Wanderstop

Wanderstop is a 2025 cozy game developed by Ivy Road and published by Annapurna Interactive. Written and directed by Davey Wreden, composed by C418, and edited by Karla Zimonja, it follows a former warrior named Alta, whose painful losses in combat have led her to help tend a tea shop with its owner, Boro, with an aim to heal herself. The gameplay includes a system of tea brewing and farming by planting seeds in a hex grid, creating more seeds and fruit for use in the tea, as the shop and its customers are attended to throughout the narrative.

After C418 and Wreden each had ideas for a video game by 2015, development on the game began around 2017. Lasting over seven years, it was completed in Unreal Engine and utilized the Blueprints visual scripting software for no-code development. Though Wreden's vision was originally only to make a cozy game, Wanderstop's focus shifted to the subject of trauma when Zimonja joined development, and Wreden chose to integrate his feeling of burnout from developing The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide into the narrative. The art design, taking inspiration from other cozy games, draws elements of Impressionist art and Art Nouveau. C418's original score plays dynamically according to the player's actions.

Wanderstop was released on March 11, 2025 for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. The game was praised for its characters, art and world design, narrative, and music, while the gameplay received a more divisive response.