aAt first glance, Wanderstop seems to stimulate the same restless urge as many other feel-good games: the desire to escape a stressful life into a secluded wilderness. The game begins with you taking a job as an assistant in a tea shop in the forest, where you spend your days cleaning, tending to the garden, and researching the perfect tea blend to satisfy the needs of visiting customers. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll find that the game rips away the hollow rewards of escapist fantasies.

This idyllic setting was born from an idea that game designer Davey Redden had in mind a few months after the game’s release. Beginner’s Guide for 2015He had a recurring daydream about going to a coffee shop in the woods and lying on a bench by the water. He drew various sketches of that scene for several months, before finally deciding that it would be his next game.

“I was feeling extremely exhausted,” he says, “like I was trying to summon up some energy within myself to rest and relax. I thought that some feel-good games would soothe a part of me. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that this was completely wrong.”

Making a feel-good game is a marathon of hard work, just like making any other game, and one that’s not made easier by a cute sensibility, but Wreden was also consumed by the same illusion at the heart of the genre: that the satisfaction of completing a series of tasks is the same as solace.

It wasn’t until Carla Zimonja, one of the creators of Gone Home, came on board that Welden realized he was making a seemingly heartwarming game about trauma.[We realized Wanderstop’s] “The characters were really conflicted and in a really bad situation,” he says. “And they’re not going to be magically cured by having tea in the middle of the woods.”

The protagonist, Alta, is at the heart of Wonderstop’s heartwarming fantasy, a character who seeks healing through escapism and the mundane. Once a champion fighter and human weapon, she was sharp and violent. “Her whole life and mind is focused on progressing and achieving future accomplishments,” says Redden. Her time in the arena left her traumatized, and she believes completing the tea shop job will help her heal.

If Alta were a player, she’d be a quintessential min-maxer, figuring out the most efficient way to get the coffee shop’s work done in the shortest time possible. She sweeps her broom as if she were swinging a sword. But without spoiling the story, Ureden makes it clear that running through a checklist of wholesome tasks won’t lead to the solace Alta or her customers are looking for. “A character who offers you a cup of tea and says, ‘Great, well done, thank you for cheering me up. Here’s a token of my appreciation!’ and then just walks away is the last thing we can do,” Ureden says. “I think this place is a place where you can be yourself and not just be yourself.” [challenge] If she doesn’t, the activity won’t have the predictable results that players are accustomed to.”

“WonderStop was created not to shatter the comfort zone of gamers and their escapist fantasies, but to change our understanding of where healing comes from,” he said. “In Studio Ghibli films, [we watch] “This is someone doing chores,” Zimonja says, “sweeping the floor, washing dishes, tidying up. You can see that these ritualistic elements, these ongoing acts of maintenance, are important and meaningful parts of living in the world.”

Through Arta’s story, we learn that tasks are restorative only because of the intrinsic pleasure of performing them, and not, as Redden puts it, “because of the promise of future reward.” As Zimonja adds, “It’s our daily rituals that are the foundation of our lives.”