You’re no good to the fight if you can’t even currently take the time to look after yourself.

I don’t love ‘cozy’ games all that much. I don’t mean to say I don’t like many of the games that often get this label. Your Stardew Valleys or Unpacking; are incredible. Still, there’s something about a lot of other cozy games’ devotion to having every rough edge sanded off. To wrap the entire experience in bubble wrap and false positivity. I’m not saying these games aren’t good for turning your brain off in these dark times (I’m a trans woman, you’re preaching to the choir), but they’re often always missing substance. They’re a label first and meaningful title second. Please consider all of this when I tell you that I adored the self-described cozy tea-making game Wanderstop. From the writing chops behind Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide) and Karla Zimonja (Gone Home and Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den), this thoughtful narrative experience means business.

Wanderstop stars Alta, a warrior who has pushed herself to her absolute limit in a fight to better herself every day. Her routine is to wake up, eat, train, get into tournaments and fights, sleep and repeat. This reaches a tipping point when a new rival comes and topples her rule in a tournament. Feeling listless, she seeks a legend to help train her up again in a forest… only to reach her breaking point, collapsing and finding herself in a clearing that’s home to a tea-making shop. That shop is where the game gets its namesake: Wanderstop. Unable to escape the clearing and start fighting again, she must learn to take the time to heal, becoming familiar with the art of making and drinking tea. She’s not useful in a fight right now. She must stop. Slow down. Rest. Existing as a trans person in the kind of world I’m in right now, it’s a painfully timely and real game experience I needed.

This debut from the newly found studio Ivy Road is an incredibly bespoke experience. The interior feels like a tapestry, home to places to sit about and drink tea, and picture frames where you can place photos and memories. A library will fill with books you collect throughout your time with the game. Shelves upon shelves where you can store trinkets you find in the clearing or excess fruit seeds for teas. There’s a giant series of pots and beakers for brewing water and the tea itself in the building’s centre, requiring you to fan flames to heat water and rotate around its bizarre setup with a tall ladder. As you’re brewing and transferring tea between containers, you’re watching the liquid travel through labyrinths of glass tubing. On the back wall, there’s a bizarre sushi-train-esque series of carts that you can place dirty cups on to wash through a bubbly waterfall dishwasher, coming out through a heated room on the other end.

Take a step outside and wander the clearing and you’ll find similar artful and colourful touches. Shrubbery and trees will be painted obscure colours like pink and purples, almost resembling a soft cotton candy appearance. Adorable penguin-like creatures with monobrows that are home to the clearing will wander the land, picking up discarded teacups but also dastardly drinking leftover cups of tea if you’re not careful. Alta can sweep about tufts of leaves or trim weeds to uncover nicknacks and additional seeds. The crops and fruit trees for your tea will be almost alien with their unique choice of colour and appearance, often being hybrids of a pair of pre-existing fruits with a bizarre off-colour. You water these crops with a cute little watering can made to resemble a frog. Everything in Wanderstop’s visual design is artful and deliberate.

Thankfully these roadblocks aren’t all that often or aplenty and instead you can spend the rest of your time focusing on the stellar writing found within. When it was announced that Davey Wreden’s next narrative venture was going to be a cozy game, speculation started spinning about what exactly that would look like. Long-time fans of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide are likely going into this experience expecting the meta and quirky writing. Cozy game fans are probably just expecting, well, a cozy game. What Wanderstop actually does is satisfy both audiences. It gives the latter much-needed storytelling that is scarcely found in the space. For Wreden fans, it does the quirky Wreden thing by not being this fourth-wall-breaking meta piece of work but subverting expectations by making what the beloved games writer kind of always wanted to make, as evidenced by the smart writing and dialogue found within.

