Wanderstop

Burnout this, burnout that. Boro says he'd like to chat. He gives me tea and time to breathe, a little shop where minds can ease. The gameplay starts to drag a bit towards the end but Boro hands down steals the game for me. Do I want to be him or marry him? Yes.

Beautiful idea, but very poorly executed. This game became a chore for me after only 3.8 hours. The plant and inventory systems are frustrating and overly complicated at the start, and the recipes become unreasonably difficult without offering any real sense of accomplishment. For a game whose storyline is based on taking your time, there’s surprisingly little to do besides making tea. The storyline itself felt dull, and with the gameplay being more annoying than engaging, I couldn’t find a single reason to keep going. While there were some cute quotes here and there, they weren’t nearly enough to make up for the frustrating gameplay.

Wanderstop is not a game about resolution. It tells you as much itself. It is a game about change, both good and ill; about how even the beneficial parts of our psyches can have dangerous and lasting consequences; and about accepting uncertainty in the future and in yourself. To demand resolution from a game trying to teach you these things is perhaps an indicator that you are not ready for its lessons. I hope one day you will be, because Wanderstop is a very wise teacher.

Game descriptions are misleading and if I knew that it's not really a farming sim, but just a story with farming in place of a "next dialog" button, I'd never bought this game. I played demo, but in it there's not much to look at - as it has only beginning of the story and basic farming mechanics. Story got bigger, but farming pretty much didn't - just couple new seeds and that's it. It would be okay, but the whole steam page telling you about making tea and looking after the teashop. So, the "farming" part is missing, but what about making clearing pretty and taking time for it? Well, it was a sad experience. I'm okay with the slow pace and loosing some things (like puffing's stealings or a need to cut old plants), but loosing everything exept for the photos and books... Why do i even bother to do anything? I had a lovely cup with stars in the first chapter, but it disappeared and I couldn't find itever again. But if I'd manage to find it, spending hours and hours, i'd loose it again. Yes, I can make a photo of it, but there's too little spaces for them. Also, even while you basically don't have a timer to do things, the game itself tells you: "anything you do doesn't matter until you talk to npc or reset a clearing (in that case it doesn't matter because it will disappear)". Exploration doesn't matter either - there's nothing to find. So, at last, the story. It also isn't really good. You have no choie except for the taking trinket from the npc or not. You just there, watching a story about a bad person. No choice, no twist - just "let me tell you about how I was an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for all my life and still am". You can't say that it's a burnout doing this with people - if you listen all "cool story" from drinking tea - she always was like this. And yeah, you can't do anything about it. NPCs are there with a purpose, like christmas ghosts, to tell us something phylosophycal and then disappear forever. In spite of all that i wrote above, I completed the game. Not because I liked it, no. I just had a hope that, maybe, whem the story ends, we can stay in the teashop and the real game will begin. Spoiler: it didn't happen, the game just ended... There were some good parts, but they cannot make the whole game good.

It has seconds of interesting and joyful things scattered throughout hours of tedium. The gameplay feels really over-engineered for such a very short, linear narrative. It could have easily been a visual novel, or something along the lines of "VA-11 Hall-A". The only reason I finished it, was because I was expecting any kind of wrap-up to any of the stories of any of the characters, but you don't even get that for the main character, let alone all the random, pointless people you meet along the way.

Une histoire narrative très émouvante, qui met l'accent sur l'acceptation de soi et le changement, dans une atmosphère douce au sein d'un cadre enchanteur. J'ai beaucoup aimé "Wanderstop" pour son aspect relaxant, et encore plus pour le message qu'il nous transmet à travers l'histoire d'Alta, une combattante déchue qui n'avait jamais connu de défaite en trois ans et demi, et qui sombre dans une profonde dépression à la suite de cet échec. Après cela, elle se retrouve à gérer un salon de thé au beau milieu d'une forêt magique, en compagnie de Boro, un personnage sympathique, bienveillant et immédiatement attachant. Les clients de ce salon de thé nommé "Wanderstop" (tous des personnages hauts en couleurs), ont chacun leurs propre personnalité, leurs forces et leurs faiblesses intérieures, et demandent des thés de toutes sortes qui correspondent à leurs envies et émotions du moment, qu'Alta apprend à fabriquer au fur et à mesure de l'histoire, dans le vaste espace extérieur qui entoure ce salon de thé aux attraits enchanteurs, tout en effectuant d'autres tâches, comme la gestion des colis perdus/le courrier dans la boîte aux lettres, la décoration intérieure du salon avec des plantes/des photos, ainsi que l'entretien du jardin (balayer, enlever les ronces, récupérer des babioles, des graines, etc..). Cependant, Alta accomplit toutes ses tâches sans se presser, en prenant du temps pour elle afin de se reposer et "lâcher prise", en méditant sur son passé et ce qu'elle a réellement désiré, pour reprendre sa vie en main vers un meilleur changement. La description de son état psychologique au fil des saisons était très bien retranscrit tout au long de cette histoire. On constate clairement l'influence des saisons et des couleurs qui s'adaptent aux émotions d'Alta : la colère, l'affection, le réconfort, la tristesse, la solitude, l'inquiétude, la joie, etc. J'ai également apprécié la qualité de l'écriture de tous les autres personnages du jeu, avec des dialogues apportant régulièrement des touches d'humour ou d'empathie. De plus, les graphismes sont très beaux, avec des couleurs magnifiques, le tout accompagné d'une boucle musicale très agréable et reposante, idéale pour se détendre pendant plusieurs heures. C'est loin d'être la première fois que je joue à un jeu dont l'éditeur est "Annapurna". Je n'ai jamais été déçue par eux, ils choisissent toujours des développeurs qui ont créé des jeux avec de belles moralités/valeurs. En général, je sais d'avance que lorsque je commence un jeu édité par "Annapurna", je vais certainement l'apprécier, c'est en quelque sorte devenu une valeur sûre pour ma part :) ! Je ne peux que recommander "Wanderstop", une petite merveille parmi les jeux indépendants avec une histoire touchante, qui nous permet de réfléchir et de nous questionner sur nous-mêmes, dans un univers doux et onirique, où l'on souhaite se poser comme Alta et savourer paisiblement une tasse de thé !

I understand that the slow pacing was a thematic choice, but it didn't make for an engaging game. I played through the first season expecting it to pick up the pace a bit after the tutorials, but it didn't happen. And every time I think about playing more, I get turned off when I remember how light the actual gameplay is. The art and writing were great, but I've accepted I'm unlikely to finish.

If you are capable of introspection and vulnerability, this is a game you will want to play. If you aren't, this is a game you might need to play.