Minecraft composer C418 talks burnout after making Wanderstop, a game about burnout

Daniel Rosenfeld, better known as C418, composed a defining soundtrack of a generation when he made the music for Minecraft. As Rosenfeld told Polygon, he’s fine with always being known as “the Minecraft guy,” but on March 11, the composer released something more personal. A game that feels both intimate and emotional, and one that he had a central role in creating. It’s called Wanderstop.

Developed by Ivy Road, Wanderstop follows the story of a powerful warrior named Alta who, after being beaten in a public arena, gets lost in the woods and finds herself at a whimsical tea shop. Among the various themes in the game, a big one is burnout. Alta calls herself a “failure” and talks negatively about herself after losing the match. In the intro to the game, the player has the option to tell her to rest, but she only slows down for a moment before she tells herself not to get “lazy” or “complacent” and starts running again. As the story unfolds, the game forces Alta to take a break.

According to Rosenfeld, he experienced “similar trauma” throughout the creation of Wanderstop. Unlike on previous projects, Rosenfeld worked both as a composer and an engineer on Wanderstop. He was involved with “anything that had to do with audio,” he told Polygon on a video call in February, about a month before the game’s launch.

“I’ve had a lot of things to deal with emotionally, especially work-related and working hard. Even with this game, I can’t stop working,” Rosenfeld said. “We are a month away from the project, and I think, I will still do some patches today.”

“Putting the pen down is really, really hard, and stopping to smell the roses can be extremely difficult for me, especially as a person with ADHD,” Rosenfeld said. “So yeah, it is funny that there are a lot of lessons in the game that sometimes I’m like, I understand, but I can’t listen to you right now. I have to do the bad thing for a second. Yeah, there’s a lot there.”

Despite personal challenges, Rosenfeld affirmed the Wanderstop team’s commitment to taking breaks. He said, “It is definitely a fun juggle of irony, but the good thing about our team is that we actually are very serious about overwork. I believe there has been no crunch on this game.”

Given his experience working on a now globally successful media franchise like Minecraft, and given the challenges to small-scale game development, we asked Rosenfeld what drew him to Wanderstop and the indie scene in general.

“I have talked to a lot of people in industries,” he said. “I’ve talked to AAA. I’ve talked to Hollywood. I’ve talked to independent musicians touring. I think I always liked the moxie of independent work the most because it’s always people wearing many hats and being multitalented in different regions. I will always enjoy that kind of spitballing environment more than anything else.”