Of course, it’s not just Wreden penning this narrative beast. Where Davey Wreden and Karla Zimonja’s writing shines is in the character work. Alta is an incredibly strong and complex character. I can truly empathise with a person who puts so many expectations on themselves, especially when that same someone was born from nothing and is forced to make themselves something. It resonates even more when that same person has to slow down because I, like Wreden alludes to in marketing for the game, am also experiencing much of the same burnout that he and Alta are facing. It depicts the gusto of this situation by biting writing, elevated by rare instances where the game is voice-acted, with Kimberley Woods doing a particularly stellar job depicting Alta.

These voice-acted moments are special by being rare. In key moments of the narrative, you’ll see Alta’s psyche breaking and her self-doubt and anxiety kicking in. While this happens your heart is breaking hearing negative self-talk from our hero as harsh psychological music by Minecraft composer C418 (who’s usually known for softer more contemplative beats in the popular crafting game and well, in every other part of this) kicks in. When Alta takes a moment to herself and has tea on her own, she reflects on memories and tells an anecdote from her past. These brief moments feel like Wreden and Zimonja’s creative writing juices leaping from the screen, with a particularly early platitude being this moment where she reflects on her younger self looking down on and finding her father pathetic when he lost his job and they had to move away from their childhood home. It’s raw, real stuff that feels in character for Alta.

Of course, there’s brevity where you’re taken away from the dark moments found within Wanderstop. There’s plenty of room for that hilarious and incredibly witty writing you found in The Stanley Parable. My favourite example of this is in not just the character interactions but the surprisingly enthralling readable. A personal favourite is that you can regularly be posted books of a crime series starring a hero called Dirk Warhard. With each story you read the premise gets more ridiculous, with Dirk Warhard being a pompous, sexist ‘savant’ who stumbles his way through solving complex spy conspiracies as he seduces women across the globe. Its ridiculousness is reflected in the over-the-top writing of the short books themselves where Dirk is trying to overcome killing a guy with a forcefield around him by firing a million bullets at him. These books were always a joy to read and this hilarity amalgamated in a later book you receive by another author which is a post-mortem of the Dirk Warhard series, talking all about the male power fantasy and compulsory heterosexuality of the texts. A genuinely funny and unique way to go about worldbuilding.

Of course, Alta is nothing without the supporting cast and there are a lot of weird and wonderful individuals to meet and interact with that help provide laughs but leave the player questioning the laws of nature of the bizarre world Wanderstop is set in. Boro is the second-most main character you’ll meet, the owner of Wanderstop who is a bald and stocky guy who has a lot of innocence and charm to him, often speaking in an endearing broken English. There’s an early moment in the game where he tries to have a go at humour for what feels like the first time in his life, improving and brainstorming a joke as he’s telling it, often referring to you for advice on where to continue the bit. I’m paraphrasing but he’ll often say stuff to the effect of “Why don’t you go be having a tea?” when Alta shows moments of distress. Boro is an incredibly charming guy. Players alike will love Boro.

Each chapter brings new characters to help and get to know, in turn teaching life lessons to Alta. Gerald is a knight who wears a tie and visibly is wearing a collared shirt underneath, an everyday man who loves his son and has a formal job but also just clearly wants to be a knight. There’s the compelling Ren, a trans masculine character who is also a warrior akin to Alta but on another stage of their journey, confounded by how Alta can be resting right now. Nana is an old woman who despite Alta’s insistence she has no beef with her, strikes up a shopfront rivalry offering dodgy items for sale in exchange for non-existent ‘Nanabucks.’ There’s an adorable demon bat girl, a wise birdwoman, and an indescribable void-being that looks ripped from a black hole. All of Wanderstop’s patrons deliberately don’t follow a particular theme or seem consistently ripped from a specific era, making the mystery of the game’s world all the more enticing.

With all of this considered, Wanderstop is a refreshing mixup not just for the simulator or ‘cozy’ genre but for all of Wreden’s prior work. Sure, there will probably be people out there unimpressed by the auteur deciding to not quite continue the same beat they’re known for, but it’s worth it for the weird wonderful and reflective experience you get here. There’s no secret hook messing with the player’s mind, only a thoughtful and needed exploration of mental health and personal strength in a time in society that bloody well needs it.