Wanderstop

Wanderstop was provided by Annapurna Interactive for review. Thank you!

If you're looking for a relaxing game that still manages to have a decent amount of depth in its gameplay, then Wanderstop might just be the game for you. I was full of a cold when reviewing this game, and it was the perfect game to play when I'm not feeling my best, with no stress and no time limits, you just grow plants, make tea, and enjoy some silly antics.

In case you aren't aware, Wanderstop follows the story of a successful fighter named Alta who... Well, isn't so successful right now. In her quest to regain her fighting prowess, she ventures into the forest to find a fabled trainer. However, she ends up passing out and being rescued by Boro, a kindly tea shop owner who suggests she take a break from her quest to be the best fighter, and instead help him run his tea shop. Thus begins Wanderstop, a tale about Alta's change as a person.

The game, at its heart, is a "Farming Sim," requiring you to grow the ingredients for your tea. However, it isn't just straight-up farming on a grid. Instead, you have to grow certain seeds in certain patterns in order to get the ingredients you want. This adds a neat level of depth to the mechanics as you explore and see what different combinations end up growing.

Once you've grown and harvested your ingredients, it's time to make the tea! Various characters will show up at the tea shop and request different types of tea, sometimes in a straightforward order, sometimes in a more cryptic manner. It's up to you to determine what kind of tea they request. But making tea isn't as straightforward as pressing a button. You'll have to navigate around a rather Rube-Goldberg-like tea-making machine, filling it with water, heating it, adding the tea and ingredients for the specific type of tea you need to make, and finally pouring it into a cup.

This is just another layer of depth to what could have been a simple process, and I'm here for it. The requests for tea made by customers didn't appear to be time-limited, and you are free to fulfill their requests when you can get around to them. It doesn't mean you can shut off your brain entirely, as you still need to plant crops in the right order to get your ingredients, and the tea-making process does require some attention, but none of it feels pressured or stressful. Wanderstop strikes a great balance between having enough depth in its gameplay and not causing an overload for the player.

The characters you meet are also well-written. They air on the "cheesy" side, but not as far as to make you cringe. Some of the dialogue is funny and comical, and the dynamic between Alta (the protagonist) and Boro (the tea shop owner) is quite sweet, with her being very serious and Boro being the most laid-back individual you can imagine.

Wanderstop presents itself well as a game in the fantasy realm. While it's fairly grounded in its mechanics, there's still that air of whimsy in the world design, especially the characters that you'll encounter with their zany personalities. The stylized world with brightly colored trees and the art style that makes you think of a fantasy realm blend well with the cozy yet crazy Wanderstop tea shop.

Not only that, as you progress the story and Alta's journey continues, the somewhat small playing area you get to inhabit changes, with new structures, different crops, new customers, and more, adding to the variety of the game.

The only issues I felt I had with the game were a couple of bugs that resulted in customers sitting on thin air, which wasn't a huge deal. Also, when watering/harvesting crops, the game likes you to be pretty accurate in where you're looking and doesn't always let you interact, meaning you have to walk around the plant a bit to get it to do what you want.

All of this makes Wanderstop the perfect game to relax with. If you aren't feeling your best or just want a game that lets you wind down at the end of the day, it should definitely have a place in your library.

Wanderstop - Steam Deck Performance

Wanderstop works great with controllers, and it also supports the Steam Deck's 1280x800 resolution, so we don't have to worry about black borders.

When it comes to the actual performance of the game, it defaults to Very High, or it did for me, so we'll need to adjust the settings a little. I've got 2 presets for you today.

Battery Life - 30 FPS

If you want your stay at Wanderstop to last as long as possible, these are your settings. Drop all the settings to "Medium" except Texture Detail, which can again remain on "Very High." Apply a 30 FPS limit in SteamOS and a 10W TDP Limit.

You should be seeing a stable 30 FPS experience. The game doesn't look as good as it does on the quality settings below, losing some lighting and shadow quality, but we've lowered that power draw down to 11W-13W, and temperatures are around 55C-60C. This means we can expect a battery life of around 4 hours on the Steam Deck OLED and about 3 hours on the LCD.

Quality Settings - 30 FPS

If you want the game to look as good as it can on the Steam Deck, turn all the settings to "High" except for Texture Detail, which you can leave on "Very High." Then, apply a 30 FPS limit in SteamOS and no TDP Limit.

With these settings, the game should hold a stable 30 FPS and look pretty good while doing it, too. Power draw is high, however, ranging from 14W to 19W, and temperatures are around 55C to 65C. Expect to get around 3 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 2 hours from an LCD model.

Accessibility:

All dialogue in the game is subtitled and has adjustable font sizes. A dyslexia-friendly font can be enabled, colorblind filters are available, and a motion sickness dot stays in the center of the screen for you to focus on. There is also cloud save support if you are switching devices.

Conclusion:

Wanderstop is delightfully relaxing. The story about Alta and her life contains some serious notes, but that doesn't change the fact that this is one of the most enjoyable "cozy" games I've played in a while. The intricacies of making tea and interacting with your customers are interesting and engaging, and I'm glad I got the chance to have this experience.

To top it all off, the game runs great on the Steam Deck. You can adjust the graphics to aim for visual quality or battery life, the controls work perfectly well, and the Deck's native resolution is supported.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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