WANDERSTOP

Getting cosy with ghosts of the past

“IT’S PITCHED AS A TITLE ABOUT RUNNING A LITTLE TEA SHOP, BUT YOU KNOW THERE’S PROBABLY MORE UNDER THE SURFACE.”

We all love a cosy game: plant some flowers, tend to your garden, and try not to be overwhelmed by thoughts of what it would take to achieve anything close to it in real life. For an audience contending with sky-high housing costs and questionable value for money, the cosy game can offer a virtual refuge.

Developer Ivy Road was co-founded by Davey Wreden, whose previous games include

The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide. Both those titles are renowned for the metatextual things they unfurl into, so when the new studio’s first game rocks up, pitched as a title about running a little tea shop, you know there’s probably more bubbling away under the surface. Ivy Road’s other co-founder, Karla Zimonja, is an alumnus of Fullbright, the studio behind Gone Home and Tacoma, so whatever that bigger picture proves to be, you can be sure it’ll be rendered in narratively ambitious brushstrokes.

You are Alta, a once-mighty championship fighter who now finds herself growing ingredients and whipping up a brew. It’s definitely a change of pace – and one she has mixed feelings about. Life in the tea shop is slow, with growing green shoots and brewing them into tea via an unusual contraption requiring patience. Between chores around the store, you can decorate the venue to your liking and listen to your clients’ many stories. In fact, there’s time to grab a cuppa yourself, sit on a bench, and listen to Alta’s own thoughts as they grow increasingly insistent there’s something very wrong with this picture.

What’s a hardened fighter doing sipping tea here? Warrior Alta seems just as confused as we are, though we’d rarely turn down a good cuppa.