I’ve got some mixed feelings on the “cozy” game genre these days. When I was first getting into the original Animal Crossing, it almost felt like a counterculture release. It was an antidote to action-packed video games that was wholly unique in tone and spirit. That success has only grown in recent years, turning cozy games into the same kind of industry it once felt like an answer to. More and more games feel like they’re following the same laid back playbook, and that can get old after a while.
Wanderstop could be the game to disrupt that pattern, or at least shake it up enough. The upcoming debut from Ivy Road, founded by indie veterans behind games like The Stanley Parable and Gone Home, sounds familiar on paper. It’s a tea shop simulator that has players planting their own ingredients and serving drinks to customers. If you love the genre, you’ve undoubtedly played something like it in the past few years. But there’s more to Wanderstop than meets the eye, at least based on what I experienced in a hands-on preview with its intriguing first hour.
The story begins by introducing Alta, a fierce warrior who prides herself on being an undefeatable beast. That is, until she’s defeated. A surprising series of losses sends her into a downward spiral, and that leads her stranded in the woods unable to lift her sword. She finds herself posted up at a local tea shop where she begrudgingly takes a job from Boro, the establishment’s kind-hearted owner.
That’s where the loop you might expect from a game like this comes into play. As Alta, my job is to make tea balls from harvested leaves, grow fruit-bearing plants, trim weeds, and fill orders for other wanderers who come to the clearing. I have a few tools to accomplish that, including a watering can that I need to occasionally fill up at pumps around the field surrounding the shop. It’s a charming little farming management loop, but one that already has some creative tricks up its sleeve.
Its most unique twist is its farming, which isn’t just as simple as placing a seed in the dirt. Instead, I need to plant multiple seeds in specific patterns to create the plants I want. Three blue seeds in a row creates a plant that produces more blue seeds. A blue seed sandwich between two pink ones produces a hybrid that grows both seeds. That same system extends to fruit plants, which are made by placing three seeds around a central one. Different color combinations create different fruits, making gardening more of a puzzle game. I spend a fair amount of time in the first hour discovering as many combos as I can and setting up a reliable system of seeds and fruits ready to be harvested at a moment’s notice.
There’s another puzzle layer in tea making. When I get a customer’s order, they usually ask me for a drink that’ll have a certain effect, like something that’ll cure an ailment. I have to figure out what fruit I should use in my mix by consulting a field guide, which gives me some background on each fruit. It’s similar to the system found in Strange Horticulture, a flower shop management game that similarly tasks players with cracking research puzzles to correctly fulfill orders.
Actually making tea is a minigame of its own, as everything takes place in a massive contraption at the center of the shop. Using a moving ladder that can rotate around the device, I need to pull a rope to fill it with water, control a pump to heat it up, open a valve, drop ingredients in, and then pull a lever to drip the tea into a cup. It’s a simple series of minigames, but one that makes it feel like I’m actually concocting something.
While those are cute touches that make Wanderstop feel more active, it’s the writing that has me more intrigued. I’m not just serving tea to random, faceless customers. Rather, each person who comes to the shop has a full story that plays out in multi-step quests. My first patron is a demon hunter who initially refuses to actually order anything, infuriating Alta. After letting them wander around for a bit, they finally give me a tea order. Fulfilling that gets them to open up to me about what brought them to the clearing. My demon hunting pal is there to, well, hunt demons. The more I interact with them, the more of their story.
The other patron I mean is a knight who wants nothing more to impress his son (all while dealing with a witch’s curse that seems to be taking over his limbs). Both stories pack in quiet emotional moments with some legitimately funny gags. Alta’s especially a riot, delivering the dry wit of a barista who is both overly committed to the gig and over it entirely on day one of the job.
There’s much more to her story and that’s what I want to see more of at this point, especially since it’s unclear how complex the farming puzzle hook will really get based on the first hour. Wanderstop seems to be telling a story about burnout, as Alta struggles to regain her momentum after pushing herself too hard at the peak of her fighting career. I get the sense that it’s all building towards a life lesson about learning when to slow down and conserve your energy so that you can fight again at full strength one day. If it can stick that landing while escalating its puzzle hooks, Wanderstop could brew up a cozy game that’s invested in its life lessons just as much as its pastel colors.
Wanderstop launches on March 11 for PS5 and PC.
