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2025 is already shaping up to be a big year for gaming. Between Nintendo’s Switch 2 launch and big games like Death Stranding 2 and Elden Ring Nightreign joining Monster Hunter Wilds as the industry’s biggest hits of 2025, it can be easy to miss some of the special gems that fall between the cracks. However, my game of the year so far isn’t any of these titles – it is a cozy little game about making tea.

Okay, Wanderstop is about more than just making tea. It is about a proud warrior who, when presented with a gap between how she views herself and the world around her, goes into an existential crisis to conquer her doubt and self-hatred. It is about burnout and dealing with the mounting pressure that success creates. It is about how forgiving ourselves can be the most difficult thing to do but also the most necessary. 
But, really, it is about making tea. And occasionally coffee. But mostly tea.

Meet the tea warrior Alta of Wanderstop

Alta starts the game as a woman on the run from herself. She is sprinting through a forest, searching for a legendary warrior who can help train her. See, Alta has, for the first tasted defeat as a fighter and is desperate to never let it happen again. However, she collapses from exhaustion and awakens in a clearing with the jovial and relaxed Boro, who invites her to work at his tea shop while she attempts to figure out why she is unable to even lift her sword anymore.

Wanderstop was written and directed by Davey Wreden, who is probably best known for The Stanley Parable. This isn’t the same meta-exploration of free will and video games, but you can see the same thoughtful intensity in his writing here. Alta is a woman haunted (quite literally in this case) by her own feelings of inadequacy and fear of failure.

I found the story here somewhat bittersweet. So much of the narrative is built around Alta’s recovery, but that recovery only comes as she engages with and helps the customers of the tea shop with their journey which becomes a reflection, in some way, of her. However, nearly every single secondary character departs before they achieve any real resolution to their story – they simply cease to exist when the plot demands it. This isn’t a shortcoming, in my opinion; Wanderstop is about the road to recovery not being perfect and stories sometimes being unfinished. As much as I wanted to resolve to story of the wannabe knight slowly turning into a ghost due to a witch’s curse, Wanderstop’s laser focus on Alta’s tale is to its benefit.

There is a real sense of catharsis in this story that I think speaks to most people. Hussle culture and gig work have broken so many people, especially in game journalism. I don’t know anyone, myself included, who hasn’t had a period of burnout hit them suddenly, weighing them down and stopping them in their tracks. The moment that Alta failed to lift her own sword, something she had done with ease until the game opens, I knew where this was going. I saw my own frustration and anger at myself reflected in her and I recognized, through hard-won experience, that her recovery wouldn’t come from pushing through the burnout. It would come from reflection, forgiveness, and, most importantly, rest.

Wanderstop is Tea Snob approved

That is the purpose of Wanderstop’s gameplay, which is, admittedly, simple. There are no consequences for getting an order wrong and no time limits to worry about. The only real requirement is that you take the time to focus on the brew. As a confessed and unapologetic tea snob, I appreciated the focus on such a simple yet meditative act. It might not be everyone’s cup of… well, tea, but there is intention behind the mechanic, just like there is behind everything in the game.

We’ve already had plenty of big game releases in 2025 and we’re going to have more and more, especially after the Switch 2 comes out. As a game journalist, there is the constant push to do more. To review more. To write more. To cover more. To stretch myself until I am spread so thin that I cannot recognize myself. So, I am thankful for Wanderlust, a game that forced me to recognize what I did to myself while in the grips of burnout and to slow down. No matter how chaotic work gets or how hard we are pushed for more more more, it is up to us all to make the time to breathe, relax, and give ourselves the love we need.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my kettle just boiled and I have a cup of tea to brew.

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