Wanderstop designer Steven Margolin on video games and life in Burlington

You may not know it, but little parts of Burlington showed up in a recently released and highly reviewed video game.

Back in March, independent development studio Ivy Road released its first-ever game. Wanderstop is a narrative-centric cozy game about change and tea. Gamers play as Alta, a fallen fighter who trades in their sword for a kettle as they manage a magical tea shop.

Wanderstop is a cozy game. If you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. Cozy is a trendy and more loosely defined genre of video game.

Steven Margolin, the lead designer of Wanderstop and a Champlain College graduate, said most video games are classified by what they do. First-person shooters are a good example: in those games, you view the world through playable characters’ eyes and usually have a gun.

“But cozy games themselves are weird and nebulous,” Margolin said. “Like, cozy is what makes you feel good, and it’s more of an aesthetic sensibility, and within that, there are some pretty common signifiers that reoccur, like tea, obviously.”

Wanderstop is full of warm colors and interactive elements including pink grass and purple trees. The game’s farming sim elements mean that the forest is as much a character as Boro, your guide through the story and the tea shop’s owner.

Players work at the shop, growing a garden to harvest plants and fruits to brew tea for travelers making their way through the forest.

Margolin and I had the chance to play some of the game together. After taking a request from Fancy Bird — who he said is one of the game’s more polarizing characters — I checked my field guide and set out to gather the elements needed to make the bird’s request: a “soothing cup of lavender tea with some cheeky color tweaks.” Here’s a bit of our dialogue:

Nathaniel Wilson: The Chip Chip plant, or no, the Mess — oh, I made the Messberry plant, of course, it’s right there.

Steven Margolin: Yes, you made a Messberry plant, and now it’s all filled in.

Nathaniel Wilson: OK. It’s beautiful, but it’s not what I need.

Margolin worked on Wanderstop’s gameplay mechanics, level design and more. He said game design is about communication.

“It’s about taking an idea that exists somewhere and turning it into a reality that can be shared with someone halfway around the world who doesn’t speak my native language, who has a weird hunk of plastic with buttons on it,” he said.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in game design from Champlain College in 2018, Margolin secured an internship at GameTheory, a game design and development collective based in Burlington.

Seven years later, he’s had about a dozen job titles at several studios. He said stability is not guaranteed in this field.

“Working in the game industry, you should always have two or three months worth of rent saved up, always at any time, because you could lose your job at any time,” Margolin said.

Before joining Ivy Road — the company that developed Wanderstop — Margolin worked at Niantic, a software development company based in San Francisco, best known for developing Pokémon Go.

In the summer of 2022, Niantic laid off 8% of its workforce, including Margolin.

After he lost his job, he cold-emailed Ivy Road with an updated resume and a message detailing his experience and excitement about the company.

“And then I end it by saying, ‘I would really love to make games with you. I’m excited by what’s going on here. And I also love that you have stable funding. Hit me up,’ and then they did,” Margolin said.

He said living in Vermont’s biggest city allows him to build community while also finding joy and inspiration for games through the place he lives.

“Like being able to like, go to Dobra and get like, really good loose leaf tea to inspire me for this tea game. Being able to walk around all of our beautiful parks,” he said. “At my last apartment, I had a garden, which helped me shape and understand a lot of like, the gardening mechanics that I put into this game.”

We ended our time together by walking to a street corner in Burlington’s Old North End. The spot features a view of the Intervale Center — it’s somewhere that Margolin frequents on walks.

“The day Wanderstop launched, it was still very muddy, but I walked down to the salmon hole anyway,” Margolin said. “And I stood out there looking at the Winooski River, feeling the sun on my back and two ducks swam by. And it was incredibly peaceful.”

Ivy Road paid for Margolin and friends to have a Wanderstop release party at Queen City Brewery. But soon after, it was back to work on what he calls “game number two.” For now, Margolin says that’s all he can say about it.