Brewing Tea in a Cozy Game Can Be Tiring
Wanderstop, a chill but cheeky experience with characters who exude dry humor, appears to be about harvesting and making tea. But it is also full of musings about fatigue and burnout. In other words, is the daily grind worth the harm it can do to the psyche?
Cozy games like Animal Crossing, Nintendo's funny animal series, became extra popular during the stress of the coronavirus pandemic, and the new studio Ivy Road is trying to change the nature of the genre.
In Wanderstop, you're not just tending your garden in a Voltaire sense. You're trying to understand, relate to and fix a character who is on the verge of a breakdown — or has already had one. It's a cautionary tale for those who toil too much and too hard.
Alta, a female warrior, has lost her mojo by laboring too strenuously to make it to the top. Exhausted, she faints in the forest. She can no longer even lift her huge sword to fight.
To clear her mind, Alta begins managing a far-flung tea cafe. Creating the steamy brews requires dutifully ascending a wooden ladder to release water into an extravagant tea machine. With a bellows, she stokes the fire 30 or so times until the water boils. Then, with a neatly animated kick, she opens a giant kettle to toss in tea and fanciful ingredients. Brilliantly rendered, the device recalls Willy Wonka's Great Gum Machine.
Alta, with a mahogany-colored apron and little patience for customers, has long followed the strict, militarized rules of elite competition. But here, there are no timed objectives, just an anything-goes attitude.
Nonetheless, the argumentative Alta remains drained. Boro, the portly, baldheaded tea master, proclaims, 'What a surprise that a person pushing themselves to the brink of exhaustion would collapse!' His Yoda-like philosophy comes off as overwhelmingly needling rather than meaningful, his concern mired by condescension.
Alta is easily addled and stressed. Beyond her desire to return to the top fighter ranks, she carries a heavy guilt regarding her father. Powerless, she feels lazy, stupid, angry and a failure, to use her words. There's a meta aspect to these feelings. Davey Wreden, the game's director, felt similarly after working for too many hours on versions of The Stanley Parable (2013), which became so popular that it was an inspiration for 'Severance.'
The art here is admirable. Lush garden acres of smudgy colors surround the cafe, inviting contemplation. Collectible tea grows on its outskirts, and there is a small temple featuring a being's somehow-soothing oval head. Hues change from variations of purple and green amid running brooks to pink and white. It's all suitable for sitting on a bench, watching the world go by while plump and playful pluffins waddle near their coop.
Alta and her customers eventually offer moments of revelation. But they're too few and far between. A goofy knight (with a cursed foot that emanates purple mist) who yearns to be thought of as cool by his son, as someone to be respected, is a compelling enough story beat that comes too late.
It was difficult to sympathize with the characters' tales of despair, however witty. The wry, eccentric humor that worked well in the sterile office setting of The Stanley Parable seemed at odds with this world of breezy bucolic environments and magical hybrid teas.
Working in the farm-like setting and making tea wasn't always peaceful. Commanding exclamation points appeared over customer heads when they required tea or wanted to make a minor point. It made me believe I needed to jump to customer needs. I also wondered how, if Alta was physically and mentally beaten down, she could cut down a lawn's worth of thorny bramble snarls with the caffeinated speed of Sonic the Hedgehog.
By the time those around me began to open up and become nicer, I didn't want to engage anymore. The point was to learn that working at one's own pace is rewarded with individual enlightenment, cup by cup. But I felt more like a therapist, trying to be patient with my patients as I urged them to spill the tea.
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