With a tea-making fantasy game, Davey Wreden gets real
Davey Wreden does not tend to make conventional games. He exploded onto the indie scene in 2013 with The Stanley Parable, a choose-your-own adventure story set in a workplace hall of mirrors. Its follow-up, 2015âs The Beginnerâs Guide was a tour through a series of games created by an untraceable hobbyist developer. Both are undeniably trippy, metafictional titles. Now, after a decade of experimentation and subsequent burnout, comes Wanderstop, a game that dials back the impish impulses that defined the earlier works for something more emotionally upfront.
Wanderstop takes place in an almost impossibly quaint forest clearing. A tea shop sits at the center of this small, ostensibly perfect world where guests arrive in search of a soothing brew. Playing as Alta, a professional fighter on a career-decimating losing streak, itâs your job to make tea while tending to her recovery. Alta is handed a basket to collect tea leaves, shears to cut unruly weeds, and a watering can to tend to plants. The game is part cozy farming simulator, part narrative adventure. Crucially, it never smashes through the fourth wall of its fantasy premise like its predecessors.
With Wredenâs track re …
