortlessly patient man named Boro. Boro is Wanderstop's owner, and after offering our heroine a cup of tea, he suggests that she try her hand at running the shop in order to rejuvenate before heading back into the forest. So, Alta begrudgingly takes that advice and begins a temporary new life centered around beverages rather than blood. As she works through various "seasons," she learns more about herself and the struggles she's facing through interactions with a cast of colorful characters that stop by the shop every now and again. As one might expect from this developer, the writing and the occasional humor is mostly solid, and the characters, while not the most three-dimensional folks of all time, are all delightful. Take Gerry, the doting dad who has set out to become a knight because he thinks it'll make his teenage son think he's cool, for example. The man isn't cool and he never will be. He's still wearing his tie on the outside of the armor. But you can't help but root for the guy! That's an early example, but the cast is fairly strong throughout save for one or two stragglers towards the end. 

Now, with all that said, I'd like to point out something Wanderstop has going for it that most "cozy" games don't: it's clearly made for adults. That isn't to say there's swearing every other word or people getting their heads chopped off or massive orgies going on while the tea brews. Rather, despite its colorful palette and relaxing ambiance, it seems to understand the kinds of pressures that adults are under and chooses to speak to those pressures. Alta is, as previously stated, an arena fighter, which none of us can say we are. But one of the big draws of the profession for Alta is the easily quantifiable sense of control that comes with the territory, and one of the big stressors of not being able to perform is the loss of that sense of control. We may not be able to identify with the realities of blood sport (hopefully), but we can all for sure relate to the kinds of anxiety that come with our sense of control being taken away. So, Wanderstop looks to give that kind of thing back, for example. I hope that helps explain what I mean when I say the game is clearly made for adults. 

One other thing I'd like to (briefly) point out is that Wanderstop shows there's room in the gaming world for therapy-informed stories and writing...namely far away from Dragon Age, but I do mean it in spite of that joke. In a relaxed environment like this that treats adults like adults, little reminders to focus on what's within our control are actually quite soothing. 

As for the gameplay, I'd say there's probably a bit more to it than you might expect from a cozy game. All you're really doing is making tea and serving it to customers, but it's a pretty analog process. 

In terms of prep work, you'll start by going out into the clearing with a pick'a'nick basket to gather tea leaves, putting those leaves in a special dryer, and waiting a little bit for the dryer to turn those leaves into tea balls. When you have a tea ball, you'll go to the giant tea machine in the center of the shop and climb up the ladder. You'll then pull a cord to fill a vat with as much water as you'd like, climb down a bit to use the bellows and boil the water, slide the ladder over a bit to kick a valve to transfer the water to a mixing pot, slide the ladder over a bit to throw in the tea ball and whatever other ingredients are required for an order, slide the ladder over a bit to kick a valve to transfer the freshly brewed tea into the serving pot, climb down the ladder, fetch a cup, put the cup under the serving spigot, pour the tea, then bring it to the customer. If that all sounds involved, it's not. Just analog. It becomes muscle memory after one time, and the routine becomes comforting if for no reason other than it's hard to become frustrated when you're sliding around a giant machine on a ladder to quickly make something. I've also made this out to be a bit more rigid than it is. You aren't going to grab tea leaves with every cup requested (unless you want to), for example. Time isn't any concern, so you'll likely go out and get all the leaves you need to fill all the dryers and thus have all of your tea balls ready to go before anything else. You can also get the cup and place it under the spigot at any point, not just at the end. So, there's a method to the madness, but it isn't as rigid as I might've made it sound. 

If an order requires other ingredients, you'll need to do some gardening. This, like the brewing, is a quick process. There are four colors of seeds, and planting these in different combinations and different layouts produces various fruits. Each fruit has a specific taste or side effect, and occasionally you'll have to read between the lines of an order to figure out which fruit will give the customer the effect they want, but there's a big book in the library that will just give you the answer if you're desperate. In addition, you have an instantly accessible field guide at your disposal with a list of every fruit, their effects, and the specific planting parameters required to produce them. There's no timer involved like you might have in other games with farming elements...just plant, water, grab, and you're golden! Orders do get a bit more complicated than this as time goes on, but the buildup is gradual enough that I don't think it'll be much of an issue for most. 

I've been saying that time isn't a concern, and I don't blame you if you don't believe me. In what universe does serving customers not come with a major time management factor, after all? But in Wanderstop, everybody has seemingly infinite patience, and there's no penalty for getting an order wrong either. So you have your tasks, but the focus is on the process, not the deliverables. And if you're anything like me, that's going to be a little hard to go along with. I'm a 100% completion and major efficiency kind of guy when it comes to games like this, so there were many times when I had to heed the game's advice, take a breath, and make myself kick back a little bit. I'd go ham trying to fill up all the picture frames in the shop, complete my field guide, fill every plant pot, the list goes on, and I'd always have to remind myself that none of these things were the point...and you know what? Even though I had to consistently come back to that idea, I always succeeded in coming back to it. This is due in part to the fact that seemingly none of the trophies have anything to do with actually doing anything. Rather, it seems like trophies unlock in order after various timestamps in the game (one at half an hour played, another at 45 minutes, something like that). It's yet another reminder that existing in and enjoying the moment is the key focus here. 

All that's left to discuss is the technical side of things, and I'm happy to report that in terms of things like framerate, crashes, etc, Wanderstop is solid! There are, however, some issues that aren't bugs, per se, but oversights. A constant issue I had with the tea-serving process was the little rope you pull to fill a cup with the tea you've just brewed. It's unusually hard to position yourself in a way where the interaction icon comes up, so I had to struggle a little bit in order to grab the darn thing. What's more, if you need to pull it again right after the first pull because you didn't pour enough of the tea, the rope isn't always pullable right then and there. You'd think it would be since you were just pulling it and you haven't moved, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. Beyond this, when you're out in the clearing looking for tea leaves or mushrooms, you'll often have your camera view blocked by some of the trees you pass. That's hardly the biggest complaint in the world, as you can easily move the camera a little bit, but it seems to happen with every tree you pass. Finally, there was a moment where I moved a cup in an attempt to get one of the most complicated brews exactly right and had the unthinkable happen. When I left the cup on a nearby table to brew the next batch to use as the next half of that cup's contents, I came back to that table to find that the tea inside was gone. This was a complicated brew, as I mentioned...and at this point, I got more than a little frustrated. I don't know if cups just automatically reset when a new brew is made if they aren't directly under the spigot or if I just had a freak accident, but I really shouldn't have experienced something that frustrating in a game like this. Other than these complaints, you can hardly go wrong with Wanderstop. The animations are full of life, the color palette is consistently pleasing, and C418's soundtrack could easily be mistaken for an in-his-prime Austin Wintory score. 

Folks, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't yet heard of Wanderstop. I certainly hadn't until I was browsing the playstation store one day, despite its pedigree. It isn't a genre-defining narrative achievement like The Stanley Parable or The Beginner's Guide. It isn't going to set the world on fire in any way. But it doesn't need to. Nothing needs to, and this game serves as an excellent reminder of that. So if you're like many people on this planet and you're fed up with living in a culture obsessed with productivity and ambition, I think you'll find the Wanderstop experience an experience worth having. 

Let us review

Techincal concerns - 0.5

The final score for Wanderstop is...

9.5/10 - Near Masterpiece

Excellent work, Ivy Road, excellent work!