Developed by Ivy Road and published by Annapurna Interactive, Wanderstop is the best and worst thing I could have played. In a narrative-centric, cozy game, your goal is to stop, make tea, and think about what you need to thrive. More importantly, it’s about what you do when doing everything right still results in failing.
The game’s title takes wanderlust and asks the player to understand that constantly moving forward doesn’t mean you’re any closer to achieving your goal. Here, you’re invited to stop. In it, you play as a fallen fighter named Alta, whose sword becomes too heavy to wield. She’s a competitor, a fighter, and fighting is all she’s ever known.
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In the game’s opening, we hear Alta explain why she fights. Ultimately, it’s for control. When you fight and are knocked down, you can get back up, and you train harder and faster. You can get control back when you do everything right. Alta gets stronger, gets faster, and becomes undefeated. The pain she experiences from losing drives her, and she achieves her goal. Alta is a hero. Then she loses.
Despite doing every single thing right, the loss breaks her spirit. This is a failure. She is not good enough. And if she can find a mysterious master, she can do it again. She can be better. Sword in hand, Alta takes off into the forest. She runs and runs, and the sword gets heavier.
The game lets you put down the sword or keep running with it. If you’re like me and you hold onto it, you’re forced to drop it. Willpower won’t get you through the weight. She drops the sword and continues running. Again, the game gives you the chance to stop. And, if you’re like me, you decide to keep going. And then you pass out.
Wanderstop is a direct attack on the psyche in the kindest of ways.
Wanderstop isn’t subtle with its critique of the world; it’s a direct attack, which I mean in the kindest way. The game forces you to engage with your inability to stop. It engages the player with that concept, especially those who don’t know what to do at rest. The game takes it a step further as well.
When you wake up from exhaustion, Boro is next to you. A large man with a larger smile and a kind demeanor tries to learn about you. As Alta, you can choose to be forthcoming about your goal to find the Master, or you can hide it and grunt and be silent. But it doesn’t matter. Boro is there, whether you know you need him or not. And so is his offer to make tea with him in his shop.
When you leave the bench and talk to Boro in his house, you can pick to start making tea or tell him you want to leave. If you tell him that you want to leave, he’ll show you where the exit back to the forest is. When I played a demo of the game at The Game Awards last December, I just said yes to making tea and got on with the game. This time, I didn’t.
Instead of helping Boro immediately, I made a run for it. I exited the area and went into the forest. Expectedly, the developer knew that some players would take this path. You run and run, and then you pass out again. Repeating the process you just went through, Boro is there, and this time, you tell him everything.
He leaves the door open for you to stay, but this is where it clicked that Boro has never told me what to do. Boro didn’t tell me what was best for me. He didn’t push me to stay. Boro just let me know he would be there. Resting at Boro’s Tea Shop is your decision, and making that decision to rest is a key first step to starting this game.
When you get into the game, it’s like other cozy games in that you manage a shop in a magical forest, tend to the land, do chores, and tend to the customers that pass through the forest. You brew tea and learn Boro’s craft, learning from the different travelers that pass through. Wanderstop also invests time in routine setting and managing your time, but nothing ever feels overwhelming. You’re just relaxing.
This isn’t so much a full preview that will break down mechanics and anything else. If anything, it’s an understanding that as I spend the next couple of weeks with the game, I’m letting myself be open to what it teaches.
The key to Wanderstop’s beautiful narrative is that Alta doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want to be docile, she doesn’t want to waste time, she wants to run and grow and redeem herself from her defeat. That’s the important part. As Alta, you know what she should be doing as your traditional hero. At the same time, Wanderstop pushes you to think about what happens if you don’t.
Since my first time with the game, I’ve been laid off. When the first game felt like an immediate story about recovering from burnout, it hit me differently. It connected with me, and I could directly see myself in Alta’s tenacity. Now? God. I see myself in Alta’s “failure.”
Alta is already an easily relatable protagonist.
I have been laid off twice, which, looking at my peers in tech and gaming, is a much lower number than they have. But regardless of how many times it happens, it always feels personal. The past week, I have been angrier than I have been sad. Angry at the situation, sure, but despite my husband’s comfort, I’m angry at myself. I keep telling myself that I did everything right. I grew, worked hard, and did what I was supposed to, but I was still lost.
Picking up the pieces of yourself after you’ve had your life blown up by a layoff is the most challenging thing I’ve done. You lose financial security. You lose your path. You pivot and take something you know you’re overqualified for, but you try to make it work. Since my first layoff, I have done just that. I did just that: pivoted, made strides, conquered mountains, and yet, it wasn’t enough, planting me immediately into Alta’s shoes.
This second time, I don’t know what to do. I did what was expected: I sent cover letters, redid my resume, and let the applications soar into inboxes. I didn’t sleep but for a sporadic three hours. I wrote cover letters, redid my resume into versions, and applied for jobs. That was day one. Like Alta, I kept pulling the sword. I just needed to work harder, be better, and be stronger. This week, the rejection emails started coming in, and I didn’t know what to do.
Wanderstop has met me at a transitional point in my life. One of these is where I need to pick up the obliterated identity that I built for myself while working at my job. I have to find my worth again. But maybe I can stop and make some tea first. Maybe I can sit and think. Maybe I can cry. Just maybe I can feel something other than anger and the need to fight. In Wanderstop, it isn’t fight or flight; it’s all about just living in one moment for one cup of tea, for one task, and then seeing what comes next.
I’m not very far into Wanderstop, and I don’t know how Alta will grow or how I will in the process of playing this Annapurna game. But for now, I’m gonna take a beat and just rest.
