Winter Burrow

Winter Burrow is a gorgeous game with heartbreaking writing. At its best, it evokes the spirit of great classics like Watership Down and the Redwall books. The minimalist dialog paints evocative histories and lived lives that feel textured and real.

There is so much to love here that even with all the faults, Winter Burrow is a game you should experience. But it is also a deeply flawed experience full of obtuse and frustrating mechanics and fussy design that takes away from the brilliant mood.

One of the main issues with Winter Burrow is that it bill itself as a "cozy". Yes, it does tack on the world "survival" in the mix, but that feels beside the point. A cozy game means a certain type of experience, one that Winter Burrow only hits on an aesthetic level.

Winter Burrow is the story of a young mouse whose family has tragically died in the big city. After burying the past, the young mouse leaves for their burrow in the countryside, where the last remnants of their family still lives. Winter here is harsh and unforgiving, and it's not long before the young mouse experiences the grim realities of it firsthand.

To survive, the player controls the young mouse as they gather ingredients and raw materials, help others, and navigate the thick forest in hopes of restoring the burrow to what it once was.

There's a deep melancholy that runs through Winter Burrow. It's a story about putting your life together again after great tragedies, where the burrow serves as the metaphor in more ways than one. The world around you isn't dying, but it is going into hibernation, and for someone like myself prone to seasonal depression, playing Winter Burrow often felt emotionally taxing.

This isn't an admonishment, but rather a statement of how profoundly successful the game is in crafting a sense of set and setting.

And yet, winter is a time of the year I associate with things slowing down; a season of waiting and contemplation. In Winter Burrow, it fuels a sense of urgency. Every minute outside drains your warmth, and once that hits zero, you begin to lose health. Lose enough and you black out, only to wake up back at the burrow having lost everything you were carrying.

It creates a gameplay loop where every exit out of the house must have a clear goal and strict planning around it. First, you need crafting materials to build better weapons. Then sturdier clothing. Then food and things that buff your stamina. New missions force you to push further into the forest, where quest givers provide small respite as their homes revitalize your warmth.

Winter Burrow is a game about trying to outrun death. It is not cozy at all.

Even more frustrating is Winter Burrow's singular vision which grinds against the notion of a cozy-ish experience. There is no map, and the woods look startlingly similar regardless where you are.

Most of the missions are annoying busywork, often involving lots of back and forth between your burrow and the quest giver. These range from baking pies or collecting a set amount of materials, but since you can't build even temporary locations elsewhere, you're always bound to your hearth.

That's because, at its core, Winter Burrow is a linear and story-driven game masquerading as a survival builder. It is more akin to Don't Starve than it is anything else. I wish it were more honest about that right from the start.

Your first playthrough will last anywhere from 6 to 9 hours, depending on how lost you get. For me, it took closer to 9 hours, because I got stuck running around the map uncertain of where to go and how to get there. Every time I got so frustrated that I wanted to quit, Winter Burrow hit me with some more magical and touching writing, and I kept on going.

I wish I loved Winter Burrow more than I do. When I first saw it at Gamescom a full year ago, I was instantly smitten by the art style and tone. When I showed it to my partner, they squealed in delight over the same things. After watching me play for about an hour, they said it was too stressful for them.

This the odd halfway point where Winter Burrow exists. It's too much of one genre and not enough of another. It is a daring attempt to marry two disparate experiences together that stumbles in not understanding who it is made for.

Yet despite this, I would still recommend giving Winter Burrow a try. I have a soft spot for big swings, even if they don't entirely connect. Winter Burrow has some of the finest writing and charming visuals out of any game I've played this year. It's the rest of it that struggles to keep up.