My identify is Jenny, and I’m the Communications Director for Ivy Highway, the indie studio at present creating Wanderstop. Our workforce is proud to announce that Wanderstop might be launched on PlayStation 5 on March 11, 2025. We’re looking forward to the possibility for gamers to step into Alta’s sneakers and contribute to PlayStation’s custom of representing impactful, emotional storytelling in video games.
A Mysterious Tea Store
In Wanderstop, you’ll play as a former match fighter named Alta who has to put her troubled previous apart to have a tendency a charming store and brew tea for its varied prospects. One would anticipate that after a lifetime of dedication, dedication, and fixed competitors, Alta would welcome the chance to decelerate. However Alta isn’t fairly like everybody else, and this golden alternative for relaxation is one thing she needs she may escape. As an alternative of combating, Alta should spend time rising and harvesting the elements wanted for tea and mixing them in an uncommon tea-making contraption, talking with the various vacationers who cross by means of the store, studying their tales, and making tea to match their distinctive requests.
In your downtime, you would possibly tidy up across the clearing, adorn the store in your type, or simply sit on a bench with a cup of tea and hear to your personal ideas. Possibly doing nothing in any respect is okay. The store calls for endurance and rejects those that have come solely within the pursuit of progress unchecked.
Impressed by Private Expertise
Inventive Director Davey Wreden’s expertise with burnout initially impressed the idea of Wanderstop, and because the workforce and undertaking grew, every member introduced their views to the desk. We additionally drew from the groundwork of many narrative and cozy video games which have additionally explored difficult subjects.
In our launch date announcement video, we had the chance to share a little bit of Davey’s journey. Years in the past, he wrote and directed two video games – The Stanley Parable and The Newbie’s Information – and after ending these video games, he felt extremely burnt out. Within the hopes of bringing some steadiness to his life, and to encourage a more healthy work/life steadiness, he began to discover making a cozy game. As he progressed, he found that taking part in cozy video games can present a number of rest – making them nonetheless include the stresses and challenges that each one game improvement holds.
After collaborating with different members of the workforce, like co-founder and author, Karla Zimonja, artwork director Temi Olujobi, and lead designer, Steve Margolin, the game’s central themes and questions developed. Moderately than merely creating a cozy expertise, there was a rigidity that they started to discover. What occurs when you may have a protagonist who isn’t excited about or keen to interact with a cozy world? The coziness, relatively than merely being the answer to her interior turmoil, grew to become a level of competition for our protagonist, Alta, and it additionally grew to become an attention-grabbing design ingredient for us as a workforce.
We seemed in direction of most of the video games already out that’ve explored these intersections of burnout, grief, fatigue, and therapeutic, in addition to earlier analysis articles on subjects like participant motivation and the work on coziness from Project Horseshoe. Our hope was to proceed increasing on the ways in which some of these video games present areas for gamers to mirror and tackle probably difficult points.
Let Your Thoughts Wander
In Wanderstop, there are ample actions a participant can do to cross the time. Let your pursuits information you to the duties that convey you probably the most achievement. Gamers who get pleasure from adorning can take their time arranging crops within the backyard and across the store, petting lovable pluffins, and discovering trinkets scattered about the glade. Periodically, guests will arrive, offering a chance for dialog. Speak with them, see what’s on their minds, and maybe tackle a request to brew their favourite tea. Want a second to your self? Create your personal cuppa, discover a spot to sit, and take within the sights and sounds of the clearing. The music – composed by C418 — shifts dynamically based mostly in your actions in-game and offers a enjoyable soundtrack to mirror on.
These verbs of Wanderstop – brew, adorn, discuss, sit, drink tea – all help our objective for you: that you just discover your personal sense of that means and connection to this world and Alta’s journey when it comes to PS5 March 11, 2025.
