Alta is a fighter. She’s trained her whole life to be the very best, forging a bloody path through a sea of enemies. As soon as she becomes the best… well, someone else soon comes along, and it turns out that now they’re the best. Video games don’t tend to spend much time on the psychological state of a warrior who’s lost everything, but Wanderstop deals in the spiral of self-loathing and failure that Alta suffers, showcasing her battle with the mental and physical pain she’s put herself through, and continues to do so.
I’m not a doctor, but I know Alta is suffering from burnout. Her continual struggle and failures have left her exhausted, and she’s fundamentally breaking down. At the opening of Wanderstop, she’s racing through the forest, searching for Master Winters, a legendary warrior turned trainer who Alta believes can make her the greatest warrior. But first, she needs to rest. She can’t keep running at this pace, leaving her sword behind in an effort to keep going, and eventually collapsing.
You wake on a bench, sat next to the cheerfully huge figure of Boro. Boro owns the Wanderstop, a café in the middle of the forest, and while he’s concerned for Alta’s wellbeing, he also seems to want a spot of free labour, asking her if she’ll help out around the place while she recovers. There’s little else to do – it would be an incredibly short game otherwise – so Alta sets about brewing tea, growing exotic plantlife, and rebuilding her self-esteem by focusing on her well-being. For anyone caught up in the daily grind, Wanderstop delivers a message that you’d do well to listen to.
The world of Wanderstop is very beautiful. Painted in gorgeous pink, purple and blue hues, it’s clearly been designed to produce calming and stress-free sensations from players, and It works. Accompanied by the beautiful piano-led soundtrack, which moves between plaintive and playful, Wanderstop is a gorgeous journey for the senses.
Alta has, like most of us, got herself into a series of unhealthy thought processes, not least that pain, brutality and an unceasing desire to be the best, will result in you becoming the best. Wanderstop deals with exhaustion, with alternatives, and ultimately, with being kinder to yourself. Boro is the voice of your friends, your family, and possibly your therapist, telling you to slow down, and it’s a message we all need to hear. Of course, Alta doesn’t want to hear it at first, so instead, you make tea.
The Wanderstop’s tea-making machine, is an immense contraption of cunning and complicated design. There’s no PG Tips or Yorkshire Tea-style tea bags, nor an electric heating element, so instead you have to do everything by hand. This means clambering up ladders, bashing levers, pumping bellows, and adding the right ingredients to create the perfect cup of tea.
Tea is an event, and so is the rest and relaxation that it can bring, so the unnecessarily complicated method of brewing up, plays into the idea that you should enjoy the little things, and that you can make a ritual out of anything. Your customers are an interesting bunch, and their specific needs will dictate what tea you make them, diving into your field guide for ingredients and their helpful qualities.
Wanderstop tells you that there are no specific rules to the way that you play the game. Other than serving tea to customers, which forms the central gameplay mechanic, you can potter about as much as you like, sweeping up leaves, growing magical plants or just drinking tea. Everyone loves drinking tea.
If you’re not brewing tea, Wanderstop goes all Animal Crossing, having you titivate the small area that surrounds the café. You sweep up fallen leaves, snip away brambles and weeds, and water your plants, before having a brew, and then putting a cup in the best dishwasher ever created. Seriously, it’s the best.
Wanderstop continues to plow its games-as-therapy through its 10-hour runtime, and I think its impact will depend on your own experiences with mental health, exhaustion and burnout. If you’ve been through these things, you’ll recognise yourself in Alta’s behaviour, and the tea-making and restful moments here feel like therapy.
Admittedly, it’s a gentle and easy-going form of therapy, but it’s therapy nonetheless. It can be difficult to see yourself in her actions and reactions, and I occasionally longed for Wanderstop just be a game about tea and beautiful foliage, rather than pain. There’s catharsis to those emotions though, and as she works through it, you learn or are reminded to be kinder to yourself. It’s proof once more that games are capable of being so much more than purely entertainment.
