Much ‘A-Brew’ about nothing (New Side Quest! #3)

Game Played: Wonderstop (2025)

FULL SPOILERS for Wonderstop as I can’t convey my feelings without touching upon

the full gameplay mechanics and storyline

Coming from the creator of The Stanley Parable and The Beginners Guide, many thought there would be some sort of meta level shenanigans hidden midway through the game. Wanderstop was marketed as a narrative cosy esque game – a far cry from the developer’s previous works. Of course developers can branch out but this seemed almost too suspicious of a pivot. Turns out there actually isn’t any and the meta elements are more in the way that the characters journey mimics that of everyday people – the concept of Burnout.

You play as Alta, a young warrior who for years has gone unbeaten. Her entire life is combat. She eat, sleeps and breathes combat. Her world comes crumbling down when she loses not one but two fights in a row. Ego and self-worth in tatters, she ventures into a forest at the end of the world to find a legendary swordswoman who can help train her. Dwelling on what happened, first her sword becomes too heavy to lift and next her body fails her. She awakens at Wanderstop, a tea shop in a clearing ran by a big joyous man by the name of Boro.

The core loop of the game is making tea, and to do so you interact with a marvellous invention in the main building in the clearing. Tea is made by pouring water into the large vial, boiling it, transferring it to the next vial, throwing the ingredients in, transferring it to the dispenser and finally pouring it. It’s a wee bit cumbersome and the process rarely differs from the same steps but I suppose it’s enjoyable enough to not be a pain by the end of the playthrough.

Making tea requires resources collected from around the clearing. You never have to worry about managing water supply, the heat or cleaning the machine – only gather the tea leaves and flavours. Tea bushes grow randomly on the outskirts of the clearing whereas seeds are used to grow the various fruits for flavour. There are four types of seed in differing availability per chapter and they can be used to grow fruit of the same colour or a number of variants. Things don’t get too complicated, you’re only ever mixing two types. The game is also generous enough to let you grow the plants anywhere thanks to the hidden hexagonal grid it operates on.

With the technical out of the way, what do you do? Well, you make Tea and relax. The game is very insistent that there is no pressure to do anything. Asking Boro what to do next, he simply replies anything you want. This is nice in theory but doesn’t really work. You have plenty of side tasks to engage with – sweeping leaves, cutting brambles, returning lost packages. These are all fine in an idle busy work way but since the game is split into chapters rather than an ongoing Stardew Valley/Animal Crossing, all your progress resets. This is fine as its low commitment low cost low reward but then why do it at all? Decorating the hanging garden and putting pictures in the frames around the shop do persist through chapters but I didn’t feel much motivation to do it. Finally Alta can sit at any of the benches around Wanderstop and chill, if you have a cup of tea you’ll get a small narration about her life, with different flavour teas offering different stories.

My key problem is that the game is about relaxing, taking things slow and chill but doesn’t reflect that. Playing a video game itself is a chill time for most people but that chill comes from actively playing. Having Alta sit at a bench and relax is fine and all but I’m not relaxing, I’m just wasting my free time and spiking the electricity bill. Alta’s relaxing and the players relaxing seem to run counter to each other. That also brings us back to the core loop of making tea – customers will visit

Wonderstop and request certain types of tea. There’s no pressure to serve these people nor do you have to make the exact tea they want at times. That’s pretty chill but again the problem arises that while there is no inherent rush, you cannot progress without serving these customers. Many story beats are related to them so they’re pretty integral to the story. I wish the game around more with this idea, letting some people leave if you didn’t see them fast enough for example. I suppose the issue there is that it’s not very chill having to worry about keeping up with people. The game also operates on a weird system - I don’t know if there’s hidden triggers or it’s based on time but eventually the world becomes silent and customers will no longer talk to Alta, signifying it’s time to move on to the next chapter. Sometimes this happens when you are mid request. I’ve not tested it but I assume it only happens with non-story NPC’s but again more flexibility would work.

I will say that the NPC designs are all stellar, each unique and vibrant with their own style, they all look like they came from different tales but it all works by nature of the Wonderstop. The fact that the stories these people tell get left hanging once they leave the clearing is also something I enjoy. Like ships in the night, you don’t get to see the end of their journeys. Choosing not to engage with these stories would also have been interesting too, tying into the self-care of the burnout story – focusing on getting better yourself before solving the problems of every stranger.

I’ve gone over how the gameplay loop doesn’t seem to fit in with the narrative but then even the narrative itself takes a turn that I think both ruins and overcomplicates. Around midway through – the narrative bridge between chapters 2 and 3, it’s revealed that Alta did reach the Swordswoman in the Woods originally but when she refused to help, Alta lashed out and injured her. The original run we see was Alta blocking the event from her memory. I understand the idea that people suffering burnout can lash out, especially a swordfighter in this context, but having such a literal version of guilt accompany the idea of burnout is strange. Burnout based guilt should be from not doing the thing that caused the crash, not necessarily an altercation resulting from the stress. That is more of a nitpick and preference than an objective criticism but it compounds later on. The issue is made more complicated with the presence of a Golden Alta. Galta as I’ll call her appears on Alta’s runs through the forest encouraging her to keep going no matter what. It’s Galta that Alta believes hurt the swordswoman, being a possessed version or alternate reality version of herself. I suppose it works well enough, Galta is the ‘Ideal’ form, the perfect version of Alta. In her burnout, Galta may as well be a different person. When she is removed from Alta, she is easy to blame for actions that aren’t her own, or so Alta believes.

So why have I brought all of this up, this longwinded explanation of story beats that I sum up as okay and perfectly reasonable. It’s because in Chapter 5, the final chapter of the game, we see an 11th hour addition to the story that complicates things beyond what the game can handle.

One of the guests is a little girl by the name of Monster. She starts off as a bratty child, ignoring Alta and being rude, only opening up when she finds out Alta used to be a fighter. She tells that her ‘Stupidity’ drove away friends and family but if she’s a fighter she won’t care. This leads to Monster stealing Alta’s sword and also becoming a monster which is different to the GMonster she has?? Why is the sword changing Monster? Why does it have power, why does it effect Monster? Honestly at this point I was kind of clocking out of the story given the hoops I was having to jump through. None of this is relevant in the end either.

I suppose my issue is not that I don’t understand the game because I do and can see for and against points for all my criticisms. I just disagree with a lot of the design choices made for the game. In the end, I don’t think it’s an issue I’ll be able to settle over tea.