A little more than a decade ago, the video-game designer Davey Wreden experienced a crippling success. In October, 2013, he and a collaborator, William Pugh, released the Stanley Parable HD, a polished and expanded version of a prototype that Wreden had developed in college, and which he had made available, free of charge, two years before. Wreden and Pugh hoped that they might sell fifty thousand or so copies of the new version in the course of its lifetime. They sold that many on the first day. Wreden was twenty-five years old, and he had everything he'd ever wanted: money, success, recognition.

The term "cosy game" typically inspires one of two responses in those of us who play video games regularly. It will either call you in with the promise of soft, resource-management oriented gameplay whose slower pace offers a gentle escape and a bucolic alternative to gunslinging and high-stress adventure. Or it will repel you – as admittedly, it repels me. Cosy is often a kind of code for twee, low-stakes domestic adventures where drama is eschewed in favour of repetitive tasks intended to generate comfort, or imitate lightning-in-a-bottle resource management sims such as Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. So when faced with Wanderstop, a colourful game in which a fallen warrior trades in her fighting life for managing a tea shop, I was hesitant.