Two Games That Broke My Brain

2025-12-28 · games

In games, (and maybe in life in general) I'm not a patient person. Never have been. I find the fastest path through everything, optimize my routes, min-max whenever possible. I don't skip cutscenes though. I want the story, all of it. I'm what I call a "relative completionist" when it comes to narrative and lore. Side quests? Not my thing. But if there's story to uncover, I need to know it.

So when I tell you that two of the best games of 2025 have thrown me into a horrible tantrum, feeling defeated, which led me to writing this, please understand what that means coming from someone like me.

The games are "Blue Prince" and "Wanderstop." Both demanded patience. They both challenged how I play. And they both won. But in completely different ways.

Blue Prince: The Game That Never Ends

You play as Simon, inheriting your eccentric great-uncle's estate but you only get it if you find the mysterious Room 46 in a mansion that officially has 45 rooms.

Every morning, the mansion resets. Each time you open a door, you choose from three random rooms to "draft" into that space. You're building the mansion as you explore, like a first-person board game mixed with a puzzle box. Rooms cost resources—steps, gems, keys, coins. Your stamina is limited. Run out, day ends, mansion resets. You keep your knowledge, but everything else starts over.

Fucking RNG hell.

I've put in over ten hours. I still haven't reached Room 46.

Ten hours of drafting rooms, managing resources, scribbling notes. I've learned which rooms to avoid, where the levers are, figured out underground passages and gear puzzles.

Still not there.

And the community keeps saying reaching Room 46 is "just the tutorial." One player said: "I reached Room 46 on Day 30. I'm currently on Day 100+. There is no end in sight." Another hit 162 hours before feeling done—and mysteries still remained. There's a spiral in the game with "does it never end?" written next to it. I don't know if that's a puzzle or the developers mocking us.

For someone like me (someone who wants to solve the thing and move on) Blue Prince is torture. Beautiful, horrible torture. It doesn't want efficiency. It wants obsession. And I can't keep giving it that, for my sin has been always haste.

Wanderstop: The Game I Played Wrong

If Blue Prince broke me with its enormity, Wanderstop broke me with its simplicity.

From Davey Wreden (The Stanley Parable) and C418 (Minecraft's soundtrack), it's a "cozy game" about running a tea shop. Except it's really about burnout.

You play as Alta, a legendary fighter who's never lost—until she did. Twice. She collapses in the woods, can't even lift her sword anymore. She wakes up next to Boro, a gentle giant who runs a tea shop called Wanderstop. He suggests she stay. Help with the shop. Rest. Alta hates this. She's a fighter, not a tea maker.

The gameplay involves growing plants, harvesting fruits, and brewing tea in this elaborate contraption requiring bellows, valves, ladders, and ropes. Customers wander in with vague requests. There are no timers. No penalties. No day cycle. Boro keeps saying there's no rush.

So naturally, I rushed. (sigh)

I completed orders fast, sped through dialogue to trigger story beats, treated brewing as an obstacle between me and narrative payoff. Finished in about eight hours.

And immediately realized I missed the point.

The game wanted me to sit on a bench and drink tea. Watch the Pluffins bounce around. Let the music wash over me. Feel the discomfort of doing nothing, like Alta does. The slowness IS the story. There's even a fucking cheat book that tells you exactly what customers want, so you don't have to figure it out. The game literally lets you skip the puzzle if you want.

I am a relative completionist. I need to know everything. But Wanderstop wasn't asking me to collect. It was asking me to feel. You can't speedrun feelings.

I played it wrong. In the end, I gave up to the voice that made Alta lose.

Conclusion: Same Lesson, Different Teachers

Both games teach the same thing to players like me.

Blue Prince: "Rushing gets you nowhere. Progress is measured in knowledge, not objectives. Slow down and learn."

Wanderstop: "Rush to the end if you want. Credits will roll. But you'll walk away empty. The point is the pause."

Blue Prince challenges patience by being impossibly vast. Wanderstop does it by being stubbornly gentle. One is a marathon. The other was a meditation I refused to sit through.

Both made me uncomfortable. Both made me better.

If you're like me, these games will test you. Blue Prince will consume you. Wanderstop will hold up a mirror.

They're two of the best games of 2025. I'm not sure I've finished either.

Blue Prince because I haven't even reached the part that's supposedly just the beginning.

Wanderstop because I need to play it again—slower this time.

Much slower.