Wander Scoop Review: A Nice Serving of Coziness (Switch)

Wander Scoop may be one of those games you might overlook on the Nintendo Switch. I happened to come across it as I was browsing through the upcoming games, and it caught my eye. Simply the concept of running your own little ice cream truck was compelling.

As it was on sale for a very good price, I decided to go for it – but was it worth it, or was I disappointed? The answer: no, I was not disappointed. I had a very pleasant time with this cozy little title – and I think you probably will, too. Let’s take a closer look at this cute title from RedDeer.Games (I seem to have reviewed a lot of their games in a short span of time recently).

Wander Scoop is available on Nintendo Switch for $12.99.

Story – Familiar Faces

Wander Scoop doesn’t have a story in the strictest sense – but it does include some form of narrative, at least with interacting with the regulars.

Ten Loyal Customers

In Wander Scoop, you have a loyal circle of customers, 10 in fact, who frequent your ice cream business. Sometimes the same customer appears twice in a row!

These characters are distinctive from one another, such as the teacher in the knitted cardigan who dotes on their grandchildren and loves reading books, the man who often buys an ice cream for himself and his cute dog, the surfer dude looking for a wave – and a date, and the kid who reminds me of Goth Boy from MySims, complete with a passion for poetry.

This is just to name a few colorful characters who visit your business. Seeing the same faces over and over is fine, but you do quickly notice that the dialogue gets very repetitive. You can respond to these dialogues yourself, but they’re very basic and don’t influence anything much. Sometimes, the responses available are completely random and irrelevant to who you’re talking to and what you’re talking about.

However, this isn’t a huge issue as the main focus is kept on making the ice creams. At least the characters don’t spend more time waffling than ordering and serving.

Every customer has a little chat before putting in their order.

The Meaning of Life – and Ice Cream

Now and again, usually after unlocking a new product for your business, a scene plays out with one of these characters, where things get rather philosophical. The customer will be discussing an issue or event currently in their life, and your character will use ice cream as a comparison for reflecting on whatever they’re going through to help them out.

It’s a nice touch, but it also feels a little random, like it’s out of place. You just want to get on with serving your other customers.

Gameplay – The Simple Pleasures of Serving Ice Cream

At the end of the day, Wander Scoop is essentially an ice cream server simulator. You work the ice cream truck, you get orders from customers, you prepare their order, and then you get paid. It’s a management game in its simplest form – and it’s also very relaxing and stress-free.

Ice Cream to Go

When you get a customer, there’s a little chat beforehand, and then they tell you what they want. The order they ask for depends on what products you have in your truck. The size and complexity of the order can also vary. Sometimes they just want a single scoop of one flavor, other times they’ll ask for two different flavors, plus a topping and sprinkles. They may also ask for soft serve ice cream or lemonade. There’s no predicting what they’re going to request.

Mm, ice cream!

Getting the Order Right

You might think you have to pay attention and memorize the order, but fortunately Wander Scoop makes sure you don’t forget. After taking the order, the request is written on a note, which you can bring up anytime while preparing the order.

It is important to get the order right. Getting it wrong results in the customer being unhappy and requesting a refund. However, when you do give them what they ask, they’ll give you a tip. It’s not entirely clear how the tip’s amount is calculated, whether it’s to do with how quickly you prepare the order or if you add any extras, but you do get something.

As you upgrade your stand and unlock new products, including new flavors, soft serve ice cream, toppings, and even lemonade, the orders that customers request start to vary, so you’re not stuck dishing out the same flavors or other products over and over.

The customer at most requests a scoop or two, plus a topping and sprinkles. It varies depending on what you have stocked.

Easy Navigation

Preparing orders thankfully isn’t too difficult in Wander Scoop. Navigating your workstation is pretty easy, moving across left and right to access different ingredients and products. If you mess up an order, you can toss it away and start again.

Also, whenever you receive a new product to sell or new appliance to work with, you are given a step-by-step walkthrough upon your first go. Learning how to prepare the orders is very easy, and soon your orders will be flying out of the workstation into waiting customers’ hands.

Whenever you get some new equipment, you are taught how to use it.

Overlooked Decorations

One thing that wasn’t fully explained in Wander Scoop was the decorations for the ice cream orders. I’m not talking about the toppings or sprinkles, but things like the little spoons, the umbrellas, and waffles, which you can stick into the scoops. They didn’t mention in the game anywhere that you could do this, and customers don’t directly request these particular extras. You can choose to add these yourself, and they are completely optional, but they don’t seem to make a difference in the customer’s satisfaction.

Also, placing these items is a little fiddly. The controls for this are a bit clunky, and it just takes up extra time preparing the order. It’s really for the benefit of you wanting to add that extra something to an order, but it’s not mandatory.

It just seemed odd that it was overlooked. Perhaps the developers had originally planned to include it in customer requests, but found it didn’t work and decided to not do this, but leave the decorations in as an optional extra.

You don’t need to add these decorations to your ice cream, but you can if you want.

Opening Hours

In a typical work day, the ice cream business is open from 11am to 8pm. As the day goes on, there are specific time skips to customers coming over and placing orders. The day typically goes quite fast (about 5 minutes in real time), and before you know it, it’s the end of the day and the shop is closed.

There are mixed feelings about this time system. It’s great that it doesn’t drag on longer than it needs to, but at the same time, it does sometimes feel a bit too fast. It feels as if you could have done with receiving another customer or two in one day.

Easier Customer Management

One feature that you might be thankful for in Wander Scoop is that you won’t get overwhelmed with a flurry of customers. In some management games, you get multiple requests at once, which can leave you feeling overwhelmed, unable to complete every order in time, resulting in angry customers storming off, sometimes with extra consequences.

This fortunately is not the case here. You usually get one customer at a time, and no more than two at most, with two separate requests to prepare. These are easy to manage though, and your customers are pretty patient. Although the customer satisfaction meter depletes more the longer you prepare an order, it’s not excessive and doesn’t appear to make much impact on your business. You won’t ever feel too rushed to fulfil an order, helping you to feel more relaxed and enjoy the process more.

You sometimes get two customers at the same time, but it’s not difficult to deal with both.

Leveling Up

As you successfully carry out orders and leave customers satisfied, your reputation meter goes up. This is calculated at the end of every shift. You start at the bottom, level 1, and work your way up. Upon leveling up, you receive rewards. These can be a cash bonus, new decorations or items for your truck, or new products to sell. The highest level to get all unlockable items is level 32. You can continue leveling up for extra cash, but you won’t unlock anything else beyond this point.

Leveling up in Wander Scoop is well worth it to unlock new items to sell, as well as new decorations to personalize your business. You also don’t know what you’re going to get before leveling up, as the purchases are locked and hidden. The intrigue behind these mysterious items inspires you to work hard to unlock them.

It’s exciting unlocking a new item that you can purchase, no matter what it is. However, it would be a good idea if you could view the item in the menu before making the final purchase, so you know exactly what you’re buying. These items could have a description against them stating what they are, if they add a new product to your business, where they appear in your stand, etc.

Leveling up is always rewarding.

Upgrading and Decorating Your Stand

Serving ice cream to customers may be fun and rewarding, but what’s better is getting to customize your business. With the money you earn and by leveling up, you can purchase all manner of items to personalize your shop. These include wall decorations, counter decorations, and serving mats. You can also buy items such as fans, freezer thermometers, and card payment displays, but these are more for aesthetics than functioning additions.

You can also buy upgrades for your business, aka new products such as a lemonade machine, soft serve ice cream machine, sauces, sprinkles, and new ice cream flavors. Although you unlock these, you need to buy them first before you can sell them to your customers, some of which are more expensive than others. Getting these upgrades is well worth it though, expanding the variety of orders you receive.

Also, when reaching a high level, you can pay for marketing, either for one day or three days, to boost customers and therefore profit. This is fairly inexpensive and a useful feature if you want to level up faster or gain extra profit.

You can decorate your truck with items unlocked from leveling up.

Missing Features?

Although I had thoroughly enjoyed playing Wander Scoop, I can’t help feeling this game has a slightly unfinished feel to it. It feels like something is missing, physically. Upon reaching the highest level to unlock the last set of rewards, these items strangely didn’t seem to manifest, despite being convinced I would unlock new products or even just decorations. I couldn’t help feeling a bit confused, as well as disappointed. I did wonder if something was meant to become available and it didn’t due to being removed or being added in a later update. We’ll have to see.

Also, in the start menu for Wander Scoop, under Extras, two DLC are listed: Christmas and Cherry Spring. When I tried to check it out from curiosity, the Nintendo eShop stated it was unavailable. This is obviously another absent feature, either removed prior to release or not yet added in. 

Although we have plenty available to keep us occupied in Wander Scoop, these missing features does make the game feel a little unfinished. Hopefully they will be added in a future update.

These Christmas and spring-themed DLC items aren’t available yet. Maybe soon?

Graphics & Audio – Soothing Pastel Drawings and Chillout Music

I’ve noticed now that several games under RedDeer.Games have this distinctive art style, featuring a cutesy style with soft pastel colors. It gives you that easygoing children’s storybook look that doesn’t necessarily make the game look babyish, but it does evoke a sense of coziness, which is obviously the objective in a game like Wander Scoop.

I personally think the game looks great in this art style. Everything is clear, the products you sell look delicious and appealing, and the characters are distinguishable from one another.

In a cozy game like Wander Scoop, like other RedDeer.Games I’ve recently played and reviewed, relaxing chillout music plays throughout. It’s inoffensive and fortunately not annoying or distracting. It’s actually quite nice to listen to and matches the theme of the game well.

Wander Scoop was played reviewed on Nintendo Switch.