I'd originally intended for this series to be a weekly thing I would do, but it turned out that I really over-expended myself on that first article (woke up way too early for that Nintendo Direct and stayed up way too late complaining about it). Fortunately, I've found some of that spark again (gotten a full night's sleep) and want to use it to sing some praise about a game I quite like: Wanderstop. Specifically, I want to do a dissection of some of its gameplay mechanics and how they interact harmoniously with the game's theme of change. Given the territory I'd like to give a mild spoiler warning. I won't be diving deep into any specifics about the game's narrative or its characters, but like any good game I think it's worth going into blind if you can manage. At time of writing there's a free demo for the game on its Steam page that does a really good job communicating how the game feels, so there's zero negative consequence to giving it a whack.

Wanderstop is a cozy game centered around running a tea shop. Like many cozy games it is not especially difficult. Customer's saunter into the place and give a summary of the type of brew they want and you use your knowledge of all the different ingredients to create something that makes them happy. Towards the game's end they throw in some more abstract asks to test your creative puzzle-solving, but there's not any real brain-busters (even then there is a little book of hints to help you if you find a customer you can't crack). There is no time-pressure; customer's are infinitely patient and the player character, Alta, doesn't need to sleep every 15 minutes. There is no consequence for brewing the wrong cup of tea, aside from briefly disappointing an imaginary person and wasting some infinitely tea leaves. The game revels in this absence of difficulty, because what sets it apart from its contemporaries is the game's emphasis on its environment.

See, the tea shop starts to feel a lot like a home, if you let it. There are plant pots dotted about the place that you can store your favourite flowers in. Step outside and you can plant those same flowers in any unoccupied space. Grab a broom and some hedge-clippers and you can do some maintenance work around the forest clearing surrounding the shop. While doing your chores you may stumble across collectible trinkets and ornate tea cups that you can use to really make the shop feel like your own. Grab the camera and hang up some pictures of you and those adorable little penguin creatures (Pluffins). If you're feeling extra adventurous, serve them some tea while your at it, and maybe have some yourself to help you gather your thoughts. It's a trait the game shares with the presently in development Voices of the Void, that there is plenty of things you can do to tailor your environment to your liking, but no motivation to do so other than it's what you wanted to do. The tea still gets served, no matter how silly or serious the vessel. There are no points for style, and time spent ogling the pretty colors is time spent not beating the game. The tea shop is offered to you for your enjoyment, but you have to want to put the time in.

This all plays in nicely to the game's narrative. Alta finds herself at odds with the tea shop because she views it as an obstacle, something which prevents her from working herself to the bone trying to achieve the thing she is supposed to be doing. To her, being stuck there is an unwanted intermission and the game spends much of its time unraveling this conflict, among others (Alta is too interesting a character to fully appreciate in so few words). An aspect of this unraveling is that Alta is forced to learn how to be patient, to enjoy the life going on around her. In this way, Alta and the player are being told the same thing: Wanderstop is not something you should rush to the end of. You are meant to enjoy it not beat it.

An interesting extra layer on top of this is that if you have taken the time to immerse yourself into the clearing and spent a couple of hours tweaking the place to your exact specifications then you will soon come to learn that none of those tweaks are permanent. Several times throughout the course of the game the clearing will change, alongside almost everything contained within. The lights, the colors, the flowers you can grow, the customers you serve are all altered. All your whimsical knick-knacks and novelty mugs are lost. This too is a message from the game: things are meant to change, they will change, and you must find peace with this. The loss of everything you have made so far is balanced with the offer of new opportunity. Different ingredients means new types of teas can be brewed, new characters means there's new stories to explore, the way structures get altered and rearranged means you can decorate in new ways you couldn't before, see new things you didn't before. And if nothing else, you retain the memories of the clearing's past, both in that your human brain remembers things and in that the photos you place on the wall stick around. Also, if you're lucky you'll get a follow-up visit with a character you saw before.

This is all true of Wanderstop, but it is also true of our lives. We spend our days building things that will one day decay, saying things that will one day be forgotten, and loving people that will one day leave our lives forever. Nothing is permanent, but that doesn't have to mean that nothing matters. A lot of stuff happens in the lifetime of a person. Much of that stuff is forced upon us, but there's also a lot of it that is not. You can choose to seize those moments of opportunity, mold the memories that will be left behind, and embrace change. Or you can choose to rush through them, chasing some abstract concept of "winning", of being the best there ever was, never stopping for a moment to steep in the wonder that surrounds you and fighting in vain against inevitability. From my perspective we have the rest of our lives ahead of us. So why not sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy it?

-JumpyWord | He/Him

Note: I actually don't much care for tea as a beverage (based on the limited sample I've tried). I'm more into unflavored carbonated water at the moment, but that wouldn't really mesh with the themeing of the last paragraph. :